The Biden Administration is deserving of the highest kudos for its recent passage of substantial legislation, targeted to the amelioration of inflation, the provision of needed National physical infrastructure, and, as well, the amelioration of many existing, National and personal problems.
Included in the laudatory legislation, are specific provisions, forgiving a portion of the substantial tuition indebtedness of students of higher education. From a truly fundamental point of view, we value the student relief, the most salubrious of the many legislated benefits.
It is our view that many of the predictable, right-wing detractors are politically motivated and are pandering to the ignorant, or, if sincere, are totally lacking in National perspective and hopelessly, short-sighted. It may be accurately observed, that substantial sums of governmental monies have awarded, as assistance, to many commercial and agricultural enterprises, which, somehow, did not elicit such outcries of unfairness or political partiality, Agricultural, scientific and pharmaceutical research subsidies, substantial banking and finance company bailouts, and needed disaster relief are just a few of the many such examples.
Not surprisingly, many of the right-wing detractors of tuition assistance are, themselves,( hypocritical) beneficiaries of the Federal Government’s largesse, in the forgiveness of private debt; such as the two, vocally, odious, anti-democratic and reductively bigoted, Congresspersons, Marjorie Taylor Greene (reportedly, $183,000) and Matt .6f5, (reportedly, $482,000). Moreover, we would presume that any reasonably competent audit of the financial affairs of Members of Congress, Senators and Congressmen, (not to mention the plethora of high governmental officials), would reveal financial “goodies” for a great many, who, concededly, find themselves in far more desirable financial circumstances, than the lower and middle class, beneficiaries of the Biden Administration’s grant of needed student relief.
However, our principal theme is not the subject of hypocritical, financial injustice, but rather, the vital benefit to our Nation, by the salubrious policy of Governmental financial assistance to American students, in their acquisition of higher education. Such empathic assistance, amounts, necessarily, to a wise and existentially, valuable, investment in our Nation’s “human infrastructure,” viz., the assurance of citizen capability and, as necessary, the Nation’s military defense.
On the latter subject, we would offer, as illustration, the heroic victory of the small, newly authorized, and poorly supplied, Nation of Israel in 1948, against the English, militarily trained and supplied, Arab Legions. As another, cogent, illustration, we would, once more, reference Germany, in the first third of the 20th Century; the most industrialized and militarily, formidable of America’s three Axis enemies, in the Second World War. Germany, a relatively small to medium size country, came, frighteningly, close to its pernicious goal, of World conquest, due to the quality of its literate and mobilized population; the availability of the latter qualities, being, a Nation’s most valuable, natural, resource.
More recently, we experienced a confirmation of the stated principle that, the most impactful, of all its natural resources, is not a Nation’s possession of fuel, water, steel, or its geographic location, but its people. Contemporary proof of this declared principle is provided the by magnificent defensive response by the Nation of Ukraine, to giant Russia’s unprovoked attack. It is, to us, highly conceivable, that the literate, united and mobilized Ukraine will indeed, prevail, over its giant, and well-equipped, aggressor. Neither the acquisitive lust of the autocratic, Putin, his country’s enormous population, its great oil reserves and other natural resources, in totality, are equal, to the qualitative love of country and sophisticated nature of the citizens of the much smaller, attacked Nation.
Currently, a vast number of serious internal problems, including an existential threat to democracy, itself, besetting the American Nation are, in large part, the result of its vast horde of inadequately, educated and poorly informed citizens. (See: # 839 “Barbarians at the Gate”). As previously, declared, such state of affairs, existentially, hampers democracy viz., government rule by, and for, the people. Historically, America’s population of such citizens has proved, incapable and unmotivated, to render meaningful contributions to the advancement and defense, nor, the very existence of our Democratic Republic. This portion of the population has been proven to be vulnerable to “snake oil” demagogues (like Donald Trump), and to such (his) autocratic style, readily accepting of his disparagement of factual truth, and acceptance of propaganda and bogus conspiratorial ideations. To repeat, this dangerous and shocking state of affairs, unfortunately, is our Democratic Republic’s, politically, dire and sociologically, threatening, conundrum du jour.
Such present, imminent, threat to democracy, posed by our population of inadequately educated and poorly informed (“underbelly,”) populist, supporters of a Trump autocracy, can only be, effectively, confronted by the encouragement of a (more) numerous population of enlightened, citizens.
The Biden Administration’s financial relief accorded to tuition indebted students, is an assistance to, and makes pragmatically, possible, the continuance and furtherance of higher education and, thereby, the strengthening of the Nation’s all-important, human infrastructure, resulting in the advancement and strengthening of the Nation, and, crucially the vital preservation of its democracy.
-p.
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