Newt or Mitt VS Obama. Can either of 'em beat him?

[Muzh]

LOL. This paricular issue had come from you on more than a few occassion, Muzh. Why are so bent in trying to throw in race in these discussions? Are you still that stuck in the '70s? It seems so much more significant with you...why?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

[Gator]

The Natural,
 
Thank you for the summary.  Nevertheless, without ritalin I can not take an hour-long radio lecture. 
 
It seems that you like offbeat opinions.  Because you shared with me, I will share one of my sources:  Taki's Magazine.
 
It claims to be libertarian but seems more paleoconservative.  Whatever it is, the editors are breezy, clever, insolent and offbeat.  They cover politics and culture, and they coin brilliant phrases.  Even Muzh and BC might find entertaining the magazine's description of the DNC in "An Overdose of Hope."
 
http://takimag.com/article/an_overdose_of_hope_takimag#axzz265hQeCkW
 
 
 
http://takimag.com/article/an_overdose_of_hope_takimag#axzz265hQeCkW

[Gator]

Muzh,
 
I am still confused.  Who is the captor and who is the hostage?  Surely you don't mean that......

[Muzh]

Muzh,
 
I am still confused.  Who is the captor and who is the hostage?  Surely you don't mean that......

Gator, some time ago you said you considered me an intelligent man. Why don't you show it?

[Gator]

Gator, some time ago you said you considered me an intelligent man. Why don't you show it?

 

I posed the question because  at times I feel the hostage-captor role has been reversed over 150 years, and the captivity is now philosophical rather than physical.   
 
You may respond that as of today I am not a minority and have not felt discriminated against as you did.  Nevertheless, I have been a close witness to change, having been there due to my age, locale and some friends who were leaders. 
 
All I can infer from your posts is that you believe Republicans are anti-black.    Or if I read your posts literally Republicans fear blacks?    If so, I say "Hogwash."     
 
Not many people know this about Mitt's father George.   
 
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/urban-game-changer/2012/mar/13/mitt-romney-civil-rights-governor-george-romney/
 
I trust that you agree with me that his father's actions were necessary, appropriate and not common in 1963.  And his son?  50 years later, I believe jobs will advance race relations far more than social welfare.
 
So if I am barking up the wrong tree (i. e., not smart enough to understand your brilliance), please help me.

[Gator]

BC,
 
You talked about promises kept.  This video compiles actual footage of Obama.   For various issues such as healthcare, the deficit, taxes, etc. his promises in 2007-2009 are contrasted with the final outcome.
 
http://www.ijreview.com/2012/09/15290-case-closed-if-moderate-voters-see-this-video-its-over-for-obama/

[Gator]

Muzh,
 
You are so intelligent that I know you will see the light.  When you do, you will need one of these kits:
 

[Eduard]

I believe jobs will advance race relations far more than social welfare.

this is pure gold!

[GQBlues]

...
http://www.ijreview.com/2012/09/15290-case-closed-if-moderate-voters-see-this-video-its-over-for-obama/

LOL. I missed this real doozy before but (un)fortunately it is in the video!

"...but we had to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it..." Nanci Pelosi @ 6:41. LOL. Unbelievable!

[Gator]

Has anyone been following the teacher's strike in Chicago?  First strike in Chicago in 25 years.
 
Rahm Emanuel is the mayor of Chicago.  Before becoming mayor he was Chief of Staff for Obama.  I dismissed him simply by association with Obama.  However, the strike reveals Rahm has some good ideas.
 

Rahm wants to incentivize teachers' pay such that the best performing teachers are paid more.  The teachers union instead wants pay based on such factors as length of service rather than performance. 
 
Muzh, please do not be shocked but I support the Democrat Rahm in what he is trying to achieve.  It will be better for everyone, except underperforming teachers.   Am I missing something?
 
 
 

[Faux Pas]

Has anyone been following the teacher's strike in Chicago?  First strike in Chicago in 25 years.
 
Rahm Emanuel is the mayor of Chicago.  Before becoming mayor he was Chief of Staff for Obama.  I dismissed him simply by association with Obama.  However, the strike reveals Rahm has some good ideas.
 

Rahm wants to incentivize teachers' pay such that the best performing teachers are paid more.  The teachers union instead wants pay based on such factors as length of service rather than performance. 
 
Muzh, please do not be shocked but I support the Democrat Rahm in what he is trying to achieve.  It will be better for everyone, except underperforming teachers.   Am I missing something?

Rahm is a chameleon that slithers in the grass. Changing whenever it suits him. The Teachers union is another prime example of what is wrong with powerful unions. All the pay and benefits without the performance. Rahm now finds himself surprisingly in management.

edit to add: I heard on a news report this morning that only 15% of students at inner Chicago school system reads at grade level. Can that possibly be right?

[Gator]

From Frontpagemag.com(whatever that is)
 

Seventy-nine percent of the 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools
are not grade-level proficient in reading, according to the U.S. Department of
Education, and 80 percent are not grade-level proficient in math.

Other claims:

Chicago public school teachers went on strike on Monday and one of the major
issues behind the strike is a new system Chicago plans to use for evaluating
public school teachers in which student improvement on standardized tests will
count for 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Until now, the evaluations of
Chicago public school teachers have been based on what a Chicago Sun Times
editorial called a “meaningless checklist."

Chicago teachers have the highest average salary of any city at $76,000 a
year before benefits. The average family in the city only earns $47,000 a year.
Yet the teachers rejected a 16 percent salary increase over four years at a time
when most families are not getting any raises or are looking for work.
The city is being bled dry by the exorbitant benefits packages negotiated by
previous elected officials. Teachers pay only 3 percent of their health-care
costs and out of every new dollar set aside for public education in Illinois in
the last five years, a full 71 cents has gone to teacher retirement
costs.

[BC]

Has anyone been following the teacher's strike in Chicago?  First strike in Chicago in 25 years.
 
Rahm Emanuel is the mayor of Chicago.  Before becoming mayor he was Chief of Staff for Obama.  I dismissed him simply by association with Obama.  However, the strike reveals Rahm has some good ideas.
 

Rahm wants to incentivize teachers' pay such that the best performing teachers are paid more.  The teachers union instead wants pay based on such factors as length of service rather than performance. 
 
Muzh, please do not be shocked but I support the Democrat Rahm in what he is trying to achieve.  It will be better for everyone, except underperforming teachers.   Am I missing something?

An incentive plan for teachers was the subject of an email I sent to Obama several months ago.  I think teachers should have a base salary, then be incentivized much as insurance salesmen with 'residual' payments based on the policies kept in force.  After graduation, based on tax returns a small percentage would be divided between the teachers involved in his / her education. Would only apply to teachers in the public school system.  Of course would take some years to build up, but a good teacher could have a nice nest egg built up by the time they retire.  The incentives would attract good teachers to public schools and help keep them there.

The base salary could be weighted based on grades taught as an elementary teacher would obviously take longer to build up their account.  That might also attract good teachers to lower grades, where learning the three 'R''s counts the most.

Have a good link for Rahm's plan?

I did receive a thank you note, pretty generic, but at least something.


June 19, 2012


Dear [BC]:

Thank you for writing.  As President, it is my privilege to hear from Americans like you who take time to offer their perspective on the serious issues facing our Nation.  I appreciate your message and value your input.
 
From putting Americans back to work to expanding access to medical care, my Administration continues to take bold action to do what is right for our Nation.  We have enacted the most comprehensive financial reforms in decades, rescued and helped retool our auto industry, expanded student aid to millions of young people, helped level the playing field for working women, and made the largest investment in clean energy in our history.  Because of the courageous acts of our service members, we have been able to end the war in Iraq and take down Osama bin Laden.  We have also made historic commitments to provide for our troops as they return home.  Securing our country’s future will take time, but I will not stop working to rebuild the kind of America where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules.
 
I am always eager to hear ideas that will help our country adapt to changing times and lead us toward a brighter day.  The enduring American spirit is revealed in the letters I receive, and I remain dedicated to ensuring it is reflected in our efforts to improve the lives of all Americans.
 
Thank you, again, for sharing your views.  I encourage you to explore www.WhiteHouse.gov to learn more about the ways we are moving America forward.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

[OlgaH]

Other claims:

Chicago public school teachers went on strike on Monday and one of the major
issues behind the strike is a new system Chicago plans to use for evaluating
public school teachers in which student improvement on standardized tests will
count for 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Until now, the evaluations of
Chicago public school teachers have been based on what a Chicago Sun Times
editorial called a “meaningless checklist."

from the teachers perspective

While teachers raised issues from evaluations to school privatization to class size to explain why they backed the strike, they were in solid agreement on one thing: public education in Chicago is not working and Mayor Emanuel is making things worse.

English teacher Keith Plum says he’s sick of teaching to the test. “It’s always some big corporation selling a canned curriculum that’s never been tested,” he said, adding that he was told he’d be punished if he deviated from the curriculum’s script.

Plum recalls a sophomore who, three weeks into the school year, raised her hand to ask, “When are going to do some real English work?”

The union singles out poverty as one of the biggest roadblocks to academic achievement. CTU has insistently pointed to disparities within the city, particularly the lack of resources in schools serving low-income Black and Latino students. The union says 160 schools have no library, and many lack playgrounds.
Problems in the schools themselves, the union argues, can be solved by fully funding them, providing a rich curriculum and the wraparound services students need. Class size matters, too. Kindergarten and first-grade classrooms in Chicago are bigger than those in 95 percent of all Illinois schools, according to the CTU’s research.
“How can we learn with a classroom of 50 kids in it with not enough books or materials?” asked Marta Aguirre, a senior at Roosevelt High School, who was walking the picket line with her teachers this morning.



Rahm Emanuel continued Daley’s tornado of closures and privatizations when he took over last year, targeting another 21 schools in December. Indeed, the fight against school closures has only gotten harder. Even the occupation of a local elementary school earlier in the year by parents was not enough to prevent its shuttering. The onslaught only promises to get worse.

http://labornotes.org/2012/09/behind-chicago-teachers-strike

[BC]

http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2013/budget_justification/pdfs/01_Operation_and_Maintenance/O_M_VOL_1_PARTS/O_M_VOL_1_BASE_PARTS/DoDDE_OP-5.pdf

The department of defense spends 3 billion per year for 60,000 students for  "world class education"

If my math is correct, that's about 50K per child.

These kids are lucky.. I was one of them.

I wonder how that compares to average per child cost for the civilian community.

Closest I could find is http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/acrossstates/Rankings.aspx?ind=5199

Sure, there are additional costs for schools overseas but that much?  Considering additional overhead of 15K, we're talking private school territory at 30/35K per year.

Staff per child is around 10 to 1, that would include principal, secretaries, counselors, nurse, janitors, sports etc. 

IIRC 20 plus students per teacher was high.. over 25 almost unheard of.  I think average was around 18 or so.

I can't recall ever having a 'bad' or uninterested teacher.

Found the tuition rates for DODEA schools

http://www.dodea.edu/aboutDoDEA/upload/SY_1112_TuitionRates.pdf

Significantly higher than any State schools.  More than triple for some, double the average state expenditure.

[Misha]

Rahm wants to incentivize teachers' pay such that the best performing teachers are paid more.  The teachers union instead wants pay based on such factors as length of service rather than performance. 

In theory, it is laudable, in practice it all depends on how you will actually evaluate the teachers. You have to ensure that the teachers are teaching children who are comparable. The best way to get a great performance as a teacher is to start off with the best students to begin with. Teaching the children of middle-class parents in the suburbs as opposed to children in poor neighbourhoods who parents may not have completed their own high school education and may be functionally illiterate themselves will do more to ensure the success of the students that whatever pedagogy you bring to the classroom.

[GQBlues]

 
 
There’s no easy, one-stop answer to improving our present public education systems. While there are multitude of things that need to be met to overhaul the current system, there is one common denominator that prevails over everything – accountability.
 
The problems I believe that impacts our education system today are:
 
Illegal Immigration: http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-political-commentary/2011/04/illegal-immigration-costs-u-s-taxpayers-113-billion-annually/
 
Unionized Public Sector: If only JFK listened and heeded the warning..  http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/18/the-first-blow-against-public-employees/fdr-warned-us-about-public-sector-unions
 
 
The problem is, as you all saw during both conventions, our politicians continue to pander and play Uncle Jose to our current illegal immigration problems. The problem isn’t in the immigrants who are here illegally. The problems is in the politicians vying for office that find themselves catering to the communities largely related to those who are illegally here.
 
The problem is the monies that come from the Unions during the election years.Then making 'bad' teachers literally immune to any form of accountability.
 
The problem is with the government even having anything to do with educating system in this country to begin with.
Privatized our education system and accountability straight across the board will never be far behind. Parents, teachers, administrators, etc…Every child is entitled to a proper education and there’s no reason in the world these kids should bear the price and burden for the perpetual social jostling our politicians do and the stupidity of the general voting public that continually put them in offices of power.
 
Cut-off all ‘illegitimate’ fringes that are keeping America’s children from proper education.
 
Charter Schools is a good start. It at least keeps children of illegal aliens off and get respective parents involved. If only they can find a way to get the Unions out - it'll be close to perfection.
 

[TheTraveler]

edit to add: I heard on a news report this morning that only 15% of students at inner Chicago school system reads at grade level. Can that possibly be right?

ever spent any time in near-downtown chicago?  (i'd say 15% sounds a little high.)
 

[Faux Pas]

ever spent any time in near-downtown chicago?  (i'd say 15% sounds a little high.)

Yes I have spent some, near and downtown but only as a spectator and could be inclined to believe it. The figure is alarmingly low it would seem for any school district

[BC]

 
The problems I believe that impacts our education system today are:
 
Illegal Immigration: http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-political-commentary/2011/04/illegal-immigration-costs-u-s-taxpayers-113-billion-annually/
 

The article noted that illegal aliens cost taxpayers 113 billion, but does not mention that illegals also pay taxes to the tune of around 111 billion

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-04-20/local/29470037_1_sales-taxes-tax-revenue-property-taxes

Study estimates that illegal immigrants paid $11.2B in taxes last year, unlike GE, which paid zero

[GQBlues]

The article noted that illegal aliens cost taxpayers 113 billion, but does not mention that illegals also pay taxes to the tune of around 111 billion

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-04-20/local/29470037_1_sales-taxes-tax-revenue-property-taxes

Then maybe at your leisure explain to us exactly how illegal aliens pay property taxes...and how exactly where they able to determine in exacting figures taxes paid through state sales taxes...being so long ago since you've spent anytime living here, they haven't yet designated a separate line at the cash registers for illegal immigrants...

 

[BC]

Then maybe at your leisure explain to us exactly how illegal aliens pay property taxes...and how exactly where they able to determine in exacting figures taxes paid through state sales taxes...being so long ago since you've spent anytime living here, they haven't yet designated a separate line at the cash registers for illegal immigrants...

 

It's mentioned in the article, also a bit more detail here.  http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/incometaxandtheirs/a/Illegal-Immigrants-Pay-Taxes-Too.htm

Follow the sources.

[GQBlues]

I read it just fine BC, and I still maintain the position maybe you ought to explain exactly where and how YOU got your number of 111 billion.

The article noted that illegal aliens cost taxpayers 113 billion, but does not mention that illegals also pay taxes to the tune of around 111 billion...

Even if given both articled numbers are even remotely close to factual...it looks to me there's still roughly 100+ billion shortfall, no? Of course, we'll assume the numbers we're speaking about are legit.

[GQBlues]

These aren't related to US economy but I always knew this clown have an agenda and they aren't what an elected official of the USA have. 4 more years! 4 more years!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-obama-skipping-more-than-half-of-his-daily-intelligence-meetings/2012/09/10/6624afe8-fb49-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html

He only shows up less than half of his appointed PDB?


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100180493/barack-obama-refuses-to-meet-benjamin-netanyahu-on-his-us-visit-a-rude-snub-to-7-million-israelis/

LOL...and this is the 2nd time he had snubbed Israel and Israel's PM...


In light of the latest news coming out of Libya and Egypt, I'm sure this clown is tickled pink...

[Muzh]

I believe jobs will advance race relations far more than social welfare.
 

this is pure gold!

Ed, just for you. I dare you to read the whole thing. I could have written much of this, oh, about 30 years ago.
 
And Gator, yes, you are barking off the wrong tree.
Just for you check the the highlighted sections.

Confesions of a Former Republican
Jeremiah Goulka
 
September 10, 2012

I used to be a serious Republican, moderate and business-oriented, who planned for a public-service career in Republican politics.  But I am a Republican no longer.
 
There’s an old joke we Republicans used to tell that goes something like this: “If you’re young and not a Democrat, you’re heartless. If you grow up and you’re not a Republican, you’re stupid.” These days, my old friends and associates no doubt consider me the butt of that joke. But I look on my “stupidity” somewhat differently.  After all, my real education only began when I was 30 years old.
 
This is the story of how in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and later in Iraq, I discovered that what I believed to be the full spectrum of reality was just a small slice of it and how that discovery knocked down my Republican worldview.
 
I always imagined that I was full of heart, but it turned out that I was oblivious.  Like so many Republicans, I had assumed that society’s “losers” had somehow earned their desserts.  As I came to recognize that poverty is not earned or chosen or deserved, and that our use of force is far less precise than I had believed, I realized with a shock that I had effectively viewed whole swaths of the country and the world as second-class people.
 
No longer oblivious, I couldn’t remain in today’s Republican Party, not unless I embraced an individualism that was even more heartless than the one I had previously accepted.  The more I learned about reality, the more I started to care about people as people, and my values shifted.  Had I always known what I know today, it would have been clear that there hasn’t been a place for me in the Republican Party since the Free Soil days of Abe Lincoln.
 
Where I Came From

I grew up in a rich, white suburb north of Chicago populated by moderate, business-oriented Republicans.  Once upon a time, we would have been called Rockefeller Republicans. Today we would be called liberal Republicans or slurred by the Right as “Republicans In Name Only” (RINOs).
 
We believed in competition and the free market, in bootstraps and personal responsibility, in equality of opportunity, not outcomes.  We were financial conservatives who wanted less government. We believed in noblesse oblige, for we saw ourselves as part of a natural aristocracy, even if we hadn’t been born into it.  We sided with management over labor and saw unions as a scourge.  We hated racism and loved Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., particularly his dream that his children would “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  We worried about the rise of the Religious Right and its social-conservative litmus tests. We were tough on crime, tough on national enemies. We believed in business, full stop.
 
I intended to run for office on just such a platform someday.  In the meantime, I founded the Republican club at my high school, knocked on doors and collected signatures with my father, volunteered on campaigns, socialized at fundraisers, and interned for Senator John McCain and Congressman Denny Hastert when he was House Majority Whip Tom DeLay's chief deputy.
 
We went to mainstream colleges -- the more elite the better -- but lamented their domination by liberal professors, and I did my best to tune out their liberal views.  I joined the Republican clubs and the Federalist Society, and I read theWall Street Journal and the Economist rather the New York Times.  George Will was a voice in the wilderness, Rush Limbaugh an occasional (sometimes guilty) pleasure.
 
Left Behind By the Party

In January 2001, I was one of thousands of Americans who braved the cold rain to attend and cheer George W. Bush’s inauguration.  After eight years hating “Slick Willie,” it felt good to have a Republican back in the White House.  But I knew that he wasn’t one of our guys.  We had been McCain fans, and even if we liked the compassionate bit of Bush’s conservatism, we didn’t care for his religiosity or his social politics.
 
Bush won a lot of us over with his hawkish response to 9/11, but he lost me with the Iraq War.  Weren’t we still busy in Afghanistan?  I didn’t see the urgency.
 
By then, I was at the Justice Department, working in an office that handled litigation related to what was officially called the Global War on Terror (or GWOT).  My office was tasked with opposing petitions for habeas corpusbrought by Guantánamo detainees who claimed that they were being held indefinitely without charge.  The government’s position struck me as an abdication of a core Republican value: protecting the “procedural” rights found in the Bill of Rights.  Sure, habeas corpus had been waived in wartime before, but it seemed to me that waiving it here reduced us to the terrorists’ level.  Besides, since acts of terrorism were crimes, why not prosecute them?  I refused to work on those cases.
 
With the Abu Ghraib pictures my disappointment turned to rage.  The America I believed in didn’t torture people.
 
I couldn’t avoid GWOT work.  I was forced to read reams of allegations of torture, sexual abuse, and cover-ups in our war zones to give the White House a heads-up in case any of made it into the news cycle.
I was so mad that I voted for Kerry out of spite.
 
How I Learned to Start Worrying

I might still have stuck it out as a frustrated liberal Republican, knowing that the wealthy business core of the party still pulled a few strings and people like Richard Lugar and Olympia Snowe remained in the Senate -- if only because the idea of voting for Democrats by choice made me feel uncomfortable.  (It would have been so… gauche.)  Then came Hurricane Katrina.  In New Orleans, I learned that it wasn’t just the Bush administration that was flawed but my worldview itself.
 
I had fallen in love with New Orleans during a post-law-school year spent in Louisiana clerking for a federal judge, and the Bush administration’s callous (non-)response to the storm broke my heart.  I wanted to help out, but I didn’t fly helicopters or know how to do anything useful in a disaster, so just I sat glued to the coverage and fumed -- until FEMA asked federal employees to volunteer to help.  I jumped at the chance.
Soon, I was involved with a task force trying to rebuild (and reform) the city’s criminal justice system.  Growing up hating racism, I was appalled but not very surprised to find overt racism and the obvious use of racist code words by officials in the Deep South.
 
Then something tiny happened that pried open my eyes to the less obvious forms of racism and the hurdles the poor face when they try to climb the economic ladder.  It happened on an official visit to a school in a suburb of New Orleans that served kids who had gotten kicked out of every other school around.  I was investigating what types of services were available to the young people who were showing up in juvenile hall and seemed to be headed toward the proverbial life of crime.
 
My tour guide mentioned that parents were required to participate in some school programs.  One of these was a field trip to a sit-down restaurant.
 
This stopped me in my tracks.  I thought: What kind of a lame field trip is that?
It turned out that none of the families had ever been to a sit-down restaurant before.  The teachers had to instruct parents and students alike how to order off a menu, how to calculate the tip.
 
I was stunned.
 
Starting To See

That night, I told my roommates about the crazy thing I had heard that day.  Apparently there were people out there who had never been to something as basic as a real restaurant.  Who knew?

One of my roommates wasn’t surprised.  He worked at a local bank branch that required two forms of ID to open an account.  Lots of people came in who had only one or none at all.
 
I was flooded with questions: There are adults who have no ID?  And no bank accounts?Who are these people?  How do they vote?  How do they live?  Is there an entire off-the-grid alternate universe out there?

From then on, I started to notice a lot more reality. I noticed that the criminal justice system treats minorities differently in subtle as well as not-so-subtle ways, and that many of the people who were getting swept up by the system came from this underclass that I knew so little about.. Lingering for months in lock-up for misdemeanors, getting pressed against the hood and frisked during routine traffic stops, being pulled over in white neighborhoods for ”driving while black:” these are things that never happen to people in my world.
 
Not having experienced it, I had always assumed that government force was only used against guilty people.  (Maybe that’s why we middle-class white people collectively freak out at TSA airport pat-downs.)
 
I dove into the research literature to try to figure out what was going on.  It turned out that everything I was “discovering” had been hiding in plain sight and had been named: aversive racism, institutional racism, disparate impact and disparate treatment, structural poverty, neighborhood redlining, the “trial tax,” the “poverty tax,” and on and on.  Having grown up obsessed with race (welfare and affirmative action were our bêtes noirs), I wondered why I had never heard of any of these concepts.
 
Was it to protect our Republican version of “individual responsibility”?  That notion is fundamental to the liberal Republican worldview. “Bootstrapping” and “equality of opportunity, not outcomes” make perfect sense if you assume, as I did, that people who hadn’t risen into my world simply hadn’t worked hard enough, or wanted it badly enough, or had simply failed.  But I had assumed that bootstrapping required about as much as it took to get yourself promoted from junior varsity to varsity.  It turns out that it’s more like pulling yourself up from tee-ball to the World Series.  Sure, some people do it, but they’re the exceptions, the outliers, the Olympians.

The enormity of the advantages I had always enjoyed started to truly sink in.  Everyone begins life thinking that his or her normal is the normal.  For the first time, I found myself paying attention to broken eggs rather than making omelets.  Up until then, I hadn’t really seen most Americans as living, breathing, thinking, feeling, hoping, loving, dreaming, hurting people.  My values shifted -- from an individualistic celebration of success (that involved dividing the world into the morally deserving and the undeserving) to an interest in people as people.
 
How I Learned to Stop Loving the Bombs

In order to learn more -- and to secure my membership in what Karl Rove sneeringly called the reality-based community” -- I joined a social science research institute.  There I was slowly disabused of layer after layer of myth and received wisdom, and it hurt.  Perhaps nothing hurt more than to see just how far my patriotic, Republican conception of U.S. martial power -- what it’s for, how it’s used -- diverged from the reality of our wars.
 
Lots of Republicans grow up hawks.  I certainly did.  My sense of what it meant to be an American was linked to my belief that from 1776 to WWII, and even from the 1991 Gulf War to Kosovo and Afghanistan, the American military had been dedicated to birthing freedom and democracy in the world, while dispensing a tough and precise global justice.
 
To me, military service represented the perfect combination of public service, honor, heroism, glory, promotion, meaning, and coolness.  As a child, I couldn’t get enough of the military: toys and models, movies and cartoons, fat books with technical pictures of manly fighter planes and ships and submarines.  We went to air shows whenever we could, and with the advent of cable, I begged my parents to sign up so that the Discovery Channel could bring those shows right into our den.  Just after we got it, the first Gulf War kicked off, and CNN provided my afterschool entertainment for weeks.
 
As I got older, I studied Civil War military history and memory.  (I would eventually edit a book of letters by Union Gen. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.)  I thought I knew a lot about war; even if Sherman was right that “war is hell,” it was frequently necessary, we did it well, and -- whatever those misinformed peaceniks said -- we made the world a better place.
 
But then I went to a war zone.
 
I was deployed to Baghdad as part of a team of RAND Corporation researchers to help the detainee operations command figure out several thorny policy issues.  My task was to figure out why we were sort-of-protecting and sort-of-detaining an Iranian dissident group on Washington’s terrorist list.
 
It got ugly fast.  Just after my first meal on base, there was a rumble of explosions, and an alarm started screaming INCOMING! INCOMING! INCOMING!  Two people were killed and dozens injured, right outside the chow hall where I had been standing minutes earlier.
 
This was the “surge” period in 2007 when, I was told, insurgent attacks came less frequently than before, but the sounds of war seemed constant to me.  The rat-tat-tat of small arms fire just across the “wire.”  Controlled detonations of insurgent duds.  Dual patrolling Blackhawks overhead. And every few mornings, a fresh rain of insurgent rockets and mortars.
 
Always alert, always nervous, I was only in Iraq for three and a half weeks, and never close to actual combat; and yet the experience gave me many of the symptoms of PTSD.  It turns out that it doesn’t take much.
 
That made me wonder how the Iraqis took it.  From overhead I saw that the once teeming city of Baghdad was now a desert of desolate neighborhoods and empty shopping streets, bomb craters in the middle of soccer fields and in the roofs of schools. Millions displaced.
 
Our nation-building efforts reeked of post-Katrina organizational incompetence.  People were assigned the wrong roles -- “Why am I building a radio station?  This isn’t what I do.  I blow things up…” -- and given no advance training or guidance.  Outgoing leaders didn’t overlap with their successors, so what they had learned would be lost, leaving each wheel to be partially reinvented again.  Precious few contracts went to Iraqis.  It was driving people out of our military.
 
This incompetence had profound human costs.  Of the 26,000 people we were detaining in Iraq, as many as two-thirds were innocent -- wrong place, wrong time -- or, poor and desperate, had worked with insurgent groups for cash, not out of an ideological commitment.  Aware of this, the military wanted to release thousands of them, but they didn't know who was who; they only knew that being detained and interrogated made even the innocents dangerously angry.  That anger trickled down to family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances.  It was about as good an in-kind donation as the U.S. could have made to insurgent recruitment -- aside from invading in the first place.
 
So much for surgical precision and winning hearts and minds.  I had grown up believing that we were more careful in our use of force, that we only punished those who deserved punishment.  But in just a few weeks in Iraq, it became apparent that what we were doing to the Iraqis, as well as to our own people, was inexcusable.
 
Today, I wonder if Mitt Romney drones on about not apologizing for America because he, like the former version of me, simply isn’t aware of the U.S. ever doing anything that might demand an apology.  Then again, no one wants to feel like a bad person, and there's no need to apologize if you are oblivious to the harms done in your name -- calling the occasional ones you notice collateral damage (“stuff happens”) -- or if you believe that American force is always applied righteously in a world that is justly divided into winners and losers.
 
A Painful Transition
 
An old saw has it that no one profits from talking about politics or religion.  I think I finally understand what it means.  We see different realities, different worlds.  If you and I take in different slices of reality, chances are that we aren’t talking about the same things.  I think this explains much of modern American political dialogue.
 
My old Republican worldview was flawed because it was based upon a small and particularly rosy sliver of reality.  To preserve that worldview, I had to believe that people had morally earned their “just” desserts, and I had to ignore those whining liberals who tried to point out that the world didn’t actually work that way.  I think this shows why Republicans put so much effort into “creat[ing] our own reality,” into fostering distrust of liberals, experts, scientists, and academics, and why they won’t let a campaign “be dictated by fact-checkers” (as a Romney pollster put it).  It explains why study after study shows that avid consumers of Republican-oriented media are more poorly informed than people who use other news sources or don’t bother to follow the news at all.
 
Waking up to a fuller spectrum of reality has proved long and painful.  I had to question all my assumptions, unlearn so much of what I had learned.  I came to understand why we Republicans thought people on the Left always seemed to be screeching angrily (because we refused to open our eyes to the damage we caused or blamed the victims) and why they never seemed to have any solutions to offer (because those weren’t mentioned in the media we read or watched).
 
My transition has significantly strained my relationships with family, friends, and former colleagues.  It is deeply upsetting to walk on thin ice where there used to be solid, common ground.  I wish they, too, would come to see a fuller spectrum of reality, but I know from experience how hard that can be when your worldview won’t let you.
 
No one wants to feel like a dupe.  It is embarrassing to come out in public and admit that I was so miseducated when so much reality is out there in plain sight in neighborhoods I avoided, in journals I hadn’t heard of, in books by authors I had refused to read.  (So I take courage from the people who have done so before me like Andrew Bacevich.)
 
Many people see the wider spectrum of reality because they grew up on the receiving end. As a retired African-American general in the Marine Corps said to me after I told him my story, “No one has to explain institutional racism to a black man.”

Others do because they grew up in families that simply got it.  I married a woman who grew up in such a family, for whom all of my hard-earned, painful “discoveries” are old news.  Each time I pull another layer of wool off my eyes and feel another surge of anger, she gives me a predictable series of looks.  The first one more or less says, “Duh, obviously.”  The second is sympathetic, a recognition of the pain that comes with dismantling my flawed worldview.  The third is concerned: “Do people actually think that?”
 
Yes, they do.

 
http://www.thenation.com/article/169833/confessions-former-republican?rel=emailNation%22