Education:What Is It?

And, is it needed

NOTE: I wrote most of this post two weeks ago. It is one of the ones I wrote about in my post on Writer’s Jam. Through I searched for this several times over the past two weeks, its location eluded me until tonight. I neglected to bring my pocket wifi today and thus could not connect during dinner and this gave me time to search more thoroughly and this time it bore fruit.

At least three generations ago my branch of the family left the tree of Amish life. I have no idea of the circumstances of the break but do know that my dad did spend at least one summer with the Amish majority of the clan. He likened them to the mafia. Just because they forbid things in their personal life does not mean they disallow them in their businesses. They do not have electricity in the home and do not drive automobiles but their businesses in town employ people to utilize both in buildings and automobiles they own. Nothing more would he speak to me of his experiences of summer(s?) with his Amish relatives.

I have often wondered if I could return to the fold. There is much I would miss of modern life. The conveniences electricity provides, but I go without when camping, especially when reenacticing, back in the day. I did not own a tv for much of my time in collage and when I did, I only used it to occasionally watch videos when/if I could borrow a DVD player from a friend. Not often, perhaps twice. I would not miss TV. Radio I would miss but went without one while at sea in the navy. Doable. Music? That would be sorely missed. That is the one thing that surprises me that the Amish do without. The fact they maintain their culture without hymns at a minimum truly mystifies me. No alcohol? Sad, but again, have gone long periods without. Sad but doable. No coffee!?!!??????!! I cannot image life without the extract of magic beans. How DO they get up at 3 am to milk the cows without coffee? The power of God must truly flow through their veins.

What may be less known is that the Amish educate their children in their own schools and only to the 8th grade. In short, that is the level needed to become a productive member of society and that nothing more than this goal is required for their earthly existence. I have pondered this a lot, off and on, throughout my adult life.

My parents dropped out of college and they were determined that I should go and graduate. I did. I recall my maternal grandfather’s 50th birthday. At that time he and my grandmother lived in the house he built and raised two daughters in. They had two cars and went on a two week long fishing vacation each summer. He dropped out of high school. Never learned to read but was a living calculator for all the math a master builder would ever need, a hard worker and a wizard with his hands when working wood or fashioning small parts from metal. By comparison, at 55 I am living alone and not capable of earning enough to pay my monthly bills. But I have a college degree.

In the US, it is we who have degrees who are living in or slightly above poverty as we pay off our college loans while those who chose to work a trade have the large houses with big yards and multiple vehicles. Most of what I learned in college I have never had a use for. Most that I have had use for is disregarded by those who are not similarly educated. That is to say that I find most people think highly of their own education but have poor opinions of the education others have. Masks are a great example I think we can all identify with.

So too it is with history, and this spreads to everything. Through my love of history, I have read many accounts of weather and its effects on military operations and civil endeavors. If it were not for the fact that people with no idea of weather throughout history are in charge of policies that affects us all, their ignorance of history would be laughable. What follows is written for an audience who will not see or hear this, so I share it with those who may.

Two historical debates that have received increased interest recently involve Japan and the US in WW2. My love of history has led to learning certain historical facts that refute much of what is taken as truth but those who have not previously learned of them discard them without consideration. What is the point of education when those not educated in the same field discount out of hand what one has learned? The whole theory that we let the attack on Pearl Harbor happen is predicated upon the belief that FDR wanted us to enter the war and needed a big event to get the American people on board with the idea. To those who think this is so, explain the USS PANAY incident, all of it. If you have no idea what this is, or not enough details to immediately understand how it destroys this theory, then you are missing the key piece of the puzzle. When I have attempted to share this information, I am not allowed. Those who I try to inform of this shift to other points and eventually leave the debate or cut me out of it.

Another thing I have often wondered about. Would the American people be much less fired up to go to war if our forces swept down out of the sunlight and splashed the attack wave as other carrier and land based aircraft clobbered their carriers? I suspect not.

The other is an even bigger point because it applies to everything, not just a single event in history. It is one that was just used against me and quickly followed by being informed I am being blocked. It may be an early version of “whataboutism”. Whenever Japanese war crimes are brought to bear upon the discussion of atomic bombings of two cities in Japan, various atrocities committed by US service members is invariably thrown into the mix as if they have weight. They do not, not in this discussion anyway for any and every society of mankind throughout our history has had and forever will have its bad actors. These should never be used to define the society they are at least nominally a part of. What can and should be used is a society’s reaction to its own members who commit atrocities. We are all familiar with how we are shamed by our worst when tested on the battlefield field and beyond.

During WW2, two junior Imperial Japanese officers partook of a competition to see who would be the first to kill 100 men with their swords. Their feats were eagerly awaited in the newspapers back in Japan as if it were an ordinary sporting event. When both surpassed the goal but it could not be certain who did so first, it was reported as going into “extra innings”, as if the body count was no more important than the number of runs. Those who know of this episode are quick to point out it was a hoax and quit before I can share what follows. The fact that it was a hoax is not the important part in this discussion. The important part is, the Japanese public loved it! They believed that two of their best were murdering unarmed men with their swords and were cheering them on! When asked why they perpetrated the fraud, one of the two said what may be best said in English as, “To get chicks when I got home.”.

There is much more to be said along these lines but I skipped them this time to get this point made. Thus far, each attempt I have made to share all this has been thwarted. People are wed to their beliefs and resist what may challenge them. What is the point of being educated on a matter when those who are not will not let you share it?

Along these lines, a past supporter, one I wrote about recently, shared a link to what is reported to be Israeli children singing a song calling for the elimination of Palestinians in Gaza as a “whataboutism” against the charter for the so called Palestinian state that calls for the elimination of all Jews wherever they may be and the abolition of all nation states. Recent versions have toned down the verbiage, but the same idea lives on. Have they never heard any songs sung by a people at war? None of the spicer American civil war songs? WW 2 anti Hitler and Hirohito songs? Never heard the 1980 Beach Boy Parody, “ BOMB BOMB BOMB, BOMB BOMB IRAN? Apparently not. I must suppose they think ten year old me a war criminal for singing such lyrics as “….gonna put the ayatollah in a box”, and “Ole Uncle Sam’s getting pretty hot, time to turn Iran into a parking lot, BOMB BOMB BOMB, BOMB BOMB IRAN” complete with a big explosion at the end of the song. How about the anti Taliban songs such as “Hey, Mr. Tailiban” sung to the music of the “Banana Boat Song”? What silliness. Are there really folks that naive? If so, forever shall they be as they end discussion before they can hear any thing different. What value then, is there in knowing anything different?

Not long ago I shared a link to a government policy dating back to the beginning of the panic that another substacker claimed was a new, bombshell revelation. After warning me about challenging his assertion, I found the link and posted it. He blocked me from his stack and scrubbed my posts from it. What is the value of knowing something when no one wants to hear about it?

There are many versions of this and no one society corners the market on it. A famous one is when American companies send an employee to Japan with the goal of them learning how to compel their Japanese counterparts to make certain changes or accept certain policies. When the employee returns to US headquarters with detailed explanation of why and how the Japanese cannot, favor does not shine upon them and they are said to “have eaten too much rice” while in Japan.

A former student of mine suffered the same. She was sent to New York by her bank to learn how to impose their will upon their New York branch. When she returned with newly acquired knowledge that differed from the expectations of her section back home, she was openly criticized and bullied. She had “become too Americanized”.

Another is on the issue of the all but unique policy of the US in that it taxes based upon citizenship. This is the Citizenship Based Taxation (CBT) I often reference. There is only one other country in the world that is known to practice this human rights violating policy, Eritrea. Canada kicked Eritrea out of its embassy in Canada because of the abuse of human rights this policy enforces. The US practices the same, yet Canada has not kicked the US out. In fact, Canada aids the US in enforcing its extraterritorial claims on taxation and information gathering against its own citizens. I have spent around 7 years trying to inform as many people as possible both as a warning and seeking help in spreading the word and seeking help over turning the bad laws that enforce it. Anger, and the dissolution of friendships are the two most common responses.

A recent conversation with a visitor indicates that he too is not believing any of the FATCA/FBAR and CBT details I post. he even called me insane for attempting for so long to convince others to take precautions are to ask for assistance. He certainly has expressed zero concern for his kids who are also caught up in this mess. I will go out on a limb here and suggest that it may be because I am the only one he knows who is concerned about this. The reason, and this is the limb I am going out on, is probably due to the fact that I am the only one he knows who has opened a new bank account in Japan in the past 13 years and is an American. I suspect this because of long running conversations I had with an old hand in Japan. He arrived here the year I was born but had never experienced any of the Japan centric issues with banking that I have. An example is with the need to visit the branch of the bank you opened your account in for certain services or to make changes. He never experienced that nor ever heard of the like. I was in an equal amount of disbelief as he.

However, unlike most people I engage with in discussion on such matters, again excluding this audience, he did not just write it off to me being a tin foil hat wearer and pondered how both our experiences could be true. At a later drink up, he brought it up. Once he opened his current bank accounts, decades ago, he hasn’t moved. His local branch of his banks were the branches he first opened his accounts with, thus he never had to deal with whatever may or may not happen after one moves in Japan. This came as quite an understanding for both of us. Even though we were both long time stayers in Japan, both married to Japanese and both had children here, something as simple as a move forced upon me a whole universe of experiences that his more settled life did not impose upon him.

I opened my newest account in 2017 IIRC, just to learn what the actual situation was. Heated arguments over what Japan was doing or not doing in regards with FATCA had been going between myself alone on one side and many others, including highly paid international tax consultants and attorneys on the other. My argument was that Japan was sending all information they had on US persons to the US and I knew this because nowhere could I find in English or Japanese any report of any Japanese financial institution paying the non compliance fine. We all agreed on what the law required and for what the penalty for noncompliance was, the difference was that they required some positive proof that Japan was compliant with the law. They would not accept fines not being levied as proof. Frustrated but a bit fearful of waving a flag for the US to see, I opened an account at a regional bank. For the first time in over 20 years in Japan, I was required by a Japanese entity to provide them with my US SSN#. It was then that I received my FATCA letter in which I learned that all financial institutions were reporting all data they had on all US persons to the US since at least as far back as 2014. I was right, they were wrong. I shared the information I learned through actually opening a new bank account in Japan and those who are paid loads of money to know such things ghosted me afterwards. as did all others on that side of the argument. I thought I was doing a service to the US expat community, but here again, what is the point of learning something new if the audience does not what to know it?

Same with Obama care. I shared the costs for the Bronze plan with proponents of this monstrosity and was derided for repeating Fox News’ lies about it. I responded that I had never watched Fox News but if they were reporting these numbers they should watch it as I went online to two different Obamacare exchanges, one California’s and the other serving the Boston, Massachusetts area and that is where the numbers I had came from. Ghosted.

What is the purpose of education and experience when those not similarly educated or experienced will not listen?