My doctor was running a bit late yesterday morning and I spent about a half hour sitting in the waiting room staring at the wall. About 10 minutes before my name was called, a tall, gaunt man in his late 70's lowered his newspaper and said to his wife in the loud way those hard of hearing do: "this is just wrong." His wife seemed to slump down in her chair and mumbled something about Obama only urging kids to work hard and stay in school. "Sixth graders aren't the ones dropping out" he replied "and asking them to help him - that's just wrong."
Of course nothing is "just wrong" it's what you say when you don't have a reason you wish to think about, much less discuss. Of course nobody faulted Bush for reading to kids, and I don't remember any such idiocy about keeping kids from listening to the President since radio broadcasting began in the 1920's, but the idea that president Obama should avoid talking about civics or anything else with school children is based on unsavory premises that need to be hidden -- and so "it's just wrong."
It's amazing how the idea that Obama not only would be "indoctrinating" anyone by making a public speech; much less indoctrinating them in some insidious Marxist plot, is to me one of the most fascinating things about American insanity. It may be the most obviously contrived meme ever to infect us, stemming at first from his questioning of the gospel of tax cuts and privatization and then reflecting the demand by a large majority for the kind of system we have in Medicare already. I don't have space to show how foolish this is and I don't need it -- just read the papers.
If a graduated income tax is Marxist, then as I've said several times, Adam Smith and Teddy Roosevelt were socialists FDR was the anti-Christ and Dwight Eisenhower was Lenin. Still the meme has cascaded down from the RNC through Fox and the ignorant backwoods bastards who hate black people and want to launder their bigotry at Murdoch's laundromat. "Work hard and stay in school?" "Think about ways to improve our nation?" COMMUNISM! FASCISM!
It's not just that miserable old hypocrite in the waiting room, doubtless having his bill payed by "socialist" medicare, it's the ignorant, stupid, miserable bastards of America pushing school boards to let their kids stay home and not be exposed to the communising Obamanite which emits MarXrays causing them to speak French and visit a dentist regularly.
Michelle Malkin is squealing like a stuck pig. World Net Daily is calling for a national "stay home from school day." Glenn Beck is being -- Glenn Beck and the rest of the Republican blogswamp is croaking like bullfrogs after a rainstorm: "Obama wants to create his own Hitler Youth!" School boards all over the country are being besieged by howling rednecks and districts in 6 states so far are refusing to tune in. It's crawling through the nation's school system like a flesh eating virus.
In a way, it's encouraging that after nearly 8 months, giving a speech to America's students is the worst thing they can pin on Obama, but that this pathetic collection of misbegotten miscreants will buy into it as enthusiastically as monster hunting peasants surrounding castle Frankenstein makes me continue to be ashamed at any country with such people in it.
The worst of it seems to be emanating from the future Nation of Texas.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing that a majority of Americans see nothing wrong with the US president speaking to American school children and telling them to do well and stay in school.
It's the loud, empty barrels that are making the most noise, and they are the ones who get the most attention.
Got something idiotic to say? Count on FOX and the rightwing blogsphere to promote it.
Ask any of the frightened and uninformed people to tell you exactly what is "socialist" about the president's message to their kids, and they'll blink, open their mouths, then walk away, smugly confident in their ignorance.
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ReplyDeleteI'm told it's infecting even upper middle class Midwestern schools.
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Perhaps not a majority, but the majority does not rule here and never has.
This kind of conduct is unAmerican. What a horrible example these parents are setting for their children.
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ReplyDeleteI would like to call it un-American, but I'm afraid this is what we're all about now; Ignorant, stupid, gleefully maladjusted and furiously aggressive against the remnants of civilization.
ReplyDeleteI refuse to let this cesspool of shitheads demoralize me. If war is what they want, then war is what they'll get!
ReplyDeleteRonald Reagan addresses middle school childern on 11/14/1988: ...America's revolutionary economic message [is one of] of free enterprise, low taxes, and open world trade. ...whenever I see foreign leaders, they tell me about their plans for reducing taxes ... that truth is fundamental to both liberty and prosperity.
ReplyDeleteSounds like conservative indoctrination to me.
You're spinning in the right direction Dervish and if it's war they want, it would serve them well to remember they don't have all the weapons.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, crazy is a preexisting condition in the US, (as Rick Perlstein wrote), and home-grown kookiness as American as apple pie, in Bill Moyers' words.
ReplyDeleteTo someone like me, who spent the first half of her life in a different country, the American brand of craziness is incomprehensible. It reeks of such massive, pervasive and successful indoctrination that Herr Goebbels would be coming here to take lessons.
Unfortunately, indoctrination works best on the fearful and ignorant populace that is easily exploited and made believe in idiotic scapegoats for their exploitation.
The uninsured or underinsured folks demonstrating against health care reform (and "socialism") are one example. The whole nonsense about Obama being a socialist/Nazi/Muslim/Mao is another. The examples are endless, really.
Every country has its stupid, but the US probably takes the cake in this respect, I'm afraid, as civilized societies go.
It's to the point where I'm considering spending the rest of my years an another country.
ReplyDeleteI've never been a believer in the intelligence of the public and I'm not a believer in the innate sanity or reasonableness of the public either, but at this point it feels like a total collapse is coming and I want out of here.
Returning to an expat's life is looking better everyday, but let me forewarn you. Every country has a lunatic fringe. England has skinheads and National Front nazis. France has Jean Marie Le Pen and his group of anti-immigrant nationalists. Hells bells, even the once peaceful Duchy of Grand Fenwick turned into imperialist pigs. There is no panacea anywhere, but there is no greater hell than living with today's GOP.
ReplyDeleteCommonwealth of Domenica
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