Make It Make Sense

As you can tell if you’ve been reading my Substack posts, I muse about a lot of topics and then write about them.  Today I want to tell you about some things that don’t make sense to me. 

Why People Want to ‘Return [name the issue] to the States.

Abortion is the most obvious example of this.  As if it makes a difference to a woman experiencing a life-threatening or other unwanted pregnancy whether the rules restricting her body autonomy are written at the federal level or at the state level.  I understand the historical reasons why the men who wrote the Constitution in 1787 wanted the locus of power to be in the states. We fought a Civil War over that. The South lost. Power shifted to the central government. Get over it.

Why Republicans claim to want ‘small government and lower taxes’ while increasing government regulations on things they don’t like.

Passing legislation that decreases personal freedom inevitably means increasing government oversight to make sure these laws are observed.  This means creating bureaucratic positions, passing the funding to pay for them, and hiring the individuals to fill the jobs.  You don’t think the menstruation police are going to do this for free, do you? Spreadsheets will be involved.

Why people want to funnel public money to private schools.

Schools are a public good (like electricity, water, public roadways, and wifi) that benefit everyone.  People who don’t own houses still benefit from electricity, water, and other public utilities; the businesses they interact with require them.  People who don’t drive still benefit from roads; emergency services, the mailman, and the Amazon delivery truck require them.  People who don’t use wifi still benefit from it, as businesses operate more efficiently and thus keep prices down.

Childless individuals (or people like me with grown children) still benefit from the public schools.  Where will the next generation of doctors, lawyers, construction workers, and store clerks come from if we don’t provide them with education?  If people have concerns about the quality of the public education system, one surefire way to make sure it doesn’t improve is to cut the funding.  I actually had a conversation with someone recently who told me that she didn’t want to pay higher property taxes because the money would go to the public schools and she doesn’t think they’re doing a good job.  She said that if they improved then she would be willing to support them financially.  Reminds me of ‘the floggings will continue until morale improves.’

Teachers being radically underpaid for their level of education (always a Bachelors Degree and more often than not a Masters Degree), hours (constant unpaid overtime), and out-of-pocket expenses (we should not tolerate teachers having to create Go Fund Me pages or Amazon wish lists to equip their classrooms). 

And then society complains and demeans them.  Go figure.

HUGE portion sizes in restaurants. 

Restaurants could serve normal portions, still charge the same, and save money in the process.  When we traveled in England a couple of years ago we were served normal portions in every restaurant we patronized.  It was refreshing not to be nauseated when our plate was placed in front of us.  And while we’re at it, do we really need to SUPERSIZE everything?  Eat normal amounts, people!

Why medical care for your eyes, ears, and teeth are not covered by many health insurance plans. 

Are they not part of your body?  Aren’t they as important for your bodily functioning as your arms and feet and oh my god your appendix?

Why children have to pay for lunch in the place we make them go to every day. 

All children are poor. 

Repeat after me: All children are poor.

Some children have rich parents, so it’s easy for them to pay for lunch.  Children whose parents are not rich have to rely on their parents to take the time to fix them a lunch every morning, scrape together the money for them to buy the meagerest of the options offered at the school cafeteria, or apply for free lunch – sometimes getting a special card, standing in a special line, or being offered reduced options so that everyone around them knows they are getting a free lunch.  If you made food free at school, you would more than cover the costs by not having to pay the ‘lunch ladies’ who man the cash registers and the cafeteria managers who would have to manage the accounts in addition to their other responsibilities. 

Why people say ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ 

Of course it does.  But what they seem to mean is that even when bad things happen we should look for the philosophical ‘reason’ it happened.  This says we should be grateful for terrible things – even when your child dies or your house burns down.  Same thing with ‘God has a plan for me’ or ‘God doesn’t close a door unless he opens a window.’  This produces compliant people who meekly accept ‘the way things are’ rather than work to make things better.  Saying ‘I’m not rich because God has a plan for me and it doesn’t include me being rich’ allows people who are already rich to keep their money.

People who say ‘If you can dream it, you can be it’ or some variant of the poster you see in the offices of high school guidance counselors. 

If that were true, every high school athlete would be drafted by the pro leagues and become an Olympic gymnast.  Every kid who aspires to be a doctor or lawyer or POTUS would achieve their dream.  This is nonsense.  When I talked with my high school seniors about their aspirations for college and beyond, many of them told me they hated signs like this, because they took it to mean that it was their own damn fault if they didn’t get into their dream school or win the scholarship competition that would allow them to go to the school. 

That’s all I have time for right now. What things don’t make sense to you?