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OK, so headlining the news recently was the new poll that concluded “1 in 5 Americans think Obama is a Muslim!”
I’m not sure why this is particularly newsworthy. 1 in 5 Americans also happen to fall into the lowest quintile of intelligence quotient (math-deniers will just have to trust me on that.)
Here are a few more things that “1 in 5″ Americans believe with all their blessed little hearts:
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- The moon landing in 1969 was all a big government hoax.
- The sun revolves around the earth.
- Ghosts are real.
- Global warming is not real.
- Dinosaurs and humans existed at the same time.
- Evolution? - totally debunked, discredited.
- They know someone who has been abducted by aliens.
- Christianity came before Judaism.
- America won its independence from a country other than Great Britain (many answer “China.”)
- George W. Bush was an excellent president.
- They found the WMD in Iraq.
- The bank bailouts were done in the early days of the Obama administration, not the late days of the Bush administration.
- Sarah Palin is qualified to be president of the United States.
- They identify themselves as Republicans.
In my opinion the greatest threat to our society in the 21st century is the way so many have turned away from reason and replaced it with rote ideology supported by little else but blind faith. Al Gore wrote about it in “The Assault on Reason.” Shortly after the 2004 election a senior Bush administration official derisively referred to rationalists as “the reality-based community,” bragging that when you’re the ones with the political power, you make your own reality. It is either intellectual dishonesty or intellectual laziness, but one way or the other it is killing (or perhaps has already killed) all prospects for rational, civil discourse on the issues of the day, whether held in the halls of Congress or on the pages of Facebook.
So those in power continue to wallow in the mud and do nothing but calculate how to win the next election, and the rest of us relegate our social interactions to posting what we had for breakfast on our Facebook status.
Related reading: Building a Nation of Know-Nothings
..I see our country teetering on the edge of an abyss. At its bottom brews the simmering bile of deep, dark hatred. Hatred that is dividing our country. Politically. Racially. Geographically. In every way, whether it’s political vendettas, sports brawls, corporate takeovers, high school gangs and cliques. The American competitive ethic has changed from “let’s beat the other guy” to “let’s destroy the other guy.” Too many, too many are too willing to stigmatize and demonize others for political advantage, for money or for ratings. The vilification is savage…
I am asking all of us on both sides to take one step back from the edge. Then another step. And another. However many it takes to get back to that place where we are all Americans. Different, imperfect, diverse, but one nation, indivisible. This cycle of tragedy-driven hatred must stop. Because so much more connects us than that which divides us. And because tragedy has been and will always be with us. Somewhere right now evil people are planning evil things. All of us will do everything meaningful, everything we can do to prevent it. But each horrible act can’t become an axe for opportunists to cleave the very bill of rights that binds us.
– Charlton Heston, defending the NRA’s right to hold their annual convention in Denver shortly after the Columbine tragedy
How do you think the Catholics would react if there were serious proposals to outlaw the building of Catholic churches near childrens’ playgrounds? My guess, they would be deeply offended. Offended at a level comparable to how I imagine most Muslims feel in this recent hysteria whipped up by political opportunists looking for a wedge issue to divide Americans, in which Muslim Americans are so casually and so intentionally equated with terrorists.
The current crop of what passes for conservatives in this country are unprincipled, hypocritical demagogues who haven’t read the U. S. constitution since they were tested on it in the 7th grade. The hypocrisy is revealed in this clip.
While the mainstream media continues to be dominated by coverage of conservative politicians who have concluded the only way to survive is to pander to the most extreme fringes of the mob mentality who’s out there screaming “we’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore,” more objective assessments of how the Obama administration is faring in terms of the actual effects of the public policies it has succeeded in implementing are decidedly more objectively positive.
From CB Richard Ellis Econometrics, one of the leading commercial real estate firms in the country, in their Summer 2010 forecast:
“The economy has turned the corner and appears to be on the road to recovery. The economy expanded by 3.2% during the first quarter of 2010, its third consecutive increase in economic output. That the economy has been able to pull itself out of a sizeable recession owes a great deal to the fiscal stimulus measures that took effect toward the middle of last year; however, it is increasingly apparent that the economic recovery is beginning to take on a life of its own. Corporate profits are once again on the rise and businesses have started to respond to increases in demand—and cash flow—by hiring back some of the workers that were let go during the recession.”
I’m not looking to start yet another debate that ends up with people screaming the president is a Kenyan born Muslim bent on imposing evil socialism on our country. The truth is Barack Obama is about as much a socialist as Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were. I’m just sayin’, when the business community is acknowledging that the economy is bouncing back, and it’s largely attributable to the economic stimulus package the administration passed in its first months in office, perhaps there’s an opportunity to re-examine one’s dominant paradigm, man up a little bit and admit the possibility of error in those doomsday predictions you were making a year ago.
There’s honor in having the courage to say those three simple words “I stand corrected.”
For my conservative friends who today find themselves members of a very exclusive club that includes them, the Taliban, and al Qaeda in being the only voices in the world who are condemning President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize award, I challenge you to make a good faith effort to step outside your dominant paradigm for just a moment, put your country ahead of your party for real instead of just as a neat-sounding soundbite, and, most importantly, for just a moment, see yourself as the rest of the country and the rest of the world (save the aforementioned Taliban and al Qaeda) see you these days. It’s not a pretty picture. It’s not very becoming. If you open your mind and summon every ounce of legitimate objectivity you have left, and bring it to bear on a sincere analysis of your words and your actions as they relate to politics, government, and the duly elected president, since November 2008, you just may experience a startling and badly needed epiphany. It’s not too late to come back from behavior that simply parrots the dark, extreme rightwing lunacy emanating from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Michael Steele. You don’t even have to abandon your conservative principles or your party - you could, instead, simply reject these unelected blowhards as your leaders, and instead pay some actual attention to the words of your most recent nominee for president, John McCain, who said yesterday ““I congratulate President Obama on receiving this prestigious award. I join my fellow Americans in expressing pride in our president on this occasion.”
OK, so here’s the challenge. Watch this 11-minute report by Rachel Maddow, which will answer the questions you’ve been asking since learning that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, and challenge you to question your reaction and your behavior. And it might, just possibly, be the catalyst you need - and trust me, my conservative friends, you really, really, really do NEED - to step back from the ledge of hysterical, hate-mongering, racially-tinged lunacy you are oh-so-close to falling off of, into an abyss of darkness you may never return from.
There is much we would not have if Ted Kennedy had never lived. In his 46 years in the Senante, he helped give 18-year-olds the right to vote and black citizens the right to fair housing. He helped give working Americans a decent minimum wage and a federal agency devoted to making their jobs safer. He helped give Meals on Wheels to the hungry, and doctors to the poor, and equal rights to the disabled. He fought to end the Vietnam War, and he was one of only 23 senators to vote against authorizing the invasion of Iraq. He was one of the last giants of the Senate, not because he mastered its arcane procedures and good-old-boy niceties, but because he insisted that it work on behalf of the very people that it was designed by the founding fathers to restrain: the majority of Americans.
Ted Kennedy was an aristocrat, well-born and well-to-do. He served in an institution intentionally constructed to protect the aristocracy and thwart the popular will. yet he did what he could to use its immense power on behalf of democracy - on behalf of us. It was a wonderful life.
–Eric Bates, Executive Editor, Rolling Stone
Investors Business Daily: “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
9:18 PM
Stephen Hawking:
“I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS,” he said. “I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”
Pasted from <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6017878/Stephen-Hawking-I-would-not-be-alive-without-the-NHS.html>
What Obama Needs to Learn from Sarah Palin
“Our uniquely noxious blend of racism, right wing politics, and moneyed interests exploiting racial fears and economic insecurity have hollowed out the core of moderation in American politics. In an unbroken line from Goldwater to Limbaugh and Palin, the Republican party has committed itself to scorched-earth tactics that have shredded the economic, political, and moral fabric of this country.”
Something to ponder:
The U.S’s private, for-profit healthcare system gives us a worldwide ranking of 37th for quality of healthcare.
The U.S.’s public (dare we say “socialized?”) education system gives us a ranking of 9th in the world in percent of population with at least a high school education.
In education, we have a public system with what could be called a “private option (i.e., private schools).” In healthcare, we have a private system that the president simply wants to reform by adding a public option.
What, then, is everybody so hysterical about?
Mark Sanford’s zipper problem is yet more proof that Republican conservatives are just liberals in right-wing drag
By Joe Conason
New York Times: What led you into politics?
Joe Scarborough (Morning Joe on MSNBC): I was always fascinated by politics, and I did not like the direction the country was going under Bill Clinton.
Me: Yeah, peace, prosperity, low crime rates, balanced budgets. Those Clinton years really sucked, didn’t they?
