Trump Triviality and the Low Level of Citizenship in the United States--- Very Much Including Minnesota

If you are a reality television escapist and lack the moral courage to commit yourself to some purpose in life, go ahead and watch the spectacle of the Donald Trump crowning today, the latter of which will be recorded as the Inauguration of the Forty-Fifth President of the United States.

 

But understand that in tuning in to this spectacle you are exercising very little citizenship;  in---  shall, we say---  reality, what you are doing is gratifying your already greater propensity to station yourself in front of the television than to read articles and books of genuine significance or to commit yourself to some path of responsible citizenship.

 

I am paying little attention to the Trump crowning.  I am focused on my own exercise of citizenship and coming down hard on others to do the same. 

 

This democracy is ours or it is no one's: 

 

Thus, I am highly focused on my own writing, teaching, and activism today. 

 

I gave the inauguration some notice when I read this morning’s Star Tribune.  I am monitoring Trump appointments to cabinet positions and such.  But as I keep track of decisions that do matter, I am ignoring the persiflage.  I am focused much more on issues pertinent to the first substantive moves of the incoming administration than I am on the inauguration itself, the coronation of a leader whose election was born of stark voter ignorance and fear.   I am analyzing information on matters of importance to the nation’s economy and to international events such as those currently transpiring in Senegal and Gambia, Syria, and Turkey.

 

And I am as a commitment of paramount importance immersed in teaching my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, ministering to their parents and families, conducting research on the Minneapolis Public Schools, and preparing two new books for publication this spring.

 

In the aftermath of my morning engagement with events that truly matter to the nation and to the world via the Star Tribune and select websites, I very consciously have not even turned on NPR/ MPR.  I'll read as much as I think appropriate concerning the Trump Trivia, the result of so much citizen ignorance and cowardice, tomorrow morning.

 

We in the United States pale in our dedication to citizenship by comparison to other world polities:

 

I was so impressed with Taiwan from my observations on a recent visit to the beautiful island that has the been among the chief foci of my scholarly research;  a place of my frequent residence;  and the birthplace of my beloved son, Ryan Davison-Reed.   My transcendently intelligent son and I agree that the great independent geopolitical entity of Taiwan has created a much better place than the United States.  Perhaps the recent punitive economic measures of the People's Republic of China's leadership, pursued  because that leadership has no claim to legitimacy than what it can cobble up in the form of nationalism will---  as it should---  induce hard thinking about over-dependence on that rogue empire (witness the occupation of Tibet and Xinjiang) for trading and commercial ventures.

 

Taiwan’s polity has public education of genuine excellence, health care that is the best in the world, and a confident people who have forged an amazing society of great equity and firm confidence through hard work and individual commitment to make of themselves the best that they can be.

 

We in the United States are a long way from doing the same, but if a greater proportion of this nation’s populace becomes more than nominal citizens, we can still make of this nation the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.

 

And there is no more important matter, with national and international implications, than the overhaul of K-12 education.

 

Be a citizen.

 

Join me.

 

Let’s make for our children the future that they deserve.