"It's Like These Guys Take Pride in Being Ignorant"
Jesus. Jumnped-up. Christ.
In a jet-propelled sidecar.
Decorated with flames and pinstripes and piloted by the frickin' ghost of Dale Earnhardt.
It took eight damn years before someone prominent in politics came out with that headline statement.
THIS is what the wingnut wurlitzer is talking about when they sneer the words "elitist" and "intellectual". The death of true information, fact-based thinking and rationality, and the embracing of woo, folk "wisdom," and feel-good thought.
THIS is what they talk about when they denigrate mainstream media for having a "liberal bias" (read: "basis in reality").
THIS is what they're defending their "right" to when they force Creationism into schools in the name of teaching the non-existant "controversy." Freedom of blind ignorance and wilful stupidity are not, so I understand, guaranteed under the Constitution of the USA.
THIS is what they're on about when they vote to restrict and hamstring scientific research in the name of "snowflake babies". What they insist on when they tamper with public health law to allow people to withold treatment, medicines, vaccines and even money for international aid based solely on whether they feel that their particular god would approve.
Bush is proud of his ignorance, from his "charmingly candid" (read £µ©λing frightening) admission that he doesn't like to read, to his claim that "the jury is still out on evolution."
And he was elected by people who believe the same sort of thing. Reading is bad--it makes your kids ask questions you can't find the answers to. It makes them think that the crap you believe might just be ... well, crap. It forces you to justify your dumbass beliefs against sharp-edged, nasty, noisy people who not only believe different things from you but may have a lot of inconvenient "facts" on their side.
Finally someone's actually said it, and in public. Ignorance IS NOT A GODDAM FAMILY VALUE. Feel that fresh air!
But finally, too, someone's written a good book about it, and offers a good interview here.
Labels: Arguments, Disgusting, Disturbing, Health, Heroes, Memory, money, monopoly, Names, News, Picanthropii, Politics, Power, Psychology, Rednecks, Responsibility, Sickening, Stupidity, Wallowing
posted by Metro @ 3:15 pm
3 Comments:
Oh Damn. If you are correct then the US of A may survive after all. If I have to listen to the star mangled spanner again at an Olympics I will scream!
Thanks for coming by.
I hope it does survive--but it needs to recall the values that founded the nation.
Of the two available presidential candidates, one is simply a continuation of the policies of those who have dragged the country so far off course. The other is new, untested, untried, but I believe he is their last, best hope.
If McCain gets in there will be at least another four years of darkness and misery. Everything will continue as it is, which will satisfy the Republican party, being the lot of cowards they mostly are.
But the braver path of change, while it contains challenges, at least acknowledges that things have changed, and must change again in measure.
And whether you like it or not, the US national anthem is pretty catchy, at least for the first four bars.
Yep - catchy - like the Common Cold - - -
Survive? Yes, it will probably remain one country - unless the South gets serious again, and the Western States decide "A Pox on both their houses!"
However it will never again be the world's number one nation. It has wasted its patrimony on futile wars against nouns and has forgotten that democracy is not the natural form of human government.
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