Relections After Another Netanyahu Victory

Everyone who associates themselves with a religious faith surely takes pride in its “values.”  In fact, we tend to identify our faith above all else with the values preached and exemplified by our greatest role models.   At least that’s the case with Judaism.

My people have plenty of catch phrases to remind ourselves of what “Jewish values” mean.   We speak of Rabbi Akiva and how he taught that the Torah’s fundamental principle was “Love your neighbor as yourself.”   And we often cite Rabbi Hillel, who when asked to summarize the entire Torah while standing on one foot, replied “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. All the rest is commentary.  Now go study.”  In both cases, these rabbis place central importance on how human beings should treat one another.  More than our observance of religious ritual or even our devotion to God, that’s what defines our commitment to the Jewish faith. 

Whenever values are discussed, of course, there is room for ambiguity.  In the above examples, a debate could center on the word “neighbor.”  In theory, if a person lives in a Jewish community, their “neighbors” will tend to be fellow Jews.  So, taken literally, as long as we care for our fellow Jews, we can disregard or even disdain gentiles and not run afoul of the directives to be good to our neighbors.  But that’s not the way I’ve been taught.  From parents and Jewish-school teachers alike, I’ve heard that the Jew is obligated to take care of ALL people, and especially the most vulnerable, regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds.  Such universalism is indeed mainstream American-Jewish doctrine and has been for generations.    That’s why so many of our parents and grandparents were attracted to socialism and other left-leaning ideologies.

When I grew up in the 60s, America had the largest Jewish community in the world.  Our community was also known for its overarching political liberalism.   In 1928, only 28 percent of Jews voted for Hoover – and that was the election he won.  In 1932, Hoover’s total among Jews was 18%, and for the next four elections, the Republican candidate did even worse.  Even in 1972, when Nixon won 49 states, McGovern had a +30% margin among Jews.   Next year, in fact, will be the 100^th anniversary of the last time that a Republican Presidential candidate won 40% of the Jewish vote.  Over the past 100 years, our community has become far more affluent, but no less politically liberal.  Some might say that we’ve been willing to vote against our own pecuniary interest in order to be true to the “values” that defined our sense of identity. 

As children who cleaved to our sense of Jewish values, my friends and I spoke about the nation of Israel in glowing and even heroic terms.  Back then, Israel symbolized both Jewish progressivism and an antidote to Jewish victimization.  This little country was started primarily by secular socialists and other leftists.  They gathered together in economic collectives known as Kibbutzim and for decades, their progressive party (Labor) dominated every election.  While most American Jews weren’t exactly historians, one fact we did know was that when Israel became a state, its citizens supported partitioning the land into two-states-for-two-peoples, but it was the Palestinians who fought against such an outcome.  Decades after the creation of Israel, there was still no “Occupation.”  And even after the Settlements began being built, we all assumed that Israel’s leaders would support the existence of a Palestinian state as soon as they had a legitimate partner for peace on the Palestinian side.  The problem, we assumed, was that enough Palestinians seemed hell bent on crushing Israel and taking back the land for themselves that Israeli had no choice but to watch their backs and build walls.  In one war after another, Arab States ganged up on precious little Israel, and it practically took miracles for Israel to survive, let alone to win these wars.  When the Israeli army seized such strategic land as the Golan Heights, no American Jew in their right mind would have begrudged Israel’s right to keep it.  But we remained passionately committed to Israel giving up the land necessary to create a viable two-state solution – one state for our own people and another for our Palestinian “neighbors” who were also victims in the arena of geopolitics and who for the most part are as innocent as the Israelis.  That two-state commitment became an integral manifestation of “Jewish values,” one that I and millions of other American Jewish Zionists continue to hold dear and always will.

American-Jewish values, you see, aren’t changing so dramatically.  But Israel is.  Now its leaders have enacted the “Jewish Nation State Law,” which stands for the principle that Israel is a nation state ONLY for the Jewish people, rather than being a nation state for both the Jewish people and for any gentiles (i.e., Palestinians) who happen to be citizens of the nation.  More significantly, its Prime Minister now stands for the principle that all the Jewish Settlements in the West Bank can legitimately be annexed by Israel – meaning that what would remain of “Palestine” would be a small chunk of swiss cheese, one that couldn’t possibly give rise to a “state” worthy of the term.  Honestly, though, what’s notable about Israel these days isn’t just that it is led by people who appear to have given up on the notion of Palestinian autonomy.  It’s that the citizens of Israel continue to vote for such leaders.  Frankly, just as the center-right movement in America seems incapable of getting a majority of Jewish support, the center-left movement in Israel seems equally incapable of winning elections.  Yes, they do just fine in and around Tel Aviv. But in the hinterland and in Jerusalem?  The majorities there would rather vote in for a fifth term a Prime Minister who has completely abandoned a two-state solution and who is close to being indicted for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.  Better that guy than anyone who stands for the same principles that the vast majority of American Jews would select. Houston, we have a problem.

Speaking personally, I feel no modicum of alienation from the Israeli people right now.  I have never had problems knowing, respecting and loving right-wing Jews.  But what I’ve not had to wrap my arms around, until recently, is that the world’s largest Jewish population (Israel overtook the U.S. in that regard during my adult life) is becoming one of the most right-wing democracies in the world.  I cannot possibly relate to what plan the Netanyahu voters have in mind for the Palestinians.  Are they expecting the Palestinians simply to pack up and head for Jordan – sort of a Middle Eastern Trail of Tears?  Or are these “majority” voters reconciled to the Palestinians remaining in Israeli-controlled areas as a stateless, impoverished underclass?  Honestly, what is the vision and how do we get there? And how is this possibly consistent with Jewish values?

Actually, I can guess the answer to that last question.  I’ve read the Book of Joshua.  I’ve seen the single-mindedness of God’s alleged directive to the Hebrew people to seize the Promised Land by, among other things, killing its inhabitants. Compared to Joshua and his troops, Bibi Netanyahu is positively Gandhi-like in his treatment of the Palestinians.   What’s more, I have heard many Jews over the years argue that the disputed land is ours because we have the prior claim to it and thus the superior legal right to it.  After all, we gave the Palestinians the chance to divide it up and they chose instead to terrorize us and to fight wars over the land; they lost, we won, and to the victor goes the spoils.  Some of the Jews I know who adopt that attitude are otherwise progressive people who care deeply about the poor or infirm.  So I guess an argument can be made that this view is consistent with “universalist” values.  But that argument would not be made by more than a small minority of non-Jews throughout the world.  And it would not be made by the vast majority of American Jews either.  So why, then, are most Israelis going to polls and supporting political parties who trade in that sort of reasoning?  What has happened to Jewish values?

These are questions that young American Jews are surely going to ask in schools and summer camps throughout this nation.  They were asking them before this recent election cycle, and now that the Jewish Nation State Law has been passed, the Prime Minister has stated his willingness to annex all the Settlements, and his alleged corruption has been exposed, young Jewish Americans will be raising these questions at a fever pitch.  You’ll forgive these young people if they wonder if their progressive teachers have been feeding them a load of crap in suggesting that Jews are any more altruistic or compassionate than anyone else.  You’ll forgive them if they wonder if the term “Jewish values” has any meaning at all.   And you’ll forgive them if they wonder whether they have far more in common with American Episcopalians or Unitarian-Universalists – or, for that matter, the so-called “Nones” – than they have with Israeli Jews.

Such wondering is surely going to present an incredible challenge to those of us who wish to see Judaism continue to flourish in America.  It’s a challenge that my Jewish friends and I didn’t have to face back in the 60s, and yet many of our cohort still gave up our Jewish identities and assimilated.  I can only imagine what’s going to happen to my grandson’s generation.

Fortunately, though, I don’t have to worry about my grandson himself – his mother is a rabbi and his parents will raise him right.  They will explain that in truth, the values of a religion are the values that the religion inspires in the minds of all of its inhabitants.  So Jewish values are my values, they’re Netanyahu’s values, and they’re the values of everyone who identifies with the faith and is inspired by it.   

It is incumbent on each of us to continue to study the great works associated with our faith, to develop our values based on that study, and to exemplify those values in our conduct.  If in doing so we seem out of step with the majority of our people, so be it.   There is enough wisdom in Judaism – and, for that matter, in all the world’s great religions – to inspire free-thinking individuals to find a set of values by which they can live their lives.  If you’re truly religious, you should have the courage to stick to those values even when it appears you’re merely a voice in the wilderness.

So to those people in and around Tel Aviv who continue to lose one national election after another, please hold your heads high and keep on fighting.  Someday, you might find yourselves in the majority again. And who knows?  Maybe that’s when your country will dismantle some of these imperialist settlements and make the kind of peace that honors the Palestinians, your values, and mine. 

Spring Comes to the Nation's Capital

Last week’s blogpost contained a tribute to the stately live oak of the South Carolina Lowcountry.  Today, I’m thinking instead about my own city and its adopted favorite tree, the cherry.  Visitors to the Nation’s Capital understand early April to be the most glorious time for a visit, both because of the weather and because of the cherry blossoms.  Guidebooks funnel these tourists to the Tidal Basin of the National Mall, where cherry trees majestically line the perimeter.  But locals know there are better places to appreciate the blossoms without even needing to go to Japan.   I am speaking of the narrow, winding streets in the suburbs where cherry trees form a canopy of blossoms that engulf anyone who is blessed to walk or drive by.  I had the pleasure of taking such a stroll this morning.  I was with my bichon, Benny, who was just groomed yesterday.  His fur and those flowers were a perfect match – Blonde on Blonde, as Bob Dylan might say.  So fresh, so restful, so bright … so un-Washington. 

Forbes recently ranked Washington DC as the fourth most stressful city in the United States.  But the three above us (L.A., N.Y., and Chicago) are all many times larger.  So perhaps I can state the obvious – pound-for-pound, we’re number one.  People come here to enhance their career.  They find a job.  They go to work.  They stay at work – hour after hour after hour.  They spend another hour or more commuting home, either on a metro train where nobody smiles or among the nation’s most congested roads.  When they get home in the evening, they consume themselves with their addiction to that form of mud-wrestling otherwise known as American politics.  Eventually, they start fantasizing about moving away to someplace more bucolic – like just about anywhere. 

This past week was the beginning of baseball season, which is definitely a major event in Washington D.C.  Gradually, we’ve been becoming a baseball city – oh, not of the caliber of St. Louis, for example, but we’re not exactly Miami either.  This past Tuesday evening, we showed baseball fans all over the country that D.C. is a place to be reckoned with.  Philadelphia was in town, and that means that the Phillies’ Bryce Harper – who the Washington Nationals signed to a rookie contract and who for years was the Nationals’ biggest star – was making his first return to his former home town.  The Baseball Gods have ordained the etiquette that cities are supposed to follow in situations like these.  First, Harper should get a video tribute from his old team, during which his former fans should cheer him in appreciation for his years of loyal and glorious service to the city.  Next, in his first at bat for the visiting team, the home fans should give him one final standing ovation in recognition of his past service.  And then, in his second at-bat --and for as long thereafter as the mood feels right -- his former fans should boo the roof off the stadium as soon as he enters the batter’s box.   That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Well, here in (arguably) America’s most stressful city, we made a little modification.  From the moment the Harper video tribute began, he was booed.  Relentlessly.  Tens of thousands of fans stood up and called him a traitor.  Then, whenever it was time for him to hit or catch a baseball, the boo-birds kept on chirping.  That stadium was loud, and the people were nasty.  It was one big F-U to a guy in his mid-20s whose sole offense was to manifest a desire to earn market wages, which the owner of his former team wasn’t willing to pay.  And here’s the funny thing about the whole episode: everyone in D.C. loved it!  It wasn’t that we begrudge Bryce Harper the right to earn $330 million in the next 13 years.  It was that we enjoyed witnessing so many Washingtonians care so much about our city that they would scream bloody murder against a man whose cardinal sin was to leave it. 

Does that sound strange to you?  Perhaps it should.  But I totally get while the local commentators are universally glowing about Tuesday’s Boo-Fest.  It showed civic pride – in an odd way I admit, but it was there nonetheless.  Washingtonians are sick of hearing what a gross place this is, sick of being on all the wrong lists (most stress, worst weather, most violence, etc.), and tired of watching their sports teams lose all the time.  They’re also done with seeing fans in other cities go crazy about their teams while their own stadiums are filled largely with visiting fans or local transplants who continue to root for the teams they grew up with.  Last year’s D.C. hockey team won the Stanley Cup, and we all watched as loyal fans finally were rewarded after decades of futility.  It reminded people that Washington is as real and legit a place to be from as anywhere else. Strangely enough, that was apparent from the energy behind those boos. 

Of course, it’s stressful here.  Everyone knows that.  Everyone knows also that our weather stinks in the summer and isn’t so great in the winter.  Everyone knows that this is a one-industry town that caters to hypocrites, sycophants, and phonies who take themselves incredibly seriously.  Everyone knows that what stinks about D.C. tends to be lasting and what’s great about D.C. tends to be ephemeral.  (No sooner do you make a good friend then you start having to listen to them talk about moving away.  Hell, even the cherry blossoms last only for two weeks a year or less.)   

But for one glorious night, none of that mattered. That’s because tens of thousands of Washingtonians – and hundreds of thousands more (like me) who were watching on TV – got to express our pride in our home town.  And yes, we did it in a characteristically crazy way: by booing relentlessly at the sight of a hardworking man who did nothing wrong except move away from our city.  It was one hell of a primal scream.  And it was truly a tribute, only it wasn’t Bryce Harper who was being celebrated, but rather having the loyalty to remain in your town, even if it’s as obviously flawed and as often disgusting as Washington D.C.

What?  Do you think I’m being hyperbolic?  Do you think D.C. is no more disgusting than any place else?  Notwithstanding my loyalty to the old home town, I’ve got to admit that this place can get downright ugly.  Only a couple of days after the Harper-booing incident, we Washingtonians were graced with a far more familiar kind of event.  It took place in the “People’s House” – the chamber of the House of Representatives.  There, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell addressed her colleagues on behalf of a bill that would enhance limits on guns for people who have been convicted of crimes involving domestic abuse.  Who wouldn’t support such a bill, right?  Who wants a man convicted of beating his wife or stalking his ex-wife to carry a gun?  Well, click on this link, watch this video, and you’ll hear a bunch of faceless Congresspeople boo Dingell as if she were Bryce Harper leaving the on-deck circle.  https://ijr.com/debbie-dingell-nra-speech/

I don’t know the names of the folks who did the booing.  But we can all guess.  They’re virtually all rich, white men whose titles begin with the term “The Honorable.”    And there is nothing whatsoever appealing about their performance in booing Debbie Dingell.

Yeah, we Washingtonians know what kind of city we live in.   We are even more aware of its problems than any anti-Government curmudgeon from Kansas, Kentucky or Kalamazoo.  But we love our Cherry Blossoms, we love our baseball team, and we love the fact that in this city, people care about politics and public policy.  That ultimately is what unites all of us boo-birds – Nationals fans, Democratic Congresspeople, Republican Congresspeople, you name it.   No matter who you are, if you live in this city, the stress will get to you and some of your neighbors will at times make you sick.   Yet there is also a bond here that stems from the fact that friend or foe, we’re all in this thing together.  No matter what side of the aisle we occupy, we all care about the local industry – enough, in fact, that we’re generally able to cope with the stresses and keep on fighting.  Every now and again, we even get to assemble and let out a primal scream – together – knowing that tomorrow we’ll be back in our respective corners fighting for our respective causes.

So let’s celebrate the baseball season of 2019.  But let’s not kid ourselves – the real sporting season of Washington D.C. begins in June.  For a local junkie like me, those debates can’t come soon enough. 

On Dignity

Nearly every year at this time, I write and deliver and essay inspired by the Jewish holiday of Purim.  This year’s essay focuses on the concept of dignity and why it is both central to authentic religion and incredibly misunderstood by the society at large.  I think you’ll find it interesting.

Here’s the essay:  http://www.danielspiro.com/uploads/3/1/0/2/31022605/purim_2019.pdf

Other Purim essays can be found on the Other Writings/Purim Essays page of my website, www.danielspiro.com. 

Six Days

It took the New Zealand Prime Minister all of six days after a mass shooting incident to announce a ban on certain weapons of mass destruction.  We’re talking about semi-automatic rifles, bump stocks, even  high-capacity magazines.  The Cabinet has already agreed to rid the country of those scourges.  As soon as the Kiwi Parliament reconvenes in April, their absolute prohibition will be the law of the land.  

New Zealand has endured only a single mass shooting in the last 20 years, but that one was enough to bring lawmakers together on behalf of common sense and the sanctity of human life.  By contrast, in the past 20 years, we in America have seen 18 shooting sprees resulting in ten or more deaths and eight such sprees in the past four years.  Yet here, except for the soon-to-be-implemented ban on bump stocks, the federal government doesn’t dare touch our guns.  Semi-automatic weapons flood the landscape.   High-capacity magazines rack up corpses in droves. Meanwhile, mentally-fragile residents can buy these insane killing tools without even needing to submit to a background check.  And the leaders of our government?  They duck and cover – much like the children at our schools during one of our increasingly common active shooter situations.

In the United States, whenever there is a mass shooting, the face of the event quickly becomes the head of the National Rifle Association – tough, macho, uncompromising, callous ... and victorious on Capitol Hill.  In New Zealand, we are greeted instead by the face of a woman – equally tough, but also open-minded, empathetic, and transparent.  Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is a mere 38 years old. Had she sought to be head of state in America, we surely would have heard a million reasons why she is unqualified.  Too young.  Weak.  Wimpy.  Unpresidential.  Just imagine her grieving in public as she has done so often in the week after the recent massacre.  The opposition party would mock her relentlessly for being someone foreign adversaries would never fully respect or take seriously.   Instead, Americans would pine for the days of George W Bush, who after 9/11, expressed the desire to “find out who did this and kick their ass.”  Ardern isn’t talking about kicking anyone’s ass.  She’s simply mourning.  And changing laws for the better.

What is it about America and its obsession with machismo?  Is that why we love guns so much?  Is that  why we insist on permitting every Tom, Dick and Harry to own weapons that can take out scores of innocent people in a single spree?  Why can’t we appreciate the strength behind feminine figures like Jacinda Ardern?  Why can’t we appreciate that a lady who is publicly mourning is far more dignified than a cowboy bent on revenge?  

I know I sound jealous of people from places like New Zealand or Scandinavia, where the values of femininity seem to be given more respect.  The truth is, though, that I’m a loyal American, one who takes tremendous pride in so many aspects of American history and culture.  And yet I’m also not deluded.  Sometimes, you have to recognize your own flaws, or those of your country.  And when you contemplate what it means to live in a place that has never elected a woman as head of state, has become the murder capital of the developed world, inures itself to hateful rhetoric from the highest levels of Government, and is so fundamentally partisan that it has trouble coming together even on common sense legislation, you find yourself saying that Houston, we have a problem.

It understates the point to say that we haven’t been electing women as President.  Lately, we haven’t even been electing short men.  Jimmy Carter was the last President who was 5’11” or shorter.  He was elected 43 years ago, before Ronald Reagan touted the cowboy ethos and set the country on an economic path of haves and have nots.  Four years after Reagan was first elected, he ran again – and this time, for the first time in history, there was a woman on the ticket (albeit in the #2 slot).  That ticket came to be known, unaffectionately, as “Fritz and Tits.”  They won only a single state.     

In some respects, we’ve clearly made progress since 1984.  In 2016, a woman ran for President and won the popular vote.  Then again, when it came to the all-important Electoral College, she lost to a political novice who ran largely on a platform of tribalism and machismo, and who was caught on tape boasting that as a celebrity, he can grab women “by the pussy.”  In some respects, he was perceived as the lout at the end of the bar.  But his opponent was perceived as an intense, uppity woman – and in much of America, that’s the greater deal breaker. 

Today in America, we have more women in political office than ever before.  Many are in Congress.  Some are even given a chance to win the Presidency.  It’s true that none who seek the Democratic nomination is polling in the double digits (unlike two men who would become octogenarians by the end of their first term), yet I suspect that most of us believe that with the right personality, intelligence, experience, and policy chops, a woman might actually win the prize.  But I also suspect that most of us believe that the lane to victory is far, far wider for a man.  Stated differently, many a male American political candidate has been made of Teflon when it comes to surviving scandals, mistakes and limitations, whereas with a woman, it almost goes without saying that they’re made of Velcro. 

That’s the situation here.  Perhaps it is different in New Zealand.  Perhaps the experience of seeing Jacinda Ardern unify her country with sympathy, rather than hatred, may remind her fellow citizens of what a wonderful choice they have made in a Prime Minister.  Fortunately, the world is becoming a small place.  Ardern’s compassion and courage are nearly as visible here as they are there.   We might want to take note of what real leadership looks like.  Now is not the time to get jealous.  But it might be the time to emulate greatness when we see it.

The College-Admissions Fetish

For many people, the story about college admissions that came to light this week centered on a legal scandal.  The Empathic Rationalist, however, is a law-free zone, so I will have nothing to say about the scandal du jour.  What I would like to talk about instead is the rat race that gave rise to this particular scandal.  Specifically, I’d like to draw an analogy between the way our society approaches getting children into college and the world of sports. 

Imagine for a moment that a sports league declared performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) legal.  Not just some PEDs, but all PEDs.  Hell, imagine that the league encouraged PED use -- for professional athletes, for college athletes, for high school athletes, you name it.  You’d expect many people to refuse to partake in them, thinking that these drugs are dangerous to body and mind.  But those athletes presumably would have trouble competing, because if there is one thing we sports fans have learned over the years, it’s that PEDs work.  

In our hypothetical, that fact is hardly lost on the athletic community.  So one by one, in town after town, athletes would go to their local pharmacies and get themselves on the juice.  Quickly, they’d find themselves running faster, hitting harder, and remaining injury free (at least in the short run).  It wouldn’t take long before these PED users came to dominate their sport.  They’d fill the rolls of the All-Mets in high school, the All-Americans in college, and the All-Stars in the pros.   By contrast, those who were drug free would end up sitting on the bench, or if they were really talented, perhaps they’d attain the status of “role player” – you know, the utility infielder, long snapper, or winger on the fourth line of a hockey team.  But the Hall of Famers, they’d all be shooting up or drinking up ... at least until the point where their bodies fell apart or they started contemplating suicide.  You see, in this hypo, just like in the real world, PEDs will eventually destroy the ones who use them. 

Now let’s get back to the context of getting little boys and girls into college in the real world.  When I look at our society, I see that process as very similar to the hypothetical I just described.  In well-to-do towns like mine (Bethesda, MD), it may be the rule, rather than the exception, for parents to obsess about getting their children into the very “best” of colleges.  And so they essentially give their kids a childhood on steroids, one that is encouraged by the admissions departments of the colleges themselves.  Some of these kids start studying for their so-called “Aptitude” tests when they are 11 or 12, perhaps with the help of SAT tutors or prep classes.  Other kids are pushed, relentlessly, into the most advanced math classes possible by parents who are practically doing their homework with them, much like Willie Shoemaker used to whip his race horse down the home stretch.  These parents also become obsessed with finding “extra-curricular activities” at which their progeny can excel and which are valued by colleges.  So, for example, instead of encouraging little Junior to play the guitar, an instrument he might possibly enjoy playing in rock bands, on campouts, or pretty much anywhere, they buy him a bassoon in the hope that he can become one of the best damned bassoon players of his cohort and thereby fill an elite college’s need for that rarest of musical breeds, the virtuoso orchestral bassoonist.

For the PED families, this approach to starting out in life essentially means that their kids will not have a childhood.  Instead, they will become soulless rat-racers.  On paper, they’ll look pristine with their 4.0s, 1600s, and demonstrated excellence at some sport, musical instrument, or other avocational vehicle.  But when you talk to them, you’ll quickly realize that they’re neither interested nor interesting.  They’re just unappealing machines. 

And then there are the families who aren’t buying into the whole rat race and who, for one reason or another, are allowing their children to grow up ... as children.   You know, normal kids.  The ones who often have time on their hands to day dream, play computer games, run around the backyard with other “underachieving” friends, etc.   These days, such kids might find themselves at college too.   But it won’t be the “top” colleges.  And they won’t come to see themselves as “top” students.  They’ll be the butt of the joke when they go on the road trip to watch their college team play at one of the PED colleges, whose crowd chants “That’s alright, that’s OK, you’re gonna pump our gas someday.” 

This approach to childhood is insane.  It isn’t fair to the kids who tried to enjoy their childhood, only to find themselves being pushed aside as mediocrities.  And it isn’t fair to the PED abusers who gain admittance to Harvard, Yale or Princeton, only to later realize that they’ve lost their humanity in the process.  Is there any question that this epitomizes a negative sum game?  But what in God’s name do we do about it?  How do we stop the rats from running around in their mazes for one generation after another with no end in sight?

To me, the most obvious suggestion is to get rid of the standardized tests – those phony symbols of meritocracy that eat up so much of our children’s psyches.  Instead, I would suggest that the college emphasize the interview process and hire interviewers who can spot genuine warmth, curiosity and courage.  Secondly, colleges admissions departments need to stop rewarding over-programmed kids, who clearly are so busy building their resumes that they haven’t had the time to build their souls.  Thirdly, colleges need to stop providing information about their schools to those organizations who attempt to rank colleges, like that God-forsaken U.S. News and World Report.   If not for those rankings, the elitism that has fueled all this insanity wouldn’t be nearly as intense.  But perhaps the most important thing is for all of us – from college admissions departments, to high school administrators, to parents, to students – to encourage kids to be just that: kids.   

The truth is that you can lead a remarkably productive life with an education from a non-elite state college and a tragically unproductive life with an education from an Ivy League school.  Given that fact, it makes no sense for us to destroy what ought to be some of the best years of our lives worrying about whether we’re heading to one college as opposed to another.  And it’s clearly not fair to those who lack either the opportunity or the inclination to jump into this rat race to make them feel like mediocrities or losers in the so-called “meritocratic” society we claim to be creating.  Anyone who thinks that merit can truly be measured by an SAT score or a child’s willingness to devote at least hours a day to practicing a musical instrument is definitely on drugs.  And they’re not wisdom-enhancing drugs, I can tell you that.

Folks, this shouldn’t be difficult.  The fixes to this mess are right in front of our eyes.  All we have to do is wake up, smell the roses, and let our kids do the same.