congratulations liberals, you were right again. this authoritarian nightmare was forseen

by many who decried 2 trends in american education-
stripping the arts from the curriculum and teaching to the test.
and the influence of the texas school board authority and teaching to the test.

ya see, here is the thing that i believe-

i believe in evolutionary psychology, a much maligned and misrepresented social science. what i think this is is a throw back. a throw back to the rules of war and aggression that took us chimps out of the forest, and all over the world. we took territory, we faced down saber toothed tigers, we learned to knit a clan. and fight someone else's clan.

a lot of people refer to the lizard brain, but i prefer to look at the "monkey brain". how does this fit w the arc of human history? not just from the trees to the village, but from the tribe to the city. the thought is that tribal cultures were a pretty uncontaminated example of who we are at the deep root of our psyches.

so here is what i think-
we know that a key to all this is fear, and the adrenalin stupid that humans are so susceptible to.
this is the well trod path of the strong man, the head man, the silver back, the alpha.

also the parroting of propaganda, the endpoint of regurgitative learning. of sitting and not doing. of learned helplessness. fill the bubbles, kid. let us take your measure.

the path that took us to the next level was "art". depicting reality. predicting reality. art is crucial to the next step up the evolutionary chain.
art, in the broad definition, makes cities tolerable. makes complex communication possible. makes cooperation to build pyramids possible makes remembering the dead possible.

add you own hallmark of human evolution here.

and so, when we stripped away the tools of the next step in evolution, we lost a step. we slid back down. "we" have been frightened into accepting a strong man. we have chosen the path of violence. of cruelty. of war.

evolve. help our children evolve.
i also think this might be the point where love got to be a pretty god damned powerful force. mother love. parental love. oh, like those obama people.

but that is a rant for another day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_and_Norma_Gabler