Spare my panty-clad tush. Ignorance is preferable to knowing or at least attempting to “know”?
This explains the whack-job Repugs who are still trying to rule our country. It explains “Voo-Doo” economics, home schooling and the need for a leader to be anointed by some mythical creature. (Yes, a Phouka guards me at all times, but I’d never let him run an entire Nation.) In this day and age people who ascribe to this “Ignorance is Bliss and Sanctity” shit are utter fucking morons. “I have Faith” does not work in a technological world. (In the nuclear Navy some folks just couldn’t get the physics, so the instructors created the “I Believe” button. Thank the Goddess I didn’t have to serve with those fools.)
Don’t get me wrong- I do have faith in people. I have seen this each and every day in my life the goodness, tenacity and heart of many, many folks. They aren’t stupid like the fools that fawn incessantly upon mooks such as McCain and Palin. The folks I like to be around are the ones who actuate themselves and their lives. We may fuck up once in a while, but we can admit the mistake and move forward. The Repug faithful cannot do this- it’s either Fate or an act of God.
So Gentle Readers, where the Hell am I going with this? Well try this one- “The Triumph of Ignorance”.
Here’s a snippet-
“On one level, this is easy to answer: Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. U.S. education, like the U.S. health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on Earth, 1 adult in 5 believes the sun revolves around the Earth; only 26 percent accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of U.S. voters cannot name the three branches of government; and the math skills of 15-year-olds in the United States are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.”
1 in every 5 adults believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth? Sweet zombie Jebus! Didn’t ya’s learn anything from Copernicus or the Space Program? I have no idea how many of these congenital idiots still believe the World is flat. (Psst… for you morons, I’ve sailed the World, She ain’t flat. Never did our ship go over the lip of the plate you think is our world.)
“But this merely extends the mystery: How did so many U.S. citizens become so dumb and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby’s book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of U.S. politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.
One theme is both familiar and clear: Religion — in particular fundamentalist religion — makes you stupid. The United States is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.” (My emphasis)
99% of the World’s population does not live in the Middle East. We haven’t witnessed burning bushes or had a volcano god hand us golden tablets. (Or in the case of Mormonism, Joseph Smith having golden tablets dropped on him. That had to hurt.) Our World is not the world of 3,500 B.C.E.. We have toilet paper and ‘puters.
This article stirred an old memory in me. Kept thinking that this had happened before, and yes, I found it- The “Know Nothing” party from the 1850′s. They started in the early 1840′s and merged with the Republican Party in 1860. Here’s Paul Krugman’s assesment of this in current time-
“Economist Paul Krugman, in a New York Times opinion piece dated August 7, 2008, writes
[K]now-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”
Though I take umbrage about the fact Krugman uses the term “men”, he’s freakin’ spot-on with his thoughts. As far as being effeminate goes, the saying “being a girl does not mean you’re a pussy” really has to become a mantra of ALL THINKING PEOPLE. The milk-toast mooks who are trying to run our world and lives from their stupid superstitions and fears are just cowards. They aren’t ready to face the World, that multi-cultural, multi-race Tech-driven World. (and tech is what raised us out of the realm of apes, thank you. Well, except for the Chimp-In-Charge.)
It is time for Reason, thoughtfulness and responsibility to become our virtues. “God” has nothing to do with this. If this belief messes with your mind, so be it. I am after all an intellectual, escargot eating Elitist.