EDUCATION, DOG EAT DOG AND TORTURE

Like most kids, but maybe more so as macho Chicanos, teachers and school administrators had to spend quite a bit of time on us teaching us the benefits of non-violence and problem resolution of whatever differences may arise, through discussion.  Later we learned how America was the beacon of the World because of the human rights record that it holds, not only for its own citizens, but for everybody coming within the jurisdiction of U.S. laws, even prisoners of war.  Years were dedicated by the school system teaching us extra-curricular things like helping to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves, renouncing violence and maintaining the high moral standards that the U.S. has always imposed on itself.  Watching the Republican debates, it appears all of that was for nothing, as each candidate espouses torturing our prisoners of war, even though their last Presidential nominee and former prisoner of war in Vietnam, John McCain, and most high-level military commanders, agree that torture hardly ever bears credible leads.  Each candidate also says they would end Government help to students whose families cannot afford college and to also end Obama’s health-care law, which would allow only rich kids to attend college and also put 30 million people, many of them children, back to having no health insurance again.  All of them trumpet war against Iran as well.  No wonder the Department of Education is also being targeted for elimination by them, the extra-curricular thinking the schools helped us with does not match the GOP’s current “nuke my pod” mentality.

Chicano Channel Magazine