The Dumbing Down of America, Part 2 in a Series

Prescott's Great-granddaughters
Originally uploaded by Phalanx.

What’s funny about all the advances of personal computing, ergo the availability of wider and wider swaths of knowledge, is the cultural and technological forces are vying to create a level of public ignorance that is so high, so preposterous, so gianormous, that the foundation of our democracy is perhaps threatened.

It’s no secret that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal tarnished Golden Boy Barak Obama’s bid at the US Presidency, nearly derailed it and certainly put up a huge obstacle for him to overcome in the Fall.. And you have to ask yourself why? It’s because the trend is that more and more people form their opinions about society from carefully constructed soundbites and juxtaposed images with specifically chosen music cues to shape YOUR opinion... as opposed to you making up your own opinion.

Pollsters know that people lie about race (still!); votes rarely come out and say they will not vote for someone because he’s black (‘cause most people are cowards and afraid to state what’s really on their minds). Instead, they say things like what was heard in West Virginia and Kentucky – that “race is a factor.” Which anybody with half a brain would call an understatement considering the populace of those two states and their history with KND (Keeping Niggas Down). In Kentucky, over 25 percent of Clinton supporters said race was a factor in their vote – about FIVE TIMES the national average for such a question. Clinton, if she really wanted to do something lasting, could and would ask her supporters why the color of a fellow Democrat’s skin is so important to their vote. That would leave these closet-bigots stumbling for words… as they yanked the dog-shit stained shoe out of their mouths…

The Republican cabal — composed of the religious fundamentalist extremists on social issues, the radical tax cutters or “supply-siders” on fiscal issues, and the saber-rattling NeoCons on foreign policy — has produced only superficial religiosity with a nasty bend to it, a woefully failed war that is bankrupting the present and the future of the country and record deficits that look to cripple the next generation (should the current recession not humble America to an economy that is filled with a bunch of “remember whens”)…

Barak Obama has an opportunity to usher in a new age in American politics that must re-define the Post-Cold War, Post-9/11 National Security Questions, figure out a way to make the US a producing economy instead of a consumer/service economy (the collapse of the dollar should led to that, if America still has the skilled workers to command the return of manufacturing jobs) and, lastly, have the moral obligation and attitude to tackle the issues afflicting our planetary environments. Otherwise, we look to have a dismal future, where the American Dream becomes the American Nightmare as the Pax Americanaa is radically and violently eclipsed by the Pax Sino.