We should have made that last left

A few days ago, I watched a PBS interview with journalist Kara Swisher and at the very end of the talk, it was announced that the administration issued an executive order for the corporation for public broadcasting to freeze federal funding to PBS. I’m not great at identifying all my emotions, but I understand rage. I can’t quite explain the rage I feel about his need to starve the public media. It feels different than my rage over his infantile avarice for a new plane. This rage is deeper. More personal.

We’ve done amazing things with our government funds. LBJ—a real president who wanted the people he governed to have things like money and justice—had good intentions with his plan for a Great Society. Not all of it panned out, but I’m grateful anyway because his plan gave us the beloved television treasure that my country calls Sesame Street. In Johnson’s time, the country used the public’s funds to strengthen its citizenship. In the case of Sesame Street it was strengthened by helping ALL our nation’s children learn and grow. Flourish. By using science to research and hone the programs’ results, we did it effectively. Sesame Street is the largest and least costly intervention in the early learning of small children. Big Bird and his friends aided our nation’s most vulnerable population and then he spread his big yellow wings around the world. Today, more than 150 countries have a version of Sesame Street.

My own kids watched Sesame Street when they were small. It was one screen activity (Read: moment of stillness) I knew was good for them. My anxious mind is comforted by science-based information when making parenting decisions. It didn’t hurt that I have fond memories of the muppets myself. I don’t specifically remember watching the show as a child but I must have. I know the neighborhood. Grover is my favorite. I think it’s beautiful that teaching children the basics of life and community helps them flourish. That says a lot about children. They just want to know. Have you ever wandered around a open field with a child? The path is meandering. Everywhere is a seat to sit and inspect something new. If you let the child lead you don’t have to say anything, you need only provide companionship and occasionally a piggy back. The child brings all the wonder. That’s what it’s like to watch Sesame Street. It’s a walk through life’s meadow with someone safe, someone who patiently answers all of your questions with admiration for the size of the query. From Sesame Street we learn we can talk to creatures who are different from us. We learn that experience varies from monster to monster and that’s alright for everyone. We learn that sometimes sad stuff happens, and although it’s out of our control, we will be okay on the other side of it. We learn we can rely on our neighbors. We can love them as they are. Those simple messages help children heal from war.

I believe our species is meant for good. I need to believe it to go on existing. I have to believe that the rest of you care about children in the same way that I do. The way that hopes our species isn’t the cause of the planet’s downfall, that the children born now will be better as the humans that come after us. I believe we owe the next generation a fighting chance by aiming to improve prior shortfalls. Giving children access to education fundamentals fortifies their survival. Caring about survival is not zero sum. When we help children at the start, they can do great things. We know how to help them, we have been doing it for decades. Our nation funded research that found a really cost-efficient, data-driven way to help children, so they could grow to do great things kindly, and he ordered that to be more difficult? What kind of king is he?

What I mean to say is we can’t classify all of government funding as waste. Otherwise, what the f*ck is the government there for? A good use of funds is supporting projects that aren’t an appropriate source for corporate profit but whose outcome we all benefit from. Sesame Street and the other educational and news programming supported by federal funding benefit our country’s citizenship. That’s exactly what government is supposed to be doing—benefiting it’s citizens, fostering the people’s right to educate themselves and their children through public broadcast is undoubtedly a benefit to all people. I would not consider it a waste of my hard-earned dollars.

So I’m angry that King Baby has decided he’d control all of what is being said about himself and his friends through the media. I’m angry he’s willing to hurt children to do it. It’s not the only terrible demand he’s made but it feels like the straw that broke the camel’s back. His contempt for others is so unmanageable that he’s threatened by the most innocent aid we provide. He’s revealed his cowardice to the rest of the world. No wonder he can’t stop any wars.

I feel like I’m holding on to hope for rationality with white knuckles. I try not to watch too much news. I think everybody knows what that means now. Too much news keeps me trapped in an outrage/despair cycle and while I care very much about what is happening politically in my country, I also care about conversing with other parents and not casually mentioning Hitler. It’s a delicate balance. I try to keep things in perspective and remember that our country has not always been run by a self-centered, short-sighted asshole and that it’s still possible for us to pull up out of the aberration we’re headed into. When a plane’s engine stalls you have to descend before you catch enough lift.