Agreed. My point was to encourage a thoughtful sixteen year old to think critically, to recognize spin, and to form his own opinions. There is still time for him 
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Oh, I did not understood the context at all. Just jumped in at the middle of the thread.
Seems a good and a wise lad. Hope he keeps this kind of curiosity towards the world.
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I know that; hence I said im glad to have learned (and of course am still learning) history
Yeah that makes sense, well I suppose technically there is, but we just wonāt know it. But yeah, its important to find what information we can in order to strengthen the grounds of the knowledge
Yeah you have a point. I believe though, in general, it is possible to get to āthe topā (although this doesnāt really exist, just the upwards direction) without āpuppet mastersā, though I do admit that I would assume it is very difficult to do so.
That an interesting way to put it, il try to remember that. Im sure it will in due time.
Yeah, its true. Id say just in our school that percentage roughly applies (though probably more like 95 instead of 80%) I say 95% of the kids are non-radical, with the 5% being what one would consider radical (and for the most part thatās radical left. Thereās even one of those mentally ill guys who thinks he is a girl. Hope he gets better.
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Of course itās possible but something being missed here is power changes people and time changes people. The young man throwing his fist in air saying āI got your backā becomes a different person when they actually become someone of importance. They are then easier to manipulate and control and they end up manipulating.
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This is a great point, but the 80% of Americans who agree want to ram it down the throats of those who donātā¦and, on the 20% of issues without agreement, someone still wants to ram it down someone elseās throat. Thatās how the powerful control a group that greatly outnumbers them.
This is because weāve moved from a country that was largely unified at the core but disagreed on how to address common problems to a country with at least two distinct primary cultures emerging and relevant subcultures lining up underneath. One divided on principle itself informing view.
There is a 3rd party āpushā every other election cycle or so. About every 8 years a generationally bonded voting bloc enters the fray with big ideas to fix everything.
They usually just wind up recapping existing sentiment, typically on the left/progressive side given age and lack of life experienceā¦.. but different, man. No cap. Itās 3rd party.
The ālibertariansā have carried this bucket for a while now but theyāre all actually just democrats with oppositional personality dysfunction.
Take your examples, for example. They all center around big government, socialistic ideals and propagation of the DNC welfare state undertones.
Itās great to see a 15 year old interested in politics and it would be great to understand your thoughts by researching them further. Examine them by questioning and researching what already exists for each of these ideas, have they been employed in some form historically, what was the objective outcome et cetera. And for the real icing on the cake, be objective in your analysis of alternate views that donāt line up with your currently held views. This is where people get lost and start framing things in an unproductive way.
Take abortion as an example. A topic spanning generations and emotionally charged. Both sides intentionally add vitriol and framing to attack and minimize the other.
Pro-life: theyāre selfish murderers with no regard for human life! Scum, they donāt matter. Subhuman.
Pro-choice: they are woman hating assholes. Misogynistic relics of the past to be deconstructed and relegated irrelevant.
In reality, pro-lifers see the beginning of life and human form as the point of inception and seek to preserve said life. Itās not about hating women at all, but protecting a life without a voice of its own. You will never hear a āpro-choiceā person acknowledge this however.
And the Pro choice crowd largely buys in to current day science, with trust placed in the medical field that before a certain point of cell division and consciousness development an abortion is akin to removing a mole or some other biological material without its own life force. They are not necessarily just cold-hearted murdering kids but believe through medical guidance the decision they are making is purely clinical.
And the battle rages on. But the anger and disparate feel come from the disingenuous framing of one another in an attacking manner.
And I would suggest discourse is largely the crux. 350 million people will never agree on anything uniformly, but civility can be achieved, hopefully.
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Itās really just typical human paranoia. Every generation thinks things āare the most polarized theyāve ever been.ā
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I cannot believe that Iām about to make my first post outside the Training Log section in years in this thread of all places, butā¦
Agree, and to take that a bit further, itās because the motivation of the ā10% on either sideā to turn out and vote in a given year is what will decide many of the elections. So itās really important to create and the continue hammering away on flashpoint issues to galvanize the marginal voters into turning out to the polls.
A somewhat-bizarre-but-sincerely-held-belief that I have is that ā¦ maybe we should no longer have a national vote for the President (hear me out, hear me out).
I have a probably-oversimplified-but-convenient mental model of the late 1700ās that goes a little something like this: in an era pre-internet, pre-telephone, and all that, there was just no way for anyone to keep up with what was happening two counties over, much less in an entire country. So the only way to come up with a form of government that could represent all people would be for folks to elect someone smart who they trusted from their town/county/whatever to go and stand for their interests, and the hope would be that such a representative cross-section would, to the extent possible, be able to debate and formulate policies that āworkedā for everyone. Sure there would have to be a little horse-trading and give-a-little-to-get-a-little for anything to get done, but thatās life.
What bothers me about the last couple of elections (mostly the effect of Trump has brought this to the fore, but it probably still exists independent of him) is that the national Presidential race so thoroughly dominates the entire image and perception of candidates from both parties. In state and local races, thereās no real consideration of āis this a fundamentally decent and smart person who I think will fulfill the office that we are voting for wellā - itās just whether they agree with the current avatar of their party. Thereās a part of me that thinks maybe just outright ditching the national vote for President would, to some extent, make folks quit hitching their entire identity and voting persona to one party or the other and actually evaluate the specific candidates themselves.
(How would we elect a President, then? Iām not really sure, my thoughts would be either āDonāt have one at allā or basically have the House elect the President from their own ranksā¦I havenāt really gotten that far, but wanted to get the idea off my chest about how much I think the national Presidential race specifically warps the whole political discourse nationally)
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The ironic thing about what you said was originally the people didnāt directly vote for the president. (Before anyone tries to say we still donāt, almost all the states have a winner take all pledge system for the electors that nullifies the original system). The founders likely foresaw the issue, among others. But us modern people, weāre so smart and advanced.
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You are correct to feel this way at your age. Iām unsure where you live, but education has changed quite a bit from when I was 15 (1995). I had absolutely no idea if any of my teachers were Republicans or Democrats, or if the unmarried ones were gay (or if the married ones were closeted gay, for that matter). The focus of classroom time was always on the academic subject of the class. Even in the Current Events class, the discussion was not guided by any particular ideology.
My advice is to be skeptical of everyone who has a strong enough opinion about something political that they feel the urge to impart it to their students. Thereās a good chance they are sharing a seriously unsupported opinion with you.
Otherwise, continue reading books written by thoughtful people about subjects you find interesting. Well-respected historians are always a good place to begin filling out your knowledge of political philosophies and how they can shape our world.
To add a bit to this, history is the study of records that have been preserved. The further back you go, the murkier the picture becomes and a degree of storytelling is necessary to put it into context. A lot of historians try very hard to force the records of the past into their contemporary worldview, which is how you can end up with wildly different narratives being told about the past. This can also result in historians giving wildly different analyses of current events.
For two prominent examples, take Heather Cox Richardson and Victor Davis Hanson. You know theyāre both serious because they have three names. Each offers their historianās perspective on current events, each coming to wildly different conclusions about what is happening in the world today.
Otherwise, youāre doing fine from what I can glean out of this thread. Itās them, not you. Keep studying hard and youāll be fine with whatever comes your way in the wild world of politics, which has always been a wild world. Historians 100 years from now will have more records of the past than anyone ever has. AP US History will be a wild subject, for sure.
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Definitely. What things you emphasize, how you interpret stuff and what you actually can know (nothing is ever fully preserved) all affect on what conclusions you make from certain events.
And besides the problem with not having all the sources preserved, thereās the problem of scale. One can never fully comprehend the world. Not the current, nor the past. Itās just too vast and complex for a single human mind.
You should of course aim for it, but accept that it canāt never be fully achieved.
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Present company included.
Well, weāre here on the internet only a few levels above the sewer known as Reddit, so yeah. Skepticism is a good default mindset not just in the high school classroom that @ZMFitness occupies, but outside of it as well.
In my opinion, OP is already thinking about the situation better than any educator who feels the need to deviate from academic lessons to instead share their political opinions with their students. This is unfortunately a very common practice in Maine public education today, and our academic outcomes reflect this. We went from leading the USA in public education outcomes to being among the very worst. Thatās not entirely due to modern ideas about politics becoming a focal point over things like science, mathematics, and humanities, but the level of hysteria astutely observed by our 15 year-old OP certainly contributes to my stateās abysmal literacy rates, poor understanding of even basic mathematics, and scientific illiteracy. This intrusion of politics into the student spaces undermines all of the positive academic outcomes that spring forth from creating students who are able to comprehend complex ideas and discern true from false.
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You sound like a groomer in this thread.
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By encouraging a 15 year-old student to focus on science, mathematics, and humanities, not contemporary politics?
I havenāt even stated a political opinion here, aside from having the opinion that political opinions shouldnāt be rammed down the throats of 15 year-olds, especially when they are a captive audience in a classroom. Maineās academic decline is a factual matter of public record. Our literacy rates and other academic outcomes are abysmal compared to any point in the stateās past.
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Another reason the state should not be running education. Schools are basically daycare. Just a pen where we prolong adolescence.
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JFC. Keep it in your thread.
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Whatās wrong with explaining basic facts about Maine?
All politics are ultimately local. Federal policy plays out in my city just as state and local policies do. We experience the effects of every level of governmentās public policies where we actually live, at the local level. I can explain whatās going on where I live because I follow state and especially local city hall and school committee meetings regularly.
It is unfortunate that youāre bothered by my plain-spoken words. Do you need help finding a safe space?
@ZMFitness Just keep thinking for yourself, studying hard, and following established progressive overload principles with your lifting. Lifting weights is much more important than keeping up to speed on local, state, or even federal politics. So are your studies.
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This is telling - me and @Andrewgen_Receptors are likely opposite ends of the spectrum. Or at least somewhere opposed. And he is telling you the same thing I am.
Keep reading, keep thinking.
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