Finneran: The World Gapes

Friday, May 10, 2019

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Tom Finneran

The rest of the world gapes at America. They shake their heads in bewilderment. And they ask the question which many of us ask, with increasing exasperation and with decreasing satisfaction-----

How long can this continue? When does it all fall apart? How can such a distracted and confused citizenry and country lead the world? How bad is it elsewhere, that a nation such as ours, a nation of spendthrifts, couch potatoes, and crybabies, remains at the top of the heap of nation-states.

Consider our education. Or consider our finances. Or consider our psyches.

Let’s start with the latter, our rapidly multiplying national psychoses. A recent headline informs us that students at George Washington High School in Northern California are “traumatized” by a mural of George Washington and that said mural might be taken down so as to reduce said trauma. The fact is that such melodramas have become so common that we have lost our capacity to tell the crybabies to go home and grow up. It seems that everyone in America is offended or wounded or traumatized or marginalized by American history or even by simple everyday events. We are told that people are “in pain”. How sad. How pathetic.

Consider this contrast. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, American boys, some as young as fourteen years old, lied about their ages and joined the armed forces. Their pain was the shock of sudden and innocent death which had been inflicted on fellow Americans in a deadly attack. Their further pain was mortal combat, in jungles, forests, and fields, on oceans, and in the air. Said combat was deadly to many and crippling to others. Now that’s pain, that’s trauma. Can some grown-up please inform today’s perpetually offended Americans to stop whining and to grow up?

Consider our finances.

We are broke. By any normal definition, we are a bankrupt nation. An entitlement crisis looms around the corner and we continue to spend trillions of dollars on credit. Such is our legacy to our children and grandchildren. Not a single word of warning is uttered by the multitude of candidates seeking the Presidency. Indeed, rather than a sober word about our reckless ways, we get to witness an auction of fiscal idiocy. Candidate A promises “free” something or other and Candidate B raises the ante by promising billions more for their version of utopia. Is any person in the media capable of confronting said candidates with the lunacy of their schemes? Is there a rational adult anywhere in Washington? No? I didn’t think so………………..

Consider the hot topics in education.

Today we have a war on pronouns. I kid you not. You remember pronouns such as he, she, it. Or you, yours, my, and mine. Or Mr., Mrs., and Ms. Words which have precisely conveyed the realities of society for countless generations no longer suffice. We might not teach spelling or vocabulary or grammatical rules any more. We might not teach history or geography or civics any more. We certainly avoid rigorous math and science instruction. Indeed, the notions of rigor, mastery, and excellence are verboten. As noted above, someone who fails to achieve subject matter mastery and excellence will be traumatized and in pain. Therefore, rigor, serious academic rigor, is frowned upon and forbidden. No one is to be offended, ever.

The world, accustomed to American ingenuity and leadership, is astonished. They see a nation enmeshed in fantasies of wishful thinking. This is not the America they thought they knew.

The world gapes, both wondrous and worried.

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio

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Finneran: The World Gapes

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