Tag: history

The only thing “normal” about the “new normal” is it isn’t new

I’m a high school teacher. I keep thinking: “God, I can’t imagine what it must feel like to grow up through this.” The insanity and cravenness of our politics. The drumbeat of daily disaster. The unraveling of social ties. 

Tonight I realized: Someone thought that about me. 

They must have. 

I’m the 9-11 generation. 

That was my first week of high school. 

The mother of one of my volleyball teammates knew one of the flight attendants who died. I remember thinking how unreal it must feel to be personally connected to a disaster like that.

To know one of the bodies.  

That disaster seemed too big, too profound, too far beyond every rule of civil society we thought existed. 

Continue reading “The only thing “normal” about the “new normal” is it isn’t new”

What We Talk About When We Talk About War

Some days I think all I have to do as a teacher is just get out of the way. Shine enough light into the darkness that kids can see their own brilliance. Or maybe tell enough truth about the world that students can see the darkness, and that’s when they discover their own inner light.

I’ve been struggling with this pervasive sense – on social media, in the mainstream media, in pop culture, in everyday discussions – that our country is at war with itself. Trump’s election win seems to be the culmination of a host of unsettling, depressing trends that have stoked fear, anger and anxiety. Those trends include (but are certainly not limited to):

 

-Hyperpolarization fueled by filtered news feeds and the rise of fake news

 

-Increasingly antagonistic partisan politics and the collapse of bipartisan political efforts (which fuels a collapse in our collective faith in the effectiveness of government institutions)

 

-Identity politics that sow divisiveness and reject unity / identity politics that raise issues Americans aren’t ready or willing to accept as reality and honestly discuss (the perception of that issue pretty much breaks down along party lines)

Continue reading “What We Talk About When We Talk About War”