Play it again, Sam in Book Seven: Reconstruction 2020

I had originally intended to come here and write about the concepts I was considering. How, right now anyway, life is reaching a somewhat numb equilibrium. Martha is expected to get approved for an apartment in the next few days, I’ll likely help her move out but not have to do it for her, and the world continues to spin. So I was going to lament the dull “same as it ever was” concept and then transition into a begrudging acceptance of feeling somewhat impotent to speed up the course of my own healing and emotional stability. After all, I can’t rush into desperately trying to find a date or a sexual partner… as much as I may want to. And that is what I was going to write.

But leave it to the absolute horror of humanity to always give me something to write about. Though, I won’t actually write about it. I’ll just reference it because some of the horror I deal with doesn’t need to be shared. Like the child under 10 who sexually assaulted a child under 5 to the point of injury. That was one of the first things I heard about when I walked into work. Or the child under 18 got who arrested after assaulting 12 people in two weeks to the point of blood, broken bones, and hospitalizations.

And here’s where things get really dark and really tragic. I’ve begun to do some research into things around here. WHY do we have such issues with juvenile violence and sexual assault? WHY do we have such issues as early as elementary school with school truancy? Sure, it is easy to say “Meth Parents” and there is a lot to that as being a huge indicator… but there’s more to it, and I want to know what it is.

I’ve found it. Or at least, found a BIG part of it. There are no Behavioral Assistance Programs available to most kids in this area. The southern half of our county exists in a “dead zone” for these programs due to proximity to service providers. Service Providers will not travel X Miles/X Minutes and after our governor personally shut down most of the State Run Programs… half of this county now exists outside any service area. Therefore, the onus falls onto those individual schools with children in need of Behavioral Assistance. And the schools have royally fucked up. Instead of creating classes, programs, or team-focused approaches to students with aggressive or problematic behavioral issues, the schools put the responsibility on the parent and child by requiring the parent to do all the paperwork in establishing an Individualized Education Program (IEP). This IEP is supposed to act as an agreement between the school, the student, and the parents so that the student may receive proper education “in spite of their challenges.” Supposed to. What ends up happening instead is that these children are required to attend school for 4 hours a day, essentially locked into a single room, where a paraeducator attempts to “keep them in line.” The paraeducator is NOT given a copy of the students’ IEP nor is she given any additional assistance (like a Teacher’s Aid or Student Teacher or Any additional staff). So you have a teacher (1 teacher) in a classroom with up to 20 children with massive behavioral issues… who has not been properly trained, properly advised, nor properly supported.

So there we go. Parents abandoned their kids either through drugs, disability, or exhaustion. Schools can’t be bothered to do anything for these kids. State has no available options to intervene. So when these kids grow up to be adults with zero education or behavioral socialization… they’ll stay in county… drag down the economy, continue to cause violence and other problems, have kids of their own… and those kids will become the next generation of children whose parents abandoned their kids either through drugs, disability, or exhaustion.... who in turn the schools can’t be bothered to do anything for while the State continues to have no available options to intervene.... making it so that when these kids grow up to be adults with zero education or behavioral socialization (and the cycle continues).

Thus why this brutally red district in Iowa offends me. Because we are red primarily for one reason: Pro-Life Voters. This district routinely elects the horribly racist Steve King. Supports the ignorant as hell Joni Ernst. And propped up a Governor who has mostly abandoned all policy initiatives in favor of a Heart Beat Bill. And who have supported anti-abortion measures that explicitly stated “No pregnancy shall be terminated despite circumstance of origin or mother’s health.” And at that point, I just want to flip the table. You’d prefer an adult woman DIE rather than let her terminate her pregnancy?! You’d rather force a woman to carry her rapist’s child rather than let her terminate her pregnancy?! That isn’t about preserving life or having any respect for the sanctity of God’s design. That’s cruelty and ignorance. And as soon as that child is born where are people like Steve King or Kim Reynolds? Immediately out there defunding public schools, cutting funding to health care, and supporting measures that harm or remove medicaid and medicare. So… yeah. Thanks a fucking lot you dumb shit rat bastards. And it is directly leading to a place where “Every child must be born” only to have every child immediately thereafter abandoned to a system that feels that child has no value, no worth… a system that refuses to do so much as even help keep them alive. So no, Iowa’s District 4… I don’t think you should be “proud of your Christian spirit in Pro-Life vigor.” I think you should be ashamed of your empty faith in your pro-birth vigor as the children you’ve abandoned continue to have unaddressed and massive issues.

“I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”
-Sr. Joan Chittister 2004