Dark Ages

[angrychair]

It’s a often repeated refrain from the poor and uneducated, as well as those that want to capitalize on that fear and ignorance, that they cannot find work because they can’t get a coal mining job or manufacturing job, jobs that were dying out 40 years ago.
Keep in mind that the solar and wind industry employs twice as many people as coal. Solar, wind and biofuels employs more people than coal and natural gas combined.
Solar and wind employs more people than the oil industry in the US.

The problem is ignorance and a poor educational system. We only have to look to red states (and to many blue states) to see state lawmakers in a constant fight to pay their teachers less and less and give them ever fewer resources to work with but exponentially increase the expectations for positive outcomes and then these same politicians criticize the educational system they cut to the bone for not producing the best educated kids in the world.
We need to reevaluate our expectations. We have to face facts: We are not preparing our children for a world economy.
Most children in first world (OECD) nations, by the time they finish primary school, can fluently speak two or more languages and have higher average testing scores than the majority of US-based schools.
These kids either go on to university or an apprenticeship/vocational program that give kids more options than being a hair dresser or plumber, often doing their apprenticeship in the very company that hires them. All of that training and expenses are taken on by the company doing the training, if the person ends up working with them or not.

We are not prepared for the present, millions of jobs are out there and few are actually qualified to do them, much less a future that will require skills and knowledge that even fewer know and no actual ability to get that knowledge for far to many.

In short, we are living in the beginning of a modern Dark Ages and as of today not only do we have no way to prevent it, we don’t seem to want to stop it.

[Cartoonist]

1. Trump as Nero

I wonder which country will sack us first.

[cilla4progress]

3. Already been sacked -

Russia.

'Cause I was thinking the same thing: we are poised for a hostile takeover, say, like Crimea.

Then I realized: Putin has already done it. He owns us. Becoming clearer with every new disclosure (e.g., he picked Tillorsen for SoS). Just because it wasn't bloody - so far - doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

[cilla4progress]

2. So, it seems like you are seeing a new Dark Ages in the US, specifically.

Is that correct?

I agree and feel like you hit on something.

Did you hear Maddow last night make the comment in her story about the WV teachers' strike that OK teachers are the lowest paid ... despite the ongoing gas and oil boom there.? Hmm, wonder where the revenues are going...

Americans are so entralled with horror movies and dystopian tales. I believe this in part explains why we don't seem to want to stop it, as you say.

[angrychair]

4. Yes, specifically here

But the ripple effects cannot be understated: our methods aside we have kept many despots at bay but our waning will leave openings that could have a long term impact for millions.

We don’t want to stop it because our collective fear and ignorance keeps us from seeing it for what it is: death and chaos.

To quote a recent poem I wrote:
I see the true four horsemen of the apocalypse: Ignorance, Religion, Arrogance and Complacency riding on the ill winds from mouths with lying tongues and I shuddered, not in fear of their coming but in seeing the bowed heads and empty hearts there to meet them on the field of Oblivion. It’s not in the losing but in the lost that will be our undoing.

[cilla4progress]

6. Wow -

amazing. Thank you for sharing (poem).

I guess we should have expected the first AA President would result in such a venomous, virulent backlash?

[angrychair]

7. In a better world

The color of his skin shouldn’t have mattered. He was and is the better man.

Thank you for your kind words about poem

[lark]

5. Prime example - the current so-called Secretary of Education.

She doesn't want to educate the students at all, she wants to end public education so the very poor don't get it. She owns millions of dollars worth of Charter Schools and that's what she wants the government to spend $$ for. She also wants zero standards to apply so their teachers can be paid far less to not provide a real education, just a profit center. No degree necessary to teach in her desired profit schools because real education isn't the goal. Once education is privatized, they will work tirelessly to end minimum wages and child labor laws and OSHA and unions to take us to a serfs/oligarchs economic system and Russia can take over as the predominant country.