CITIZENSHIP IS SATISFACTORY

We all know sometimes life’s hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your lifetimes that and twice it's double
That god knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed
So make sure when you say you're in it, but not of it
You're not helpin' to make this earth
A place sometimes called hell
Change your words into truths
And then change that truth into love
And maybe our children's grandchildren
And their great grandchildren will tell
I'll be loving you
—Stevie Wonder “As” 1976

Just read that one more time:

“CITIZENSHIP IS SATISFACTORY”

In all capital letters.

Citizenship in America isn’t satisfactory any more. In fact, it’s so bad we can’t even define what it is.

And, what’s worse, you think I’m talking about immigrants.

Spoiler alert . . . being a truly good citizen in America today is not what it used to be.

Like millions of other kids before me and since, CITIZENSHIP IS SATISFACTORY was one of the teacher options on my report cards for dozens of my teachers over the six years I went to school in the Hanford Joint Union High School District which also included the Junior High School called Woodrow Wilson.

One way of looking at the phrase CITIZENSHIP IS SATISFACTORY would be that all students would get this choice UNLESS they had some problem with their citizenship in which case students would not be given that comment code.

Considering the fact that no teacher ever gave me a CITIZENSHIP IS SATISFACTORY code, my guess is that this code was given only to someone who had been told in some other way that their citizenship needed improving and then got CITIZENSHIP IS SATISFACTORY on their report card when they actually improved their citizenship.

Also, I do not specifically remember learning about citizenship as much as I do remember learning about penmanship.

Here’s a look at how that grading process actually worked for me with other grading “issues.” For example in April of my junior year of high school I received a C grade from Mr. Penn in College English. He also added a comment number 7 which corresponds to STUDY HABITS NEED IMPROVING. In June I received an A grade with no additional comments.

Got the message.

In November of my Freshman year Mr. Swassing gave me a B grade and the numbers 3 and 7 in the comment field. Number 3 corresponds to STUDENT IS ACHIEVING BELOW APPARENT ABILITY, while number 7 again is STUDY HABITS NEED IMPROVING. In January I received an A grade with no additional comments.

Got the message.

Mr. Swassing did this for me one more time in that same school year when I received a 2 and a 3 comment along with an A grade in April. The 2 comment was STUDENT IS IMPROVING IN THIS COURSE which I apparently did while achieving below my ability. In June I received an A grade with a 0 and a 4 comment.

All of these comment codes meant that, for the school year, I went from under achieving but improving, to excellent, despite poor attendance.

Got the message.

But today I’m wondering about that CITIZENSHIP IS SATISFACTORY comment a lot more than I used to.

What I witness in politics today is truly a lack of citizenship in our leaders, especially from people who want to deport others because of their alleged lack of citizenship. It’s all upside down.

How is it that we can allow people with such bad citizenship skills and behaviors, to control who can and cannot gain American citizenship?

When I was in high school I participated in what was called the National Foresnic League. Participation included attending speech competitions where we were given a topic and a hour to research and prepare a speech. In one competition I was given the topic: “Leadership”

In the middle of the three and a half page hand written speech I declare:

Whether it be more activities, better involvement in the community, unification of campuses, or keep your school clean, the leader needs to find something so worthwhile that he could have an obsession for it.

In conclusion I ask my audience the question of what is a leader? And answer my own question with:

He (the leader) will always ask questions. He will search, try, work, care and pray. He possesses the courage and wisdom to strive to achieve his goals. He knows just exactly what and how much power he has and how to use it, but not mis-use it.

But most of all, a great leader is a great follower.

At about that time, Ronald Reagan became president and things changed in America for citizens.

I was in college when America’s leadership decided it was time for a draft registration and possibly even an actual draft.

I was forced to be one of the first group of young men to register for a potential draft to go to war in Central America. As a good citizen I protested war and the draft but on the assigned date, as I was traveling past the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, I went into the post office and completed my draft registration card and slid it into the mailbox.

From there I drove back to California and back to school. There was that whole Iran/Contra affair which impacted us all and the draft was not used during my time on the eligibility list. But it was there, and when I was teaching young people I had to teach about the draft and war.

To me these were real issues that America hasn’t truly dealt with in our understanding and reckoning with history.

Now, technology allows us to write different stories in history and whitewash what is considered inconsistent or unsightly for some Americans. In their minds, all we have to do is put something shiny in front of people on television.

By 1992, conservative Americans were using their words and media appearances to publicly target Liberal Democratic ideas and public issues like civil rights and global warming.

The ultimate triumph of “virtual reality” is that people who challenge it are attacked for their motives, rather than having their challenge examined for its evidence. When this happens, the world of illusion has successfully sealed itself off completely from the world of facts.

We have already reached that stage on a wide range of issues, from race to sex to “global warming.” For much of the media, and for those who believe them, the only world on which they base their conclusions is the world of “virtual reality.”

—Thomas Sowell, Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, San Francisco Examiner, Monday, June l5, 1992

Oh, how times have changed here in America. At least I can see where current American leadership got the idea that all they have to do is say the other side is wrong and their followers will believe them.

Today, if you are scrolling through your social media, one might believe that all America’s problems of racial bias, sexual preference and gender transitions, as well as anything that might have been so-called “causing global warming,” have all been fixed and are no longer an issue for citizens to worry about much less discuss as a whole society.

The president, and his MAGite movement of soldiers, have declared all these issues and all those terrible problems we’ve been having with migrants are being fixed or removed.

They also revealed that people who don’t take vaccines were right about something all along.

Did I mention they still believe that people are eating the cats and dogs?

We heard it all on television. Then we see it repeated online with social media.

But I digress, this article is about good citizenship in America.

We’ve been practicing for this moment for a long time now and there are many examples in our world of communications media that showed us what the future might bring.

The 1971 movie Willy Wonka gave us that glimpse with a scene that most people like to call Mike TV.

In the scene, a little boy named Mike asks Willy Wonka to shrink him into the Television on the other side of the laboratory. It works, but he’s not truly the virtual person we might be expecting today. Instead he’s merely the precursor to “Honey, I shrunk the kids.”

In 1985, things on TV started looking more like the digital world we live in today.

During a tense boardroom scene in the Cinemax pilot for a show called Max Headroom, Network XXIII head of Research and Development, Bryce describes how he could replicate their top reporter, Edison Carter, using his computer and Carter’s brain.

Bryce explains:

“The brain is only a binary computer. A series of on off switches. That’s the basis of my computer generated people program. I can record Edison Carter’s memory into the computer then regenerate him on screen.”

This is essentially the goal of what people today call “Artificial Intelligence,” and what I call fake information. You can find it everywhere now even, on your friend’s Instagram posts.

One of the key questions facing America and the world today is how to proceed with the new computer systems being developed that can replace much more than just Edison Carter in Max Headroom.

They can replace Anderson Cooper and CNN.

How we answer questions about developing communication and information technology matters. If we look back to the early days of mass computer information processing we find scholars who saw the dangers ahead based on what they learned while watching how it was used and how the technology increased in ability and power to influence human understanding of ideas.