After the resistance is, eventually, successful*, Americans of good will have to be ready to work hard \u2014 probably for many years \u2014 to rebuild our civic structures. I\u2019m trying to imagine what a strong civic life would be like, stripped of the old adoring nationalism & of many of our old illusions… (like any hint of American immunity to dictatorships) …and I like what I see.<\/p>\n
For one, I think that at the local level, it\u2019s important to get everyday people involved in politics much more often. Seeing for yourself how hard it is to do the work of organizing & governing, while also learning where things can go sideways, would be incredibly valuable. I suspect that many people who end up corrupted by graft & favoritism don\u2019t realize anything is happening at first, don\u2019t think that they\u2019re compromising their principles. Then your ability to frame whatever you\u2019re doing as \u201cnot that bad\u201d kicks in and… boom you\u2019ve been corrupted. When you see it up close, you might then be more aware of \u2014 and wary of \u2014 the evidence of this happening at the state & federal levels.<\/p>\n
Mandatory classes in civics might help. Make it part of the fabric of what kids learn. Science, technology, engineering, math, reading, critical thinking, writing\/exposition\/speaking, geography, history, philosophy; and how they all build on each other.<\/em> A true liberal arts education, 1st grade through college.<\/p>\n If this sounds overly optimistic, I\u2019ll only suggest that we don\u2019t really have any choice. If we don\u2019t do something different, we\u2019ll not only never fully recover from Trumpism, we\u2019ll have more Trumps forever.<\/p>\n ===<\/p>\n A note about the phrases \u201csimpering patriotism\u201d and \u201cadoring nationalism.\u201d I always associated enthusiastic civics education of children with the supposed civics classes that groups like the VFW held in my hometown. I shuddered at those, without examining why. Now I realize that whatever actual civics instruction happened there, was almost certainly swamped by the heavy-handed America First agenda. You know…\u00a0 \u201cAmerica first, right or wrong.\u201d It\u2019s like what I said to an old high school buddy after I discovered that he supported the use of torture in the War on Terror that the US has been prosecuting for the last 16 years: If we\u2019re acting just like the bad people, how are we good people? If we can\u2019t see where the problems are in our systems, how can we fix those problems?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ===<\/p>\n *yes, I know I\u2019m being insanely optimistic here.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the resistance is, eventually, successful*, Americans of good will have to be ready to work hard \u2014 probably for many years \u2014 to rebuild our civic structures. I\u2019m trying to imagine what a strong civic life would be like, stripped of the old adoring nationalism & of many of our old illusions… (like any … Continue reading “Civics… without the simpering patriotism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgY3e-h8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1068,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions\/1068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}