A group is advertising against Joe Biden and his support of Ukraine. They have mentioned how we have given Ukraine 66 billion dollars and how we could be using “all that” money at home to solve our own problems. They are calling themselves common sense for something or other, so I thought I would take a look at their arguments in case you have friends and family uttering the same things.

I should say first that we should ignore the name of this organization. They know very well what they are arguing and it has little to do with common sense. It always pays to look up who is supporting them financially and where their support is going politically. Do they have ties to Russia? I could spend time on that, but there are earnest people making the same arguments, so we will focus on that.

Let’s start with the sum of money. 66 billion dollars is a lot of money and it sounds like a huge sum. In 2022, 6.27 trillion dollars has been allocated. That means that the 66 billion referenced accounts for a little more than one percent of the federal budget. Let’s remember that the aforementioned Biden (or really Congress since they pass the budget) has cut the deficit by a heftier percentage than at any time in history. So, it’s not like we are talking about runaway spending here.

This is not an annual expenditure. It obviously is in response to the crisis. So, let’s focus on common sense. This is what we often call a “straw man” argument. Why are we ignoring these problems at home when we help Ukraine? Well, when you are talking less than one percent of the budget you should clue yourself in that this is a false choice. It isn’t help Ukraine or feed the hungry. It isn’t help Ukraine or clothe the naked. It isn’t help Ukraine or fight “uncontrollable” crime at home. You can easily do all of those things and I think most people would acknowledge that it would take far more than 66 billion to address all of those concerns.

In point of fact, this is anything but common sense. We live in an ever shrinking world and we see a better life economically and in terms of our security when democracies are allowed to thrive. Boil this down and you have one country that wants its own autonomy while the other wants to control it. Deciding to help or not help isn’t about common sense. It is about whether it is in our best interest to help. Is it a better world if we allow Russia to do whatever it wants? It is the same question as with China and it’s neighboring countries. It’s the same as the Middle East. Pick any region of the world and ask the same questions.

This is where one of those friends or family will point out that we can’t afford to help everyone. This is absolutely true, but any decision about who we support cannot be boiled down to common sense. It is much more intricate than that. There are all kinds of factors that go into deciding to help Ukraine and not some other country.

They want the 66 billion spent here. Would they go to the family starving on the street and help them? Well, why do you choose to help this family but not that family? Is it really common sense or is there something else at play here? Again, this is for your earnest family and friends. I suspect we know for those that are creating this ad and we know it has nothing to do with common sense.

Yesterday was an interesting day in the World Geography class I support. See, the district made a huge deal about the teaching of controversial topics. It isn’t even so much that we aren’t supposed to do it, but we have to be so careful as to not interject our own opinion into these things. Then, the teacher found a worksheet that described health care costs in the United States and nine other industrialized nations.

The teacher gave me the worksheet and asked me to look at the first question. It looked a little loaded and so we pivoted a little and hedged our bets. We looked more carefully at the whole sheet (including the graph) and there was no way to spin it. All of the questions were loaded. It presented facts that could not be disputed and yet framed the discussion in such a negative way that you wanted to call the policy fight before one side got killed.

See, according to the graph, the United States spends more than 15 percent of its GDP on health care. Naturally, you’d have to read the fine print to know exactly what that all entails. We could naturally assume they are talking both health insurance premiums and out of pocket expenses. The other nine industrialized nations all hovered around ten percent. Sweden was the lowest at 9.3 percent.

We include the usual caveats in a conversation like this. Why did those that make the graph pick those specific countries? Wouldn’t we need to also see what people are getting for that care? The worksheet even asked a question of what we would expect to see in terms of quality of care.

We avoid teaching these things because we are under the impression that we have to show both sides. We are under the impression that both sides actually have equal merit. This is where we’ve landed in terms of political correctness and bending over backwards not to appear to have a liberal agenda. A worksheet clearly shows we are spending too much on health care and we have to somehow tiptoe around that.

There used to be a day when we could all agree on the facts before us. If information presented itself that we spent more on health care per capita then any country in the world then we could all agree we are spending too much on health care. We could all agree that you don’t pal around with white supremacists or sing Vladimir Putin’s praises.

Politics used to be about accepting reality and then suggesting ways to make it better. If we want to stop a Russian mad man do we simply clamp down on him with more sanctions or do we actually physically intervene? We acknowledge that racism exists. We acknowledge that there are cases of racial bias in the judicial system and other systems. We endeavor to find ways to remove those biases.

In terms of health care, we acknowledge we are spending too much and too many families are financially ruined because someone got sick. Of course, acknowledging that also forces us to acknowledge our own greed. We would acknowledge that we are the only industrialized nation without universal coverage. We would have to acknowledge that drug prices are higher here and insurance companies make a bigger profit here.

We used to acknowledge that mad men shouldn’t have access to automatic weapons that can kill people by the dozens. We used to acknowledge that consumers deserved basic protections from predatory lenders or those that would swindle them. The debate came in how we protect people. It came in how we best serve their interests. It came in just how involved the government needed to be in providing these solutions. No one ever argued that these were good things. At least they didn’t until now.

There’s been a lot to mourn about over the past several years. Obviously, the loss of 600,000+ Americans is on top of that list when it comes to COVID-19. Everyone has either lost someone close to them or knows someone who has. However, that’s not the type of mourning that has been on my mind. Instead, I’m mourning the loss of civility and intelligent debate that we used to have concerning complex issues.

The Texas Tribune released one of those stories that surprises no one. For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, they basically said that resuming in person instruction in Texas accelerated the spread of the virus. Knock me over with a feather. That falls under the category of news that isn’t really news. It’s more the kind of common sense that seems to be a lot less common these days. When you deny science and deny logic like this you end up getting this kind of news story.

Yet, there has been something else going on this year in schools that is also impossible to deny. Failures are up. Frustration is up. It is much more difficult to teach students remotely and it is much more difficult for them to learn. Furthermore, it is also more difficult for students to enjoy school when many of their extracurricular activities have either been canceled or limited. They are not feeling the connection they need to succeed. I’m not sure how that can be replicated in a virtual environment and this is supposed to be what I’m an expert at.

This is where the mourning comes in. We used to be a people that could acknowledge both of these facts and then have a somewhat intelligent debate on how to move forward. The more heads we put together the better we usually do. We have made awesome innovations as a society so maybe someone can come up with a way to offer connection and keep people safe. Naturally, a part of that is getting as many people vaccinated as possible, but when you have people denying the jab just to own the libs it impossible to do that universally. Idiots have always been among us, but it seems we have more of them.

These are the same idiots that seem to think having more guns in society makes us safer. It seems that the police are drawing a chalk line around common sense and fewer and fewer people are able to identify the victim. It’s not that we have complex problems like those in our schools. It is that fewer and fewer people seem to want to try to tackle them. I know we are supposed to fight when the idiots try to fight culture wars instead of tackling real issues. Unfortunately, there is just an overwhelming sadness that this is where we are at.