Love and Kindness

This past weekend, my son got married. I took a personal day Friday to help decorate for the reception and the rehearsal dinner. Our wild and crazy bachelor party involved bowling (which we did not very well). Then on Saturday, my son and daughter-in-law were married on the stage of the same community theater in which they met almost a decade ago. Family members who couldn't be there because of health or distance issues watched via facebook live. Then there was food and dancing in the Elks club ballroom.

It was a good wedding, and like the best weddings brought together a wide assortment of people from the couple's life plus aunts, uncles, siblings, nieces, nephews, etc etc etc. There were plenty of people there, and it was good to see everyone.

For those of us who are divorced and remarried, even the most joyful and trouble-free weddings come with a side order of Thoughtful Reflection. For the last couple of years I have periodically posted references to a study on what makes relationships last, and lo and behold, this morning there was another article about the study from two years ago, right there on my facebook feed (h/t Anthony Cody).

Emily Esfahani Smith covered the study for the Atlantic, and the subheading pretty much summarizes the findings -- "Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity."

Smith takes us back to the work of John Gottman of the Gottman Institute, an outfit set up to help couples "build and maintain loving, healthy relationships based on scientific studies." So what does some of that science say?

In 1986 Gottman and Robert Levenson (University of Washington) set up "The Love Lab," which was apparently way less sexy than it sounds. One of their big studies involved electrodes and measuring physiological responses. They sorted the couples into "masters" and "disasters" and looked for differences. With disasters, they found that physiological responses, even in simple seemingly harmless conversations, were heightened flight-or-fight mode. Even when discussing simple topics, "having a conversation sitting next to their spouse was, to their bodies, like facing off with a saber-toothed tiger." Masters, on the other hand, stayed calm, as if they felt safe and comfortable.

The masters maintained long, healthy relationships; the disasters' relationships were messy, difficult, unhappy, and often fully broken.

Now, this is worth keeping in mind when it comes to your marriage or primary relationship, but let's think about it in terms of another relationship-- that between teacher and student. Does it not make sense that when a student doesn't feel safe, when even the simplest interaction triggers a physiological flight-or-fight reflex, that student's connection to the teacher and therefor to the material, the school, the classroom, the whole educational experience-- all of those lines are going to be at best intermittently shaky and at worse just plain busted and down.

If a student feels unsafe in the classroom, the relationship with the teacher is broken and everything suffers.

Gottman went on to examine how that safety could be established or broken. What he found was subtle and simple and profound all at once. Gottman saw that couples in the course of a normal day made "bids" each other's attention and connection, at which point their partner could either turn toward them or turn away. Those who turned away became the disasters.

How good is Gottman's science? He can predict with about 94% accuracy what the future holds for a couple, regardless of factors like wealth, children and even sexual orientation.

The number one destructive factor? Contempt. The cold shoulder. The number one relationship healer and strengthener? Kindness.

Again, the implications beyond the realm of marriage seem obvious to me. Students who feel dismissed or ignored will be beaten down. Those who experience kindness and generosity of spirit-- their relationship with school will thrive, and so will they. This also seems like a model for understanding classroom dynamics; as a first grade teacher, my wife must have handled roughly six million "bids" a day from her students, while my high school juniors make fewer, and they're far more subtle.

The older I get, the more certain I am that kindness is hugely important (though I don't think kindness always looks like a warm, fuzzy Care Bear). There is science on my side; mean people really do suck, and they really do have a hard time building good relationships. We seem to have entered a pronounced mean streak as a country; the challenge will be to remember that unkind, ungenerous meanness is not beaten by more of the same.

Here's the rest of my weekend story. Sunday they headed off to her parents' to swap out some wedding paraphernalia, but instead they put their car in a ditch. So instead of heading home to spend a few days off basking in newlyweddedness, they've been staying at my house with nothing much to do but wait on repairs, play with their dog, hang around each other, play games. It has been my privilege to be the father in the house who gets to watch them be their newlyweddy selves. Yeah, they're in love, but being young and in love is easy. What's more heartwarming is to see how kind and generous and thoughtful they are too each other. Kindness really is the nutrient that makes everything else grow strong.

An A-Plus Method of Liberating Money

The Very Conservative Heritage Foundation has posted on Facebook a video with their six suggestions for the first 100 days of Betsy DeVos's attempt to drive the Department of Education into the privatization ditch (they might have phrased it a little differently).

1. Support states as they work to exit Common Core.
2. Call on Congress to pass the A-Plus Act returning power to the states.
3. Reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship
4. Cancel the Department of Education guidance on transgender bathrooms.
5. Rescind the Obama Administration’s heavy-handed education regulations.
6. Create Education Savings Accounts for children at Bureau of Indian Education schools.

Some of these are old familiar friends, like getting rid of Common Core (or at least that name for one-size-fits-all bone-headed unproven amateur-created standards), policing student peeing, or maintaining the DC school choice program. There's even the slightly creative idea of using Native American students as lab rats for one more foot-in-the-door voucher program.

But #2 may seem unfamiliar, or like a ghost from the past. It may seem an especially odd thing for anyone to suggest DeVos get behind, because for most of its long, sad life, the A-Plus Act has been pitched as an alternative to No Child Left Behind (in fact, it stands for Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success Act, not to be confused with other A-Plus acts, because naming legislation is hard). But there are reasons it remains appealing to folks like the Heritage crowd.

That lamprey is mighty uncomfortable

It has been a Heritage Foundation favorite, and they have an expansive history of the act and how it fits in the long storied history of federal government Power Grabbing. The big selling point of the A-Plus Act was the freedom to opt out of No Child Left Behind (at the time, nobody realized that the term "opt out" would be policy garlic to some undead policies). But while "opt out of NCLB" was on the marquee, inside the lobby, more wonky and powerful features were being pitched.

A-Plus was supposed to make decision-making more local, by letting state government decide how to use federal funds and which programs to continue and which to ax. Basically, the act was meant to turn all federal ed support funds into a big stringless bale of money that states could dispose of in whatever manner suited them. This was a gift of money so loose, opaque, and accountability-free that even some reformsters thought it was a bridge too far. Fans pushed back, but the act still languished.

Still, the act shambles on. It was pitched in 2007 at the very moment that Congress was beginning the long re-authorization slog. Then again in 2011. And last year some Congressmen were still trying to attach A-Plus to the ESSA, like a lamprey latched onto the butt of a giant elephant seal.

The purpose of the A-Plus Act has always been pretty clear. It is hard to hoover up all those federal public tax dollars for education when they come attached with all these rules and regulations like "you have to spend this money on helping poor kids read" or "you have to show that you spent that money on actual education stuff." This goes well beyond even the accountability mavens of ed reform-- when your big criticism of public ed is that it's neither transparent nor accountable enough, a program that says "Just throw money at the states and trust that it will land somewhere useful" can't seem like much of an improvement.

The Heritage Foundation smells opportunity. They were excited about welcoming DeVos to USED, and they released a similar action list for her (so she could become a "transformative leader") a few weeks ago. That time they skipped A-Plus and instead proposed the old backpacks full of cash that follow the kids around.

The principle remains the same. Banks are really infringing on our freedom by putting their money in vaults and guarding it; to really let freedom ring, the money should just be set out on the sidewalk. Restaurants limit our freedom by not letting us walk into the kitchen and take whatever food we're hungry for. And governments hogtie our freedom by insisting on all sorts of rules and regulations and proof that the money taxpayers handed over is being used for the purpose for which it was taken. Now is the time to bring back true freedom, because after all, America is only great when a man can reach out and grab whatever he wants without anyone telling him no. That kind of country is not just great-- it is A-Plus!!

DeVos Speaks (Sort of)

Poor Betsy DeVos. She has recently spent time on the Donald Trump "Thank You These rallies Are The Only Part I Liked About Running for President" Tour, complaining that the media is spreading "false news" about her. I suppose that she could address that by actually, you know, speaking to the press directly, but apparently she is spending time prepping for her confirmation hearing. Her appearances at Herr Trump's rallies haven't been covered in great detail, but thanks to the faux journalist power I call "Making It Up," I'm prepared to present the full text of one of her most recent tour speeches.

Thank you! Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to see all my friends and neighbors out to greet me here in my hometown of Grand Rapids. Just keep right on applauding. Remember, my family and I can ruin you at any moment. That's it! Cheer, fellow citizens and peasants!!

 There has been a lot of speculation about what kind of Education Secretary I will be. Let me clear that up. I will be a great one!

For one thing, we will be bringing the benefits of school choice. I think all Americans agree that it's important that all businesses, no matter what their zip codes, have an opportunity to get their hands on a piece of the giant mountain of money that funds education in this country. Choice will let us do that. Cheer!!

But we want to do better than that. Everyone should have a chance to grab some of those public tax dollars, including all of the private schools which already exist. Vouchers should be an important part of an education money payout plan because every private school, whether its Baptist or Methodist or Bible Church or Church of God or even Catholic, should have a chance to get a fresh infusion of tax dollars.

Some people have complained that the kind of charter and choice system that I support would lead to a two-tier system of schools, with one well-funded school system for the students from the upper class. To them I can only say one thing-- of course.

You have to understand-- when the founding fathers said that all men were created equal, they didn't mean that all men are actually equal. The Puritans understood that some people are favored by God and therefor blessed with greater prosperity than others. These Chosen are more favored, more suited to take dominion over the rest of creation, more deserving of honor. They're just better.

Are some people better than others just because they're rich? No, that would be ridiculous. They're rich because they're better. People criticize me because every cent I have either was passed to me either by my parents or my husband, but those people are missing the point. God made me rich because I deserve it.

These signs of God's favor and an individual's superiority used to be pretty clearcut, and they used to be the foundation of America. But the founders made one crucial mistake-- they let all sorts of people vote, and over time, those people got uppity. There was a time when America was still great, back when everybody knew his or her place, back when black people and poor people handicapped people and non-Christians didn't try to take things they weren't entitled to. Back when the homosexuals had the decency to pretend they didn't exist. But those days are gone-- ruined by a bunch of uppity people who won't just shut up and listen to those of us who know better. Now homosexuals and blacks and women and Muslims can all strut around like they're perfectly normal and it's we decent Christians who have to hold our tongue and avoid saying simple things like "Jesus hates you and you're going to hell." It's a topsy turvy world.

And it all starts in school.

We let the children of the better class of people mix with the children of Those People. Teachers don't seem to know their place, and insist on teaching things they just shouldn't teach, the kinds of things that students were never taught back when America was great-- certainly not in the fine private schools my children and I attended. That is why I absolutely support the Common Core-- someone has to tell Those People what they should teach. However, I understand that some of you are not fans of Common Core, and so I totally promise that the federal regulations requiring Common Core will be stricken from the law, along with the regulations requiring students to wear clown shoes and the regulations requiring lunch ladies to be certified Yeti's. I guarantee you that in just a few months, all of those laws will be gone, and you will be free to have your state government enforce Common Core under some other name.

We will also do our best to crush both teacher unions and all those other unions, too. Unions are unnatural, a terrible attempt to interfere with the natural order of things. People who want to control working conditions and wages should not choose to be the kind of people who work at those jobs. It is their place to simply do their jobs and let those of us who Know Better make the important decisions.

Government has also interfered with the God-given natural order of things by forcing money to flow to people who don't deserve it. If God wanted Those People to have money, He would have made them rich, and it is not government's place to interfere with that just process. By getting government to takes its paws off schools, a choice and charter system can allow money to again flow to those who actually deserve it. A choice and charter system also allows children of the better people to get their education without having to deal with the children of Those People. Really, isn't it better when people associate with their own kind?


I hear people complain about mobility and opportunity. We still believe in that-- any child who is born into poverty should be free to show that he actually belongs to a better class of people, and he can best do that by becoming rich, remembering that it only counts if he becomes rich on his own, without any kind of help, like Mr. Trump or like me.

I have read the accusation that I want to do away with public schools. This is simply false. We must have public schools, otherwise, where would the children of Those People go to school. But I do not want to have to give up any more of my hard-inherited and hard-married money to educate Those People than is absolutely necessary. Just enough to make them useful as workers should be sufficient. After all, why spend a lot of money educating people who are just going to burn in hell for eternity, anyway?

Much like a sin-filled homosexual must be forcibly brought back to rightful behavior, American education can be forced to be The Way I Think It's Supposed To Be. We can serve the chosen folks by giving them the opportunity to rise as God wants them to, we can give their children the opportunity to get a proper education with the proper people, and we can give Those People an opportunity to become compliant, useful tools for the people who should be properly running the country. Education can be the foundation for making America great again as well as a chance to advance God's kingdom and take us one step closer to the theocracy we should be, correcting the country's greatest mistake-- allowing just anybody to vote.

Now, cheer, fellow citizens and peasants! Cheer as if your future and the future of your children depended upon it.

Why Honor Diane Ravitch?

Tonight the Network for Public Education is throwing a shindig in New York to honor Diane Ravitch. In truth, it is also to help raise money for NPE, an organization for which Ravitch is a co-founder.

If you are at all concerned about public education, you are familiar with Ravitch's name, and the general arc of her story that has provided a sort of third-act apostasy-fueled career for her as a public figure. She has plenty of detractors from all sides of the education debates, and some of them are pretty worked up about her. Some of the arguments are the same old purity crusades, resting on the notion that if someone only says The Right Thing 98% of the time, they're ruined goods. I've never been a fan of that theory, but then I'm not much of labels guy, either. Human beings are generally complex and always non-uniform. If I ever meet someone who tells me that they agree with me 100% of the time, I assume they are lying to me.

Ravitch is important because she is the closest thing we have to a central figure in the public education side of the debates. While the reformster movement has manufactured big-time cover-photo public figures (She Who Will Not Be Named, former DC chancellor), won innumerable public posts (Arne Duncan), joined a plethora of billionaires (Eli Broad), and congealed around already-famous figures (Bill Gates), the defenders of public education have no such roster. If I showed a list of prominent reformsters to an average civilian, she would know many of the names. I don't think I could pull off a similar trick with public education advocates. Ravitch is about as close as we get to such a central, recognizable figure.

Part of that is her story. Hanging out with the architects of education reform, then defecting upon the realization that they were following the wrong past. But it is also her relentless attention to the movement and the many people it touches. She blogs endlessly, and a large part of that blogging is amplifying hundreds of voices of people who are invested in all of this. Reading Ravitch's blog not only keeps you informed about what is going out there, but it provides an undeniable sense that you have lots of company, lots of people who care about public education, too. You're not crazy, and you're not alone.

Ravitch has not tried to be a Great Leader, has not enforced an orthodoxy, and has not been getting rich from her activities. Her defection was arguably the worst career move ever, leaving people who write multi-million-dollar checks to fund websites, advocacy groups and think tanks to keep their ideas afloat and pushed on the public. Advocates for public education have no such deep pockets. There is no public education equivalent of a Bill Gates or an Eli Broad.

This, incidentally, why groups like the Network for Public Education need to throw fundraisers. Because Doing Stuff costs money, and money has to come from somewhere. Is NPE perfect? Of course not-- like the Badass Teachers, NPE has occasionally stumbled over other issues, particularly those related to equity and racism. But as far as I'm concerned, NPE is an important group doing important work and providing a far-reaching network of public education advocates.

I'm not there tonight; yesterday my son got married and my dance card is just a little full this weekend. But I can contribute to the cause easily enough via the interwebs, and so can you. 

Does any of this mean that a testimonial dinner is a great idea? Should we be honoring an individual when the movement is so large and wide? Should we be holding up one individual for applause?

Well, I look at it like this-- we honor people as a way of honoring the kinds of values and behaviors that we care about, that we want to see in the world. This is part of how we shape our world-- if we want to see kindness, we have to honor people who show us how to be kind, and that in turn lifts more kindness into the world. If you have any doubts about this, simply look at how honoring more racism and hatred and just-plain-meanness in the election has lifted up a whole depressing load of racism, hatred, and meanness. And I believe with all my heart that if we wait for someone who is the perfect embodiment of our positive values to come along, we will be interrupted by a bunch of people who are perfectly willing to lift up an imperfect evil.

Ravitch has been a fighter, a scholar, a connector, a sharp writer, and a vocal advocate for public education. I have never seen her be anything but kind and generous, and she feeds my belief that I still have at least a few good decades left in me. She is an invaluable leader in a hugely important movement who has stepped up when it would have been easy to sit back. Those, to me, are all qualities well worth honoring, particularly when that helps support a group that does work I believe in. If, like me, you're not going to be in NYC tonight, consider making a contribution-- as I just said yesterday, in these times, we must all do what we can. Thanks to Diane Ravitch, who has done so much.

ICYMI: Baby, It's Cold Outside (12/11)

Some readings from the week. Remember to share, pass on, and generally amplify what you read that you believe hits the spot. 

Is Ed-Tech Research Nearing Its Big Tobacco Moment

From Gotesborg Universitet of all places, a consideration of how trustworthy ed tech is and will continue to be (or not).

What Will It Take for Pennsylvania To Really Regulate Cyber Chatrers?

Lawrence Feinberg asks the $64 question for the Keystone State-- will cybers ever be bad enough for someone in the legislature to actually put education ahead of, well, anything?

Making a Straight Cut Ditch of s Free Meandering Brook

Reading Paul Thomas always makes me feel smarter, and he had a heck of a week this week, looking particularly on the subject of credentialing and training teachers in especially uncreative and soul-crushing ways.

Measuring Proficient Teachers Codifies Bed Teaching

More Paul Thomas. Read this one, too.

Cory Booker Whiffs It


Cory Booker, rising Democrat star and devoted reformster, faces the same problem as many reformy pseudo-dems-- how to reject Trump while embracing his education policies. Booker faces his trial when it comes time to comment on the choice of DeVos as Ed Sec. Daniel katz explains how Booker blew it.

Culture Warrior Princess

Jennifer Berkshire at Edushyster connects one more DeVos dot by showing how the Michigan Marauder is not just a fan of charters, but a major player in the movement to wipe out the scourge of homosexuality.

Trying To Teach in the Age of Trump

All my faves are here this week. Here's Jose Luis Vilson as always artfully blending the personal and the global to consider how we move forward to teach in Trumplandia.

An Open Letter from Public School Teachers to Betsy DeVos

In a much-forwarded Huff Post piece, Patrick Kearney introduces himself and three million public school colleagues to DeVos.

Bystanding Educators

Over at EdWeek, Peter DeWitt asks the question "Have educators been bystanders too long?" I like the question because it doesn't even waste time asking if educators are bystanders, because, yes, that's what we do.

 This is probably one of the reasons we don't get more respect from business-folks. In the private sector, you sometimes have to play hardball. You "negotiate" by being non-compliant, looking across the table at the people demanding you do something and saying, "Make me." But schools are a culture of compliance. Many (almost certainly too many) teachers expect their students to be compliant, and in turn, we expect to be compliant with our administrators. I cannot begin to guess how many times some local union leader has had this conversation:

Teacher: My principal told me to do this thing, and I think it's wrong.
Union: Well, did you tell her you wouldn't do it?
Teacher: Are you kidding? She'll yell at me. She might put a letter in my file.

Here's a story about the culture of compliance. Years ago, my school board was complaining about an item forced on them by the state. Every member agreed that the state was dead wrong. One member suggested, "Well, what if we just don't do it?" The superintendent, principals, and several of those same board members looked at him as if had just suggested slaughtering puppies on the schoolhouse steps.

From top to bottom, schools run on one simple principle-- you do as you're told.

This is one of my pettest of peeves-- teachers will sit through a meeting or development session, smiling, nodding, quietly agreeing with everything, and then, afterwards, walk out the door and start talking to each other about everything that was wrong with the message. Too many teachers can't conceive of a middle ground somewhere between being raging asshattery and silent compliance.

Now more than ever, this is a problem. I'm still convinced that one of the reason teacher voices weren't included in the past few waves of reformsterism, from No Child Left Behind through Common Core, is that reformsters determined that all they needed to do was dictate from the top and teachers would just fall in line. Teachers have to bear some of the responsibility for creating the impression that we would comply quietly with whatever our Noble Trusted Leaders told us. This dynamic was certainly behind the occasional attempt to distinguish between teachers and teacher unions ("Teachers love this just fine, it's that cantankerous union that causes the problems"). I can distinctly remember hen state-sponsored PD shifted from trying to win our hearts and minds with a barrage of baloney to a more direct, "This is what's happening. Do it, or else."

As DeWitt puts it:

We are under a barrage of negative stories, fake news, and compliance and accountability that will only lead to more compliance and accountability, more fake news and negative stories. What are we getting out of it? Nothing. We still feel like we have no voice and after years of experience and paying to go to expensive schools to get degrees so we can remain in our practice, we feel like we are not good enough at what we do.

Between local, state, federal, and future Trumpian issues, educators face a wide range of Stupid Things being imposed on the profession, almost universally implemented without the input of educator voices. We are complicit in this because of our own silence-- the first step in making your voice heard is to use that voice, to speak.

When, how, and for what cause is a personal decision. Only you know the specifics of your local situation, only you know how much push back you can expect (there is an important difference between "My boss will probably yell at me' and "My boss will get me fired"). But I am not exaggerating when I say that some folks' strategy is "I will be sad about this Bad Thing, and Somebody Important will notice how sad I am and decide to do something to make me less sad." This is not good enough. If your image of teaching is "I just show up to work and do my job and let everyone else decide the policies and procedures that I have to follow," then you have come to the profession fifty years too late.

Maybe join your local union, or maybe not; hell, maybe your local union is part of the problem and you need to go to meetings and be a pain in the ass. Blog. Write letters. Share articles that you think matter. Go to professional gatherings and learn new stuff. Call your elected representatives. Use your inside and your outside voices. When you're sitting in a professional development meeting and someone presents a big fat slab of baloney, make them uncomfortable.

DeWitt's jumping off point was a book by Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves, Bringing the Profession Back In (Learning Forward. 2016). Fullan and Hargreaves suggest that idea of self-efficacy has been stripped from teachers, especially in the US, because there has been a, 'barrage of wrong solutions thrown at the profession.'" But the good news is that we could start talking again at any time. Just, you know, open your mouth and let your voice out.

No, people will not suddenly snap to attention, look raptly at us and declare, "You--you're talking!! Thank God!! Tell us what to do!" To imagine educators as the dominant voice in education-- well, that's just crazy talk. But we need to speak up, get involved, get in the game, get uncomfortable, and just generally stop standing on the sidelines watching the game as if we weren't expert players.

Education, schools, and the students they serve need advocates, and those advocates won't be the power players who know nothing about school, and those advocates won't be the privatizers whose interest in education extends only as far as the sector's ability to generate profits, and those advocates won't be the politicians who want to turn education into an engine of personal power, and those advocates won't be the Betters who believe that a good education is not for the children of Those People, and those advocates won't be the people who believe that education is the unguarded front through which democracy is allowed to interfere with the gathering of power, and those advocates who think education is just a political power base that must be broken up to consolidate political power. None of those people will advocate for public education and the children that it serves. Even parents, who do not always have access to the information and understanding they need to advocate-- even they can't always be counted on to advocate for schools and children. If educators don't speak up and use our voices to advocate for public education and children, how will it be done. If not us, who? If not now, when?

Disrupting the Moral Center

Sarah Jones at the New Republic yesterday posted a blistering take on technocracy entitled "The Year Silicon Valley Went Morally Bankrupt." It doesn't address education, but it surely could.

She takes us back to 1996, and “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" by John Perry Barlo, a statement of Silicon Valley's manifest destiny to rise over and above the nation that birthed it:

Barlow’s manifesto is undeniably grandiose. “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth,” he announced. “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” This was more than an expression of ego. Barlow asserted a moral hierarchy, and in this new order, Silicon Valley outranked the world it had come to transform.  

Barlow's vision seems to keep the moral center of American democracy, but as examination and time have revealed, it's really the blueprint for the Betterocracy-- the mobility and openness of technology do not give all citizens an equal voice, but give all citizens an equal opportunity to rise to their appropriate level, because at the end of the day, Technocratic Bettercrats believe that some people really are better than others, and those who are Better should be in charge, and those who are Lesser should shut up.

Jones connects this to a moral aloofness, a technocratic solutionism, a belief that the only problems that really are problems are problems that have a technological solution. "Show us your problem," Silicone Valley says, "and we will disrupt the heck out of it." If it's not solvable by technology, it's not a real problem.

Jones centers on two examples. One is Peter Thiel, who bullied Gawker into silence and has been riding on the Trump train. Thiel is a vocal critic of democracy, diversity, and women, and like Trump, he has suffered the opposite of negative consequences for his stances. That Trump can connect with the Bettercrats of the tech world is not surprising-- they share a fundamental belief that might makes right, that if you can do something and you want to something and nobody can stop you from doing something, then there is no reason to rein yourself in. I'm not sure that these folks are morally aloof-- it's just that they are their own true north on the moral compass.

Jones also tosses out Mark Zuckerberg's unwillingness to come to grips with the journalistic power of facebook, and for extra fun reminds us that Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who got caught touting a completely fictitious medical test company is still running that company, now claiming some new technomedimarvel, as if she hadn't been outed as an untrustworthy liar of epic proportions.

"Tech moguls," Jones writes, "strive to remake the world, but this year they behaved as if they owe us no explanation for their decisions."

But she of course need not have stopped with her three examples, nor did 2016 represent a sudden new emergence of this issue. Netflix mogul Reed Hastings famously complained that democratically-elected school boards should be done away with (they just get in the way of their Betters). Stephen Barr, who moguled the Green Dot Charter school chain, just backed off his run for Los Angeles mayor-- he was qualified to be mayor because he had run the charters, and he was qualified to run the charters because he wanted to-- but had originally launched the run because he intended "to disrupt the political establishment and turn our city around."

Education reform is rife with these Techno-Bettercrats. Sir Michael Barber, head mogul of the multinational edu-juggernaut Pearson, does not at the end of the day justify their attempts to remake the education system as profitable or good for kids, but as an act of Higher Moral Purpose. Sure, remaking the world when the world resists being remade presents some challenges, but those challenges never create a need to self-examine, to check the poles on one's moral compass. No, this is the reaction:

Be that as it may, the aspiration to meet these challenges is right

And of course, Jones has passed up the lowest hanging fruit of all-- Bill Gates, who believes that he has the right, even the obligation, to remake the nation's education system into the form that he believes is right. Nobody elected him, nobody asked him, and at no point did he submit himself to any kind of democratic process. Because democracy is a process by which a whole bunch of Lessers who shouldn't have a say inflict their will on their Betters. Gates has some ideas about how schools should work, so he's just going to implement them without discussion or explanation.

There's been a sudden shock that Donald Trump, in all his autocratic authoritarian glory, is going to be our President, but the truth is we've been working our way up to this for a while. Champions and vocal supporters of democracy have been few and far between. In government, both dems and GOP have looked for ways to thwart the will of the electorate, whether it is trying to skew elections by gaming the rules or trying to create policy out of the offices of unelected department appointees. All around the nation, giants walk among us, devoted not to the rules or the laws or some undergirding principles, but to their own greatness, their own vision, and their own power and ability to implement those visions. They are genius Gullivers, held down by puny Lessers and unions and the stupid government functionaries that get themselves elected by those Lessers.

And those Lessers that are hungry or homeless or struggling in minimal employment? They would be better off if they just learned to Stay in Place instead of trying to leach off their Betters. If I'm a Better and you're not-- well, maybe you deserve a little help, but it will be what I choose to give you and damn sure not what you try to take from me. I have wealth because I deserve it. It's mine. If you wanted some of this, you should have been better. In the meantime, I will certainly try to be benevolent and give you a little of the help that I think you deserve.

American exceptionalism? It's not America that's exceptional-- it's the small group of techno-disruptor-visionaries who aim to rebuild this country the way they think it should be built. They don't need a moral compass-- they are their own True North. And as they strip away the tiny people and democratic traditions holding them down, one by one, they have less and less need to pretend otherwise.