Today marks the end of the life of Barbara Bush, who served as First Lady of the United States between 1989 and 1993.
While 151,600 individuals die each day across the globe, Americans will pause to collectively grieve the loss of this one woman whom they've never met, much less ever had the chance to know at a more-than-academic level.
And the total of this mourning across the nation will represent a manifestly glorified adoration for a family which symbolizes fantasy and concocted imagination far more than any strict rendering of historical happenings.
Despite the horrendous implications of the Iran-Contra scandal, the devastating casualties of Iran Air Flight 655, and a set of monetary, fiscal and social policies which unequivocally conflict with the original thousand-points-of-light Bush campaign, a great many Americans remain enamored with the family which appears nearly immune to reproach and primly primed for induction into the immutable annals of whitewashed history.
It is astounding, really, to visualize the numbers of innocent civilians who have been murdered, the many trillions of dollars which have been squandered, and the untold measures of freedom which have been encroached upon by the Bush family, as they inconceivably continue to retain a margin of popularity among those who remain nostalgic about times past.
Regardless of diabolical covert-ops, deceitful coverups, contradictory tax hikes, unconstitutional foreign engagements, unjustified expansions of the role of government, and fabricated pretexts to war, the Bush family has consistently, albeit cunningly, betrayed the U.S. Constitution and the American public while maintaining a semblance of royalty in the minds of many.
Even against its own rubric, for which Mrs. Bush and her husband will be celebrated, the Bush family has indisputably failed the United States.
In her husband's 1990 State of the Union Address, George H. W. Bush famously declared his objective to propel the United States to the forefront as "first in the world" in the subjects of math and science by the year 2000.
While the United States has indeed dramatically increased its expenditures within the domain of education, and while high school graduation rates have climbed along with rates of college attendance, the average scores of American students have fallen far short of number one in the categories of math and science.
In fact, the United States ranks 25th in science, six-tenths of a percent above the OECD average, and a mind-numbing 40th in mathematics, a full 4 percent below the OECD average.
It appears, then, that while no child has been left behind, a political fixture of son George W.'s later presidential platform, every child has been doomed to mediocrity or worse.
It appears also that so many of us have been duped by our unflinching desire to view the world through rose-colored lenses, whereby we sedate ourselves through the palatable interpretation of sanguine translations.
We perform this function, as mere human beings, to unconsciously operate toward a state of normality, or that of equilibrium, in order to protect ourselves from any threats which jeopardize our routine or our expectations; for as human beings, peace and stability prove mere functions of the regular satisfaction thereof, as the general direction for humanity is nowhere near the pursuit of truth or vivid understanding, but rather toward one’s own personal version of peace.
And though a sophisticated foray into the frontiers of lesser-read histories would invariably expose the weaknesses of those expedient assumptions about the commonly-venerated tale, the commoner among us tends all too often to rest his conclusions on the warm and pillowy testimonies of those who are best versed in marketing powerful propaganda or the digestible short-hand storyline over the illumination of the objectionable truth which serves inconveniently to rattle our minds and leave us stranded between omniscience and desperation, where there is clearly not a whole lot of company.
While 151,600 individuals die each day across the globe, Americans will pause to collectively grieve the loss of this one woman whom they've never met, much less ever had the chance to know at a more-than-academic level.
And the total of this mourning across the nation will represent a manifestly glorified adoration for a family which symbolizes fantasy and concocted imagination far more than any strict rendering of historical happenings.
Despite the horrendous implications of the Iran-Contra scandal, the devastating casualties of Iran Air Flight 655, and a set of monetary, fiscal and social policies which unequivocally conflict with the original thousand-points-of-light Bush campaign, a great many Americans remain enamored with the family which appears nearly immune to reproach and primly primed for induction into the immutable annals of whitewashed history.
It is astounding, really, to visualize the numbers of innocent civilians who have been murdered, the many trillions of dollars which have been squandered, and the untold measures of freedom which have been encroached upon by the Bush family, as they inconceivably continue to retain a margin of popularity among those who remain nostalgic about times past.
Regardless of diabolical covert-ops, deceitful coverups, contradictory tax hikes, unconstitutional foreign engagements, unjustified expansions of the role of government, and fabricated pretexts to war, the Bush family has consistently, albeit cunningly, betrayed the U.S. Constitution and the American public while maintaining a semblance of royalty in the minds of many.
Even against its own rubric, for which Mrs. Bush and her husband will be celebrated, the Bush family has indisputably failed the United States.
In her husband's 1990 State of the Union Address, George H. W. Bush famously declared his objective to propel the United States to the forefront as "first in the world" in the subjects of math and science by the year 2000.
While the United States has indeed dramatically increased its expenditures within the domain of education, and while high school graduation rates have climbed along with rates of college attendance, the average scores of American students have fallen far short of number one in the categories of math and science.
In fact, the United States ranks 25th in science, six-tenths of a percent above the OECD average, and a mind-numbing 40th in mathematics, a full 4 percent below the OECD average.
It appears, then, that while no child has been left behind, a political fixture of son George W.'s later presidential platform, every child has been doomed to mediocrity or worse.
It appears also that so many of us have been duped by our unflinching desire to view the world through rose-colored lenses, whereby we sedate ourselves through the palatable interpretation of sanguine translations.
We perform this function, as mere human beings, to unconsciously operate toward a state of normality, or that of equilibrium, in order to protect ourselves from any threats which jeopardize our routine or our expectations; for as human beings, peace and stability prove mere functions of the regular satisfaction thereof, as the general direction for humanity is nowhere near the pursuit of truth or vivid understanding, but rather toward one’s own personal version of peace.
And though a sophisticated foray into the frontiers of lesser-read histories would invariably expose the weaknesses of those expedient assumptions about the commonly-venerated tale, the commoner among us tends all too often to rest his conclusions on the warm and pillowy testimonies of those who are best versed in marketing powerful propaganda or the digestible short-hand storyline over the illumination of the objectionable truth which serves inconveniently to rattle our minds and leave us stranded between omniscience and desperation, where there is clearly not a whole lot of company.
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