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Education and the revolution
The revolution is coming. The BDN and both political parties have been forewarning it for years. The haves versus the have-nots, the aggrieved versus the even-more aggrieved, rural versus urban, blue versus red. Any way you want to define it, it’s coming. But does either political party realize its impetus has been championed by both, publicly, for years?
Education. Namely, providing every child a great education and an equal shot at achieving the American dream (read, circa 2020: get rich!). It’s an admirable objective. In theory. But has anyone asked who’s gonna be left to actually make all the “stuff” — turn the gears and pull the levers? Who’s gonna man the shovels as we rebuild the country’s failing infrastructure? That well-educated kid aspiring to greatness? Who’s gonna grind on the assembly lines and sandblast the rust off all those bridges? That highly enlightened go-getter, teeming with hope and confidence, ready to take on the world?
Or will it be you? How ’bout you?
Be careful what you wish for. The last thing late stage capitalism can afford is a well-educated population teeming with inspiration, on so many levels. Because invariably, tens of millions of those well-schooled types will have to pick up the nail guns and the dayglow vests, and their dashed aspirations will start to fester. Combine that with the current socioeconomic environment, and I believe you will soon get your revolution.
Chris Smith
Scarborough
Six more years
Sen. Susan Collins has, once again, talked her way into another Senate term telling everyone that she’s a moderate, middle-of-the-road politician. I believe this is not, and never was, the case.
Here is just one example: The Senate Republicans, including Collins, recently confirmed a 33-year-old lawyer, Kathryn Mizelle, to the federal bench, despite the fact that she’s never tried a case. She was rated as “not qualified” by a substantial majority of the American Bar Association, in large part due to her lack of experience.
Why did Collins do it? I think she is just a follower of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, even after Trump lost the election. It seems to me she did a good job of snookering 51.2 percent of us here in Maine. We have to live with that for another six years.
John Tiedje
Gorham
The Pardoner’s Tale
“The Pardoner’s Tale” may well be the title of a forthcoming book on the ex-president of the United States. Citizen Donald Trump leaves behind a treasure trove of tweets, tantrums and tales of fakery along with questionable pardons.
In Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale,” the protagonist “had hair as yellow as wax, But smooth it hung, as does a strip of flax.” He carried a “wallet…brimful of pardons come from Rome all hot” as he traveled the countryside preaching about the sin of avarice. He sold official church pardons and fake relics in exchange for forgiveness and made money for himself, not the church which he represents.
Before the age of tweets, the pardoner used his bully pulpit to endlessly berate pilgrims for their sinfulness, so as to intimidate them into donating money for his own self-promotion: “Thus I repay folk who make trouble for us pardoners; Thus I spit out my venom under hue.”
Oscar Wilde lamented “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” That is the organizing concept to understand the behavior of Donald Trump.
Citizen Trump would be the best author of his “Pardoner’s Tale.” He could begin his autobiography with the last lines of “The Pardoner’s Prologue”: “For though myself be a very vicious man, Yet I can tell you a moral tale, Which I am accustomed to preach in order to profit. Now hold your peace! My tale I will begin.”
Robert F. Lyons
Kennebunk