memes

just because you’ve had a few bad experiences doesn’t mean that the entire professions are rotten to the core

Yeah, there are definitely good, bad, and medium-level performers in the group.

But, according to you, we shouldn't be making any attempts to evaluate them. You apparently just think I should treat them all the same, pretend the bad apples don't exist, and just continue to pay my taxes and keep my mouth shut, even though each generation of people gets stupider and stupider.

The kids who are about to graduate high school this year are mostly illiterate. No shit. They're just meat creatures, with smartphones attached to them. We're in the middle of a fucking emergency.

As for nurses, cops, and politicians, it's even more of a life and death situation, on a daily basis. On the nursing front, you've got actual anti-vaxx nurses, stalking the wards, pretending they know better than the doctors. Cops have been almost 100 percent radicalized to ultra-right-wing nonsense ideologies, and cruise around our neighborhoods, as if they're patrolling enemy territory. They shoot whoever they want, with total knowledge that they will be protected by ridiculous interpretations of federal law, as well as a ridiculously powerful union.

Politics is, like, unsolvable, at this point. I'm not even going to depress myself by talking about it.

The point is, I don't think anybody is above accountability for their fucking performance. Period. There really isn't an honest way for you to disagree with that. Even when you take factors like the district budget into account (grading on a curve, no pun intended), I still think you CAN asses all public employees, in a meaningful way. I agree, it shouldn't be anything like the meaningless performance reviews that middle managers come up with, to convince everyone that they're not useless parasites. But their ways are not the only ways.

You know who really gets it? The whole thing that I'm talking about? Firefighters. They get it.

Firefighters know that they better fucking put the fires out, or else they're gonna get fucking fired, lol. Never in your life are you going to hear about a fire department that actually sucks at their job. I don't know if the firefighters have a union, but I know they're not out there, defending fire stations who let whole blocks burn down, on their watch.

Thing is, people won't stand for that shit, and they know it. If shit starts burning down, and they can't stop it, they know the townspeople are NOT going to accept any excuses. That's largely because the fire is bright, loud, smelly, and happens in less than one day. It can't be ignored, and you know EXACTLY who didn't solve that problem.

In terms of the education crisis, the whole goddamn country is on fire. But you can't SEE the fire. The ashes won't be revealed until years later, when the slower-moving consequences of bad education start rippling through society. ALL of us will suffer for it. But nah, you keep worrying about the poor, poor, put-upon, heroic martyr teachers, who can do no wrong. I'm sure they would give you a thumbs-up for your solidarity, if they saw this conversation.