A School System Goes to Hell and Back Again - TomDispatch.com

A School System Goes to Hell and Back Again - TomDispatch.com Frida Berrigan, Investing in the Pentagon, Not Our Children April 28, 2022 The United States is a war state of the strangest sort. Your taxes go to war -- in this century, losing wars -- in ever more extravagant amounts. There's simply no end to it. In fact, it's safe to say that investing yet greater sums in the military-industrial complex is about the only subject on which congressional Republicans and Democrats seem capable of agreement (though even there, the Republicans are demanding more, much more!). Meanwhile, as TomDispatch has recorded over all these years, this is a country that seems to be coming apart at -- okay, I'm an editor, but I still can't resist using the same-sounding word twice in this sentence -- yes, the seams. If you don't believe me, ask Trump appointee Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, the Florida District Court "judge" (and I put that word in quotes because she's hardly more of a judge than I am) who lifted the national travel mask mandate, once again splitting this country in fervent disagreement and, it being in the Trump tradition, undoubtedly killing some of us in the process. So here we are, more than two years into a pandemic estimated to have done in up to 15 million people globally, with cases and hospitalizations once again on the rise in the United States. In response, the country's letting down its guard. What else is new? I have the feeling that what this society needs is attention from someone like the husband of today's author and TomDispatch regular Frida Berrigan. He's a "wellness interventionist" -- a term I had never heard before -- in our public schools, which, as she tells us (and she's not alone at TomDispatch in that), are an increasing mess. Who could be surprised in a country that would never invest in public education, as she makes all too clear, the way it does in its military. Of course, given this country's record at war in this century, perhaps that's a good thing. Who knows anymore? Not me! Tom