{link » Shoes of Rage!}
A child's "innocence" is really a euphemism for a child's "ignorance". It is ordinarily not a problem — children must accumulate a vast database that comprises what is sometimes referred to as "cultural literacy". This process is known as education. In our country, education is not all it's cracked up to be, unfortunately. Especially bad, and getting worse, are high school and college. If you read "I Am Charlotte Simmons, a 2004 novel by Tom Wolfe, you will get an inkling of what passes for education for your little darlings at a nominal price that is, currently, upwards of 150 kilobucks a pop.
Despite such significant obstacles, most children somehow reach adulthood with a semblance of cultural literacy, albeit only a semblance. Even many of them who acquire advanced degrees are sorely lacking, but they can usually fake their way past the equally boorish hiring "experts" populating the personnel management departments.
A person's education is ultimately only as good as they want it to be. But wanting it is not enough. One has to be willing to work for it too. If you party all night, a euphemism for getting stinking drunk in some bizarre ritual that hopefully leads to getting laid, and then pass out with a textbook under your pillow, you will experience the limitations of osmosis as well as a pain in the neck.
So, why do the likes of "Code Pink" do it? Because remaining ignorant is a lot easier than becoming culturally literate. These people are the ones who fell through the cracks of our porous education system because they were simply too lazy to make the effort. Most of these assholes will continue to fritter away into eventual obscurity and a pretty miserable middle age, and an even worse old age if they're lucky. A few will succeed to the pinnacle of notoriety, like OJ. A very few, however, will ultimately achieve a level of decent lifestyle through the failings of our great, albeit imperfect, justice system. So our by-and-large decent society must abide the occasional freak-of-nature that defines a William Ayers. That is the price of democracy.
Any parent who survived to their child's third birthday has anecdotal evidence to support the concept of the "terrible twos". In most cases, that year of exasperation is thankfully followed by the "lovable threes". But there are exceptions, of course.
“Gateway rounds up Code Pink’s pro-shoe ambush on the Iraqi ambassador, who tells them to take a hike. The above art of a Shoeist protest in Berkeley would be poignantly reminiscent of the traveling anti-war symbolic boot protests of a few years ago … except instead of being tragically wrongheaded, this one is just ridiculously boneheaded. I hope the long-suffering Marines at the Berkeley recruiting station enjoyed it.”
— Jules Crittenden
A child's "innocence" is really a euphemism for a child's "ignorance". It is ordinarily not a problem — children must accumulate a vast database that comprises what is sometimes referred to as "cultural literacy". This process is known as education. In our country, education is not all it's cracked up to be, unfortunately. Especially bad, and getting worse, are high school and college. If you read "I Am Charlotte Simmons, a 2004 novel by Tom Wolfe, you will get an inkling of what passes for education for your little darlings at a nominal price that is, currently, upwards of 150 kilobucks a pop.
Despite such significant obstacles, most children somehow reach adulthood with a semblance of cultural literacy, albeit only a semblance. Even many of them who acquire advanced degrees are sorely lacking, but they can usually fake their way past the equally boorish hiring "experts" populating the personnel management departments.
A person's education is ultimately only as good as they want it to be. But wanting it is not enough. One has to be willing to work for it too. If you party all night, a euphemism for getting stinking drunk in some bizarre ritual that hopefully leads to getting laid, and then pass out with a textbook under your pillow, you will experience the limitations of osmosis as well as a pain in the neck.
So, why do the likes of "Code Pink" do it? Because remaining ignorant is a lot easier than becoming culturally literate. These people are the ones who fell through the cracks of our porous education system because they were simply too lazy to make the effort. Most of these assholes will continue to fritter away into eventual obscurity and a pretty miserable middle age, and an even worse old age if they're lucky. A few will succeed to the pinnacle of notoriety, like OJ. A very few, however, will ultimately achieve a level of decent lifestyle through the failings of our great, albeit imperfect, justice system. So our by-and-large decent society must abide the occasional freak-of-nature that defines a William Ayers. That is the price of democracy.
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