As a teacher, I didn’t heartily endorse “the Curve.” I didn’t believe that just because a student could find five friends who were either stupider or lazier than they were they deserved a free pass (although I’m sure that for some of my students that was no trivial feat). This also tied into a theory I developed early in my teaching career (which turned into a prophesy). Unlike doctors, who are said to be able to bury their mistakes, if teachers were to make mistakes, and for political or social reasons were unable to correct the system to reduce the number of those mistakes, then non-educated people could eventually reach critical mass. They could then elect enough unqualified politicians to negatively affect the education process (with budget cuts, for example). This would be the beginning of a feedback loop that could put American education and thus American society on a death spiral. But that could never happen here, right?
Now that Mr. Trump has been elected president and his conduct, unchecked by congress, has become more and more outrageous, I find it interesting to watch some of his supporters as they have to warp their world (or the principles by which that world is defined) to greater degrees in order to be able to justify His actions within that small world. To do that successfully, they need other people (their five friends) to be dumb enough to fall for those contorted explanations. As time goes on, those friends need to recruit their own set of even dumber friends so that they don’t look like the fools that they are . . . and so on. But even now, dumb and foolish people are not an unlimited resource in this country, and Trump’s actions will continue to test that resource like no other leader in the history of the Earth. So as in all such schemes, the buffoon bubble is bound to break. The only question is – will that happen before the next election? I’m not so sure it will. Any comments?
