Serving the Towns of Wawarsing, Crawford, Mamakating, Rochester and Shawangunk, and everything in between
(none)   
SJ FB page   

Gutter Gutter
Editorial
Arab Spring: Unkempt Partisanship Was Behind The Hate Over Language & Pledges

What a week! We noticed some ripples about the reading of the pledge of allegiance in Arabic by a Pine Bush student as this paper was about to get printed last Wednesday, but decided it would be best to wait a week to see what happened. And then the thing went viral, with comments coming in from all over the globe.

We understand how some people were shocked by what they heard, first in school and then as the news started to travel by word of mouth and social media. Many of us are deeply tied to our sense of country and patriotism, to how we see ourselves as different from the rest of the world. And that side vented their anger to the point where the school district that okayed announcements and the pledge being read in other languages many times before now felt they must apologize, even though that apology hurt those of an Arabic background, or who spoke that language as well as the English that is not our national language, but what we all tend to do business in.

Discussion soon followed about how we've demonized other nationalities and languages over the years, from German and Italian to Japanese and Chinese and Spanish and French... and even the British accents most of our patriots spoke with when they declared our independence and wrote our Constitution.

And in all that talk came some real truths. And contradictions.

Yes, it would be nice if our schools could tell the rest of us what they were doing at all times. But that's not the role of education, which includes reminding our students, and all of us, that we are part of a bigger world than what we can see around us every day, or on our televisions at night.

And yes, diversity and the world out there can seem frightening. But we have created a legal system that protects the complexities of our nation, and not the simpler elements tied to our fears.

Nothing that occurred last week in Pine Bush was illegal. And unless we radically change our understanding of what this nation is, we continue to be a nation of tolerance and welcome, a melting pot of various types and languages and beliefs.

Times don't go back... ever. Time moves forward and we learn to do business with former enemies, we mix languages and cultures and races, and we prosper because of all that.

Simultaneous to all this brouhaha, we've been receiving news releases from local hospitals and doctors about how our health system is on the verge of losing seventy percent of its federal funding. Why? Because, as one professional put it, "A significant shift in the congressional composition that the business of healthcare delivery has become so demonized anything connected with it at this moment that remotely implies any connect to the Affordable Care Act is in a precarious position."

Oh lord... is it really ANY good for partisanship to reach such levels that our health lies in the brink, even as word comes down about how our healthcare systems were finally starting to get better?

And might that same sense of partisanship be what was really behind the mess we saw in and around Pine Bush High this past week?

Some blamed the news, and how some ran to the press, local and national, with their stories about what was happening. But those first reports were simply factual, or reminding us all of the facts behind our pledge and its legal standing, or the ways in which such a furor takes no prisoners.

We think the real problem came with the entertaining bloviating opinion side of our present news world, and the many ways in which what happened was then twisted to serve specific agendas.

Which brought it all back to partisanship.

Listen folks, it's the mud season — or should be — and tensions are high. But we are still one country, one world, one vast pot of humanity more similar to each other, in many a way still, than dissimilar.

Let's just hope, now, that it gets warm soon before anything worse happens.

Think spring... real Spring.



Gutter Gutter
LP Transportation - Mechanics Needed






Gutter