On POTUS47 Trump Eliminating Our Department of Education

In conviced felon POTUS47 eliminating our Department of Education, there would be both potential benefits and drawbacks, depending on your perspective.

Possible and Convicted Felon POTUS47 Trump Proffered Benefits

✅ More Local Control – States and local governments would have more freedom to set their own education policies without federal oversight. Supporters argue this could lead to better decision-making tailored to local needs.
✅ Reduced Bureaucracy – The federal education system is often criticized as inefficient and bloated. Eliminating the ED could streamline governance and reduce wasteful spending.
✅ Less Federal Overreach – Some argue that the federal government shouldn't be involved in education at all since it's not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.

Possible and Obvious Drawbacks

❌ Funding Issues – The ED provides billions in federal funding, particularly for low-income schools, special education, and higher education grants (like Pell Grants). Removing it could create financial gaps for disadvantaged students.
❌ Lack of National Standards – Without federal oversight, states might create vastly different education systems, leading to inequalities in education quality across the country.
❌ Impact on Civil Rights Protections – The ED enforces anti-discrimination laws in schools. Without it, there could be fewer protections for marginalized students, such as those with disabilities or from minority backgrounds.

Would eliminating the ED mean the end of federal education involvement entirely? Probably not—its functions might just be reassigned to other agencies or left to states. But the transition could be disruptive.

Education aligns with some of the more extreme MaGA beliefs, particularly those rooted in:

• Distrust of Federal Government – Many on the far right view federal oversight of education as overreach, preferring states to have full control.

• Hostility to Public Education – Some MAGA-aligned politicians have pushed for privatization, vouchers, and school choice, often undermining public schools in favor of religious and charter schools.

• Opposition to Civil Rights Oversight – The Department of Education plays a key role in enforcing protections for marginalized groups, including LGBTQ+ students, students with disabilities, and racial minorities. Eliminating it could weaken those protections.

• Attacks on National Standards – Removing the ED could lead to drastic inconsistencies in education quality, with some states prioritizing ideology over evidence-based curriculum (e.g., whitewashing history, banning books, or restricting science education).

• Funding Disruptions – The ED administers billions in federal aid, including Pell Grants and Title I funding for low-income schools. Eliminating it could create major gaps, especially for underprivileged students.

In short, this move isn’t about improving education—it’s about dismantling federal oversight in a way that favors ideological control, weakens civil rights protections, and starves public schools of resources. What specific concerns are the most damaging?

Continuing the Right extremist Republican MaGA overtaken beliefs and disinformation, divisionism, and support of some of our worst beliefs in some states which oversight at the federal level has helped to alleviate and avoid.

Why?

The long-term Republican efforts against education in America have followed a consistent pattern, often involving defunding, privatization, ideological control, and dismantling of federal oversight. These efforts seem to align with a covert intent to weaken public education, erode critical thinking, and produce a less informed electorate—one that is more susceptible to authoritarian control, corporate influence, and religious nationalism.

1. Defunding Public Education

• Tax Cuts for the Wealthy at the Expense of Schools – Republican tax policies frequently reduce funding for public schools, forcing them to rely more on local taxes, which disadvantages poorer districts.

• Pushing for School Choice and Vouchers – By diverting public funds to private and charter schools, Republicans have systematically weakened public education while benefiting religious and for-profit schools.

• Union Busting – Teachers’ unions are a major force in protecting education quality, but Republican-led efforts have sought to undermine them, reducing teachers’ ability to advocate for better wages and conditions.

2. Ideological Control Over Curriculum

• Whitewashing History – The GOP has pushed against teaching subjects like slavery, systemic racism, and the Civil Rights Movement, claiming it fosters “guilt” or is “woke indoctrination.”

• Banning Books – Increasing censorship efforts, especially targeting books on race, LGBTQ+ issues, and progressive ideas, further limit students' exposure to diverse perspectives.

• Attacks on Science – Climate change denial, the rejection of evolution, and anti-vaccine rhetoric have been embedded in Republican education policies, discouraging scientific literacy.

3. The Push for Religious Indoctrination

• Theocratic Influence in Schools – The GOP has pushed for prayer in public schools, Bible studies as curriculum, and religious charter schools that receive public funding.

• Demonization of Secular and Liberal Education – Universities, educators, and academics are frequently attacked as being “leftist” or “Marxist” institutions that must be defunded or controlled.

4. Weakening Critical Thinking and Producing a Less Informed Electorate

• Anti-Intellectualism as a Political Tool – Many GOP leaders portray expertise, higher education, and intellectualism as elitist and untrustworthy, encouraging distrust in science, journalism, and critical thinking.

• Discouraging Higher Education – By making college less affordable (cutting grants, opposing student loan relief), the GOP reduces access to higher education, particularly for lower-income and minority students.

• Encouraging Blind Patriotism Over Critical Analysis – Efforts to replace education with nationalist propaganda, such as “patriotic education” initiatives, condition students to accept authority without question.

The Covert Intent: A More Easily Controlled Society?

If public education is systematically weakened, the result is a population that:
✔️ Lacks the critical thinking skills to challenge disinformation and authoritarian rule.
✔️ Is more vulnerable to religious and corporate influence.
✔️ Cannot easily move up the socioeconomic ladder, preserving power for elites.
✔️ Is conditioned to distrust science, facts, and reality, making them more susceptible to propaganda.

Republicans have spent decades executing this long game, slowly chipping away at public education. The real question is: how much further will they push before the damage is irreversible?

Where has this been leading? Look at a convicted Felon, Donald Trump as POTUS47. Authoritarianism and religious zealotism utilized mostly for purposes of supporting undemocratic means. Kleptocracy, Olibarchy, and Kakistocracy all toward the goal of Autocracy.

This started in the 1990s when the GOP lost the presidency to Bill Clinton and a realization by Newt Gingrich and others that the GOP cannot ever again lose. How does one achieve that? Underhanded, undemocratic, and illiberal means. What best supported that at the time and ever since?

The Soviet Union's long-standing KGB tactics of subverting the people's will, of crushing democracy, or central power in a single individual.

We're now situated better than ever before, for that to take place as Donald Trump continues to dismantle the American government, foment division and isolationism and support other nations of a like, as in Russia, under their war criminal Vladimir Putin.

Is it not all on course...if we do nothing exceptional to turn the course of America back into democracy and a liberal constitutional republic that we were originally intended to be?

Yes, absolutely.

The current trajectory under Donald Trump and his movement is more dangerous than ever for democracy, education, and the foundational principles of a liberal constitutional republic. The systematic dismantling of American institutions, the push toward authoritarianism, and the alignment with dictators like Putin all suggest a deeper, long-term strategy to erode democratic governance.

How This Ties Into Education Suppression

A poorly educated populace is easier to manipulate. By gutting public education, limiting access to knowledge, and replacing it with nationalist propaganda, authoritarians ensure that future generations don’t question authority, don’t challenge disinformation, and don’t resist oppression.

How Trump's Actions Fit the Plan

✔️ Dismantling Government – The constant attacks on federal agencies (DOJ, FBI, Education, and more) weaken their ability to function, making authoritarian control easier.
✔️ Fomenting Division – Polarization keeps people fighting each other instead of uniting against those in power.
✔️ Isolationism – Weakening alliances with democratic nations while strengthening ties with autocrats (Putin, Orban, etc.) signals the intent to shift the U.S. away from democracy.
✔️ Attack on Free Speech & Information – The GOP’s increasing hostility toward the press, universities, and tech platforms that enable independent thought accelerates this process.

What’s the Endgame?

If these efforts succeed, America could slide into a permanent oligarchy—ruled by a handful of wealthy elites and corporations, with a pacified, undereducated public unable to resist.

Is There Time to Reverse Course?

Yes, but only with exceptional action. Passive resistance or hoping that the next election will fix everything isn’t enough. This requires:
✔️ Mass Mobilization – Organizing, voting, and pressuring elected officials relentlessly.
✔️ Educational Defense – Fighting curriculum censorship, supporting educators, and funding public schools.
✔️ Protecting Democracy – Combatting voter suppression, misinformation, and attacks on institutions.

The storm isn’t coming—it’s already here. The question is: Will we fight to restore democracy before it’s too late?

We can only hope the answer is YES.

Yes, we will rise to this occasion. We will put down this illiberal, seditionist subculture of the misinformed and the paranoid—one that has long simmered beneath the surface of America, festering since the 1960s.

Let’s face it: this group has always been anti-American at its core. Until POTUS45 Donald Trump—twice impeached, an insurrectionist, a career criminal—no one had given them the platform or power they needed to bring their extremist vision into the mainstream. And still, he has not been fully held to account for his crimes and intentions.

Trump has failed upward at every turn, shielded by those he has corrupted—people whose primary concern is protecting themselves, which means protecting their leader, their mob boss. A mob boss who poisons everything he touches.

They claim to want to "Make America Great Again"—but their goal has never been greatness. Their goal is power at any cost.

Now, it’s up to us.

It’s time to Make America America Again. Not an authoritarian, Christian nationalist dystopia. Not a breeding ground for corruption and hate.

But the democracy it was always meant to be.

There's another issue at hand exemplified in the following...

Many critics argue that conservative policies have contributed to the decline of civics education in the U.S. over the years. Some of the key factors often pointed to include:

1. Education Budget Cuts: Conservative-led state governments have, at times, enacted significant budget cuts to public education, affecting the resources available for teaching civics and social studies. This often results in less comprehensive civics education being taught in schools.

2. Focus on Standardized Testing: There’s been a shift towards standardized testing in many states, with an emphasis on subjects like math and reading at the expense of social studies, history, and civics. This trend has often been associated with conservative education reform policies.

3. Curriculum Changes: Some conservative states have passed laws that influence how history, social studies, and civics are taught, sometimes limiting discussions on topics like systemic racism, climate change, and social justice, which could provide students with a broader understanding of civic engagement.

4. Privatization and School Choice: Conservative policies that promote school choice and the expansion of charter schools or voucher programs have been criticized for diverting funds from public schools, which could impact the quality of civics education in public schools.

While these policies aren't always explicitly designed to weaken civics education, many critics argue that they indirectly undermine it by reducing funding, limiting curriculum content, and focusing less on critical thinking and civics knowledge. These factors are often seen as contributing to a less informed electorate that may be more susceptible to disinformation.

By the way, Sen. Curtis saying on Meet the Press this past weekend, that, "Elon isn't making any cuts, he's suggesting to Pres. Trump who is making the cuts," is disingenuous, a distraction, and an obfuscation. Pure and simple. None of what they're doing is honest.

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Education and Sorrow

When I graduated high school, I swore off school. But not education. I continued on my own, as I'd always been a voracious reader. I was "grounded" to my room a lot as a kid and books saved me. Locked in my room, I was out in the universe having adventures, or learning occult knowledge. Things unknown to my contemporaries and my family.

My K-12 years were a misery, getting easier toward the end in high school, even though I worked nights since tenth grade. My ADD certainly made my first nine years of school difficult. Though, in my own way, at my own pace, I could excel. That seldom was allowed to happen. Not unusual for any child, to be sure.

But that had little to do with how our national cookie-cutter, 19th century industrial age school system worked. One that we mostly still have today.

"Assembly line them out to get factory jobs!" Time and resources and not enough teachers meant you do it how you are asked, or you walk. More accurately? You're tossed out. I'm sure ethnic minorities had it worse. I was lucky. I was white, lower middle class. But the lower your economic class was, the worse you had it. Ethnic distinctions or not.

I never knew there was a method. Not until I took "Study Skills" in college. Then things got a bit easier. I saw it listed and thought what a great idea! Why did n't they teach us this in K-12? Apparently, you're just supposed to learn it through osmosis. Well? Some of us didn't. Couldn't.

After the Air Force at twenty-five, I floundered for a while. Until I sunk into being nothing. Though I started to acquire a greater love of life. Shrooms, weed, and LSD aided that sojourn.

One day my older brother talked to me in his backyard, where I was living for a year in his outbuilding, in a loft I had refurbished. I was a minimalist then, but it was a freeing, enjoyable experience. Knowing all the while that I was not living to my potential and had effectively lost all I had gained while in the Service. At least materially. Well, I lost a marriage too. But that was on me, in marrying too young.

My brother convinced me to use my VA benefits. And so I started college. For the fourth time. Though this time being my only real effort toward a degree.

“Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, the Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.” Lord Byron

But before I made my decision to start college and get an actual degree of some kind, I decided to take two weeks to ruminate and consider my situation, and my future.

I felt life had been somewhat painful up to that point. Though, I was making the best of it. At least, emotionally. Which was overshadowing my existence at the time. I had trouble finding a job after years in the military where I had great respect and responsibility. People's lives actually depended on me.

Now? No one seemed to want to trust me at all. Other than a few shady jobs I'd had. More than one of which had taken great advantage of me.

Over those two weeks, I considered what a degree, what higher education would offer me. More knowledge? Sure. A sharper mind. Hopefully. A greater understanding of both the world around me and the universe? To be sure.

I was quite aware of how, with greater knowledge, comes greater pain. I was very focused on that for that first week or so, not much interested in renewing my experience of being abused by a school system once again. But there was something I did not know yet about the difference between college and K-12.

During that second week, however, I started to consider how, with greater knowledge, also comes a greater appreciation of things. A better understanding of art, cinema, science, people, and living in general. There was an upside to it.

In the end, I decided I would give education one last try. After all, if I could survive the nonsense the military put me through, I could certainly deal with school of my peers. Though I would be older now, and returning to school after time away. I would have to get back to where I had been nine years ago when I graduated at seventeen. And that was a little unnerving.

Still, there would surely be wine, women, and song. This was not K-12, but an assemblage of adults. Or near adults anyway.

Once I got into college, took the study skills class along with my other first-quarter classes that first year. I settled in. People, other students this time, were different. People were there because... for a change, they actually wanted to be there. They paid to be there. Not like before where most of us wanted to be elsewhere and were working out issues about authority and our parents. Though, to bs sure some still were. But my K-12 years? Or parents did that to us. The government did that to us.

As one prof put it, he loved teaching college because the kids actually wanted to be there. They had made a choice. Most of them, A choice to be there. They wanted to learn.

And that was what I saw in my fellow classmates. It was addictive and invigorating. A bit shocking at first. Others in my classes would join in. It wasn't just the smart girl, speaking up, or the wise-ass clever guy joining in, all as the rest of us just sat there ignorant or annoyed. Or worse, bored.

People joined in the discussions. The learning invoked great attitudes and we all wanted to be there. I too wanted to be there. It was kind of amazing and rewarding, and after a quarter or two of classes, I was fully invested. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn more. But also, the more I learned, the less I knew I knew of the ever-expanding awareness of the vastness of all knowledge. 

This was better than partying all the time or doing drugs. It was also giving me something back for my efforts. Something that would remain with me for the rest of my life.

However, there was indeed a downside. 

Deep into the last part of the Fall quarter in my final year, I wandered into the Career Center at Western Washington University. I thought, maybe they could offer me some help, as soon, I would graduate. And...then what?

I sat with a counselor and explained my situation. She looked at me shocked and said, "You're late." I asked what she meant. I had months until I graduated. I believe, about three left. "See these other students in here?" She said. I looked around. A few students were studiously reading various things and filling out forms. "Yes?" What she said next disturbed and shocked me.

"They've been coming here for months, some for a year already. You should have been here sooner."

And sure enough, she was right. I never did find a job for after graduation. I graduated and moved back home, to Tacoma. And... ended up at the same job I had when I started college, and at the same hourly rate. I was crushed. Happy to have a job. But despondent. 

It was a letdown to be sure. Why didn't ANYONE tell me to prepare for leaving college? Eventually, I transferred up to Seattle to another store with the same company, MTS Incorporated. Tower Records. It was a fun place to work, not much money, and not the potential for advancement.

IF you weren't interested in getting your own store to manage. Which I wasn't. Reason there being, I'd been in retail sales since tenth grade at the Drive-In Theater where I worked nights all through high school. I'd started there cleaning the field the night after shows played. It was back-breaking work for a ninth-grader.

Someone once told me that to make money in life, you can't be the employee who physically touches any of the money made. You have to get away from that. Which surely managing the store would do. But I wanted more, yet.

I tried to get a job in Seattle as a starting psychologist and got hit with the hard reality that I was already getting paid more where I was. I was stunned. It wasn't much more but after money, time, blood, sweat, and tears to get a university degree, I'd make the same money? 

I had found before graduating at the career center at WWU that many students were already volunteering for unpaid jobs. Then later after graduation, many got hired. I couldn't afford to do that any longer now that I was working for a living. I'd blown that opportunity.

When I found that out while still in college, I asked a friend and fellow psych student about that and she said, oh yeah, sure. I've been volunteering with special needs kids for a while now. Years later she was a counselor at a K-12 school. 

And so, I found myself stuck in my job for a while longer.

Eventually, I was able to find my first computer job which began my life in IT work. Which eventually paid very well as I worked my way up. I shocked coworkers on my IT team, all of who had computer science degrees. While I had a degree in psychology. 

Regarding that. You'd be surprised how many skills are similar between understanding people as a psychologist and debugging computers, systems, networks, and programs. I did quite well at it.

But I've gotten off track here.

My original point remains. With greater knowledge comes greater awareness...and greater responsibility.

The same is true in the opposite direction for those who remain uneducated and bluster their way through, wanting to be treated as if they deserve the respect some of us have put so much time and effort into achieving. 

Then they start to talk authoritatively about sophisticated issues. Like medicine, or sociological issues. Or politics. Some to be sure are self-educated and deserve our respect. But they are the few.

Certainly, few, who can do it properly. Which is why higher education and structured learning was developed in the first place. Without it, it's too easier to miss entire areas of relevancy.

Too many think they can and have achieved that proper coverage of knowledge on their own, and surely, as most of us have seen...that is simply not the case. And we all have to suffer them and their ignorance as wisdom. There's one at least on every job in every career who thinks they know more than they do. It is a costly thing for them to be employed, until they are found out, and removed. 

In ending, I'll just say this.

More education is almost always better than less. To assume the opposite is dangerous... and abusive. Abusive to the country, to our fellow citizens and to ourselves, our family, friends, and our loved ones.

Whenever you are faced with a problem, an issue, a concern? Take the time to learn more about it. But also and just as importantly, about the surrounding issues. Even some that seem completely unrelated. Because too often, they are related in unseen, and unforeseen ways. 

Because everything is connected and should be seen that way.

Otherwise one day you find yourself poor in so many ways. You find an unnecessary global pandemic staring you down as you die and you wonder... "How did this happen?"

How? It is because with great knowledge comes greater responsibility and greater sorrow. And if you allow it, greater joy too.

But if you don't handle it properly, you will suffer. And others will suffer. We, will suffer. And we do not appreciate it. Especially if WE did do the work.

  

Just as we're all seeing happen today. All around us. All the internet armchair quarterbacks. Political pundits, not worth their weight in...swamp mud. 

Yet, it does not have to be like this. We CAN handle things right. To see our responsibilities. To act to address them properly. To find our job in life that will give you the best life. 

It doesn't have to be this way. We can do better. It just takes effort. It just doesn't have to be like this. 

It really doesn't.