...The idea that the U.S. won’t even properly develop the skills of young people who could perform at the highest intellectual levels is breathtaking — breathtakingly stupid, that is.
The authors of the study, published in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, concluded that American culture does not value talent in math very highly. I suppose we’re busy with other things, like text-messaging while jay-walking. The math thing is seen as something for Asians and nerds.
Meanwhile, the country is going down the tubes. Felix Rohatyn, who helped lead New York City out of the dark days of the 1970s fiscal crisis, had an article in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books (with co-author Everett Ehrlich) lamenting the sad state of the U.S. infrastructure. Most Americans are oblivious on this issue. We’re like a family that won’t even think about fixing a sagging, leaky roof until it collapses on our heads.
New Orleans was nearly wiped from the map in the Hurricane Katrina nightmare, and 13 people were killed when a bridge in Minneapolis broke apart during rush hour, hurling helpless motorists 60 feet into the Mississippi River. Neither of those disasters was enough of a warning for us to think seriously about infrastructure maintenance, repair and construction.
Could these types of disasters happen again? They’re going to happen again. Mr. Rohatyn reminds us that nearly 30 percent of the nation’s bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.”
We haven’t even got sense enough to keep an eye on the water we drink. Citing a report from the American Society of Civil Engineers, Mr. Rohatyn and Mr. Ehrlich write: “Current funding for safe drinking water, amounts to ‘less than 10 percent of the total national requirement.’ ”
A country that refuses to properly educate its young people or to maintain its physical plant is one that has clearly lost its way. Add in the myriad problems associated with unnecessary warfare and a clueless central government that wastes taxpayer dollars by the trillions, and you’ve got a society in danger of becoming completely unhinged.
This is about more than the election of a president in a few weeks. The American people have to decide what kind of country they want.
Do they want one in which the top 1 percent hauled in more than 21 percent of all personal income in 2005? Do they want a country in which, as my former colleague at The Times, David Cay Johnston, has noted: the tax system “now levies the poor, the middle class and even the upper middle class to subsidize the rich”?
Do they want a country in which their democratic freedoms are eroded by a deliberate exploitation of their fear of terrorism, and their earning power is diminished by a crippling dependence on foreign oil?
No, they want to see who's going to be Amerika's Top Model, or Dancing With the Stars, or the latest Amerikan Idol. They want to feel good about themselves without the work-out and diet. They want a candidate they can believe in, instead of a candidate they can evaluate.
Apparently unable to afford the bottle in front of me approach, reel Amerikans seem to be opting for the frontal lobotomy:
...In some ways, Ms. Palin seems like a 2.0 version of George W. Bush — not the deeply unpopular president, but the plain-spoken and energetic campaigner who rose as a political talent in Texas and solidified his appeal in the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Hers, like his, is a with-us-or-against-us message, as when Ms. Palin pledges total solidarity with “good, hard-working, patriotic Americans.”
“For a campaign that says it’s all about the future,” Ms. Palin said to a mix of applause (for her) and boos (for you-know-who) in Richmond, “do you notice that our opponents sure have spent a heck of a lot of time looking to the past and pointing fingers? You look to the past because that’s where you find blame, but we’re joining you and looking to the future, because that’s where you find solutions.”
“America, doggone it, unfortunately we’re deep in debt, and Barack Obama would put us even deeper in debt,” she added a few minutes later. “We’ve got to reverse this. America, we cannot afford another big spender in the White House.”
Ms. Palin’s speeches do not acknowledge that looking at past mistakes is one way to avoid making those mistakes again. And her addresses gloss over some uncomfortable details, like that the most recent big spender in the White House is the Republican now there.
Ms. Palin also rarely ends up in the weeds of policy details on the economy, health care or Iraq. When it comes to generalizing, she can muster awfully strong passion, as in discussing Mr. McCain’s ability to get out of a jam.
“He’s got the guts to confront the $10 trillion debt that the federal government has run up,” Ms. Palin said in Virginia Beach as Mr. McCain looked on with a stiff smile, “and we will balance the budget by the end of our term.”
If there are holes in logic or a lack of specifics in Ms. Palin’s speeches, her audiences tend to fill the absence with gushing affection.
“She’s intelligent, she’s adorable and she has the audacity to speak her mind,” said Ray Gilson of Corapeake, N.C., who attended the Virginia Beach rally. “I’ve never loved a politician like I love her. I want her to be president someday.”
Her mind, now that's real entertainment.
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