Dear Hillary

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Dear Hillary:

As you know, we all depend daily on our dense physical infrastructures. We need them. We use them every single day. And most of us, from daily experience, are super aware of their crumbling condition.

Bridges are collapsing under morning traffic loads, or being closed before they collapse. People are being poisoned by drinking water. Buildings and their inhabitants are being blown up in the middle of the night from gas leaks. Commutes of 10 miles are taking 2 hours. It takes longer to get on the plane than it takes the plane to get where you’re going.

Also as you well know, these vital systems are crumbling because those in control of our Government do not see how they can use infrastructure support to move money from our pockets into theirs. The defense department is so much more lucrative for them.

The deplorable condition of these essential systems is evidence of the effectiveness of the assault that has and is being made on our democratic way of life by those forces whose agenda does not include things like bridges, roads, water, air, and transportation, to say nothing of liberty and justice for all. Having private possession or access to an inexhaustible abundance of these essentials, I would guess that the forces of separation and are not even conscious of their crumbling condition.

While as important as these physical structures are, they are still in much better shape than the less visible but ever so much more critical soft infrastructure upon which our entire democracy of liberty, equality, and justice for all rests. These vital “soft systems” of law and policy have been under a literally conscious assault by the same forces that have no interest in maintaining our hard systems. A current example is the efforts to disenfranchise minority and poor voters.

Of these soft systems, our educational system, the heart of any civilization, has sustained very subtle but major damage over the past 45 years. This system provides the structure, the instruments of the actual foundational Principles of any civilization. This system is and has for this very reason been, I would say, the major target of interest for the Retrogressive forces from the beginning, but especially since the advent of Ronald Reagan.

A major, major reason that Trump’s, use of racism, sexism ageism, bigotry, hate and fear, is being as successful as it is with the lower classes is their lack of an even mediocre education. The minds and hearts of many, many millions of young children from 5 to 17 have, for the past 40 years or so, been purposefully and literally warped and filled with not only religious fanaticism but with actually wrong scientific and historical non-sense.

This condition is an epidemic in our Southern States. The situation in the north is just as awful but slightly different. In the North the educational systems have simply been strangled by the lack of resources.

The crumbling buildings and lack of essential supplies do not even come close to the seriousness of the lack of qualified and dedicated TEACHERS.

The many really dedicated, intelligent and loving teachers in the systems are overwhelmed by the student teacher ratio. It is not possible for even the most dedicated and the very best secondary teachers to see that every teen age child in their student load of 185 to 200 students gets anything like what the Law demands they have in terms of a quality education. Not a possibility!

And what is impossible for the secondary teachers is not even mentionable for elementary school teachers who often have loads of 30 to 50 students and are required to teach these young open minds and hearts not only to read and write, but how to be people.

I hope, that in your second shot at a first 100 days you will bring all of that power and love that you and Bill focused on the universal health care effort

to bear on salvaging our educational systems. Hopefully you will be successful with the plans for making college available to all. (It’s the most common sense piece of legislation in 50 years)

But think about who is going to teach those classes! I have all sorts of ideas about “how” to make this happen; however, I know that you have legions of “wonks” that do that. 

My thing is to Will it into manifestation. What the heart wills cannot be stopped. Recall, it may take a few years like universal health care, but it is unavoidable because a heart willed it to begin with. Let’s “Make It So” for education and our children and grand children, and great grand children.

Lots of love

-tom