Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Tweedle dee, Tweedle Dumb, and Tweedle Dumber

Or, in other words, three US Senators are running for the office of president of the United States. One has been in office for three years, the other two longer. It is clear to me that Clinton would be better than McCain, and it is clear to me that Obama would be better than Clinton.

But it is also clear to me that all three of these clowns have been around to work on the problems facing our country for some time, and instead of making things better, they either made them worse or did nothing. McCain would probably be the best candidate to stop all this corruption by contractors who work for or with our military. I used to think that he would put an end to torture, but then last week he voted for water-boarding. He most certainly will continue the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and might start up yet more wars. (We certainly will not be invading anyone – we don’t have the troops. But we have lots and lots of bombs, and some of them are getting old.) Clinton would definitely be a better “manager” than the current criminal in office, but she has plenty of blood on her hands too. There is no way I will vote for either one of these war criminals.

And then there is Obama, or Tweedle dee. I don’t see a whole lot of improvement in his stated policies, particularly his claims to bomb Iran or send troops into Pakistan. He is not doing well recently on Israel/Palestine issues, although he has a background of exposure to Palestinian problems. I wrote to Jewish Voice for Peace and said: “The best we can hope for is that Obama wins and at his inauguration, he says that he lied about Iran and Pakistan and he remembers his dinners with Edward Said.” They wrote back: “Wouldn’t that be something!” As for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, I am not sure that he will get our troops out of either place. He does stand a chance of getting the UN and other countries to work on a diplomatic solution. Obama does have the advantage of being aware of what is happening in the world, and he is also intelligent, unlike our current criminal resident of the White House. He could not find the country Iraq on a map in 2000.

A woman recently wrote a book about how dumb Americans are. Susan Jacoby wrote “The Age of American Unreason,” and she focuses on a general hostility to knowledge. She does not limit this to age or ideology. (Although I suspect the Democrats are slightly smarter than the rank-and-file Republicans, this probably would not be true for the Republican leaders – they know what they are doing, and don’t care if it is evil!)

But as for most Americans – all I can say is, dear God they are dumb!

Here is a bit from the NYT article about this author and her book:

T. J. Jackson Lears, a cultural historian who edits the quarterly review Raritan, said, “The tendency to this sort of lamentation is perennial in American history,” adding that in periods “when political problems seem intractable or somehow frozen, there is a turn toward cultural issues.”

But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

I work with a college-educated woman who thinks the WMDs in Iraq were moved to Syria. She also believes every single lie told to her by our government over the last four years that I have known her. Another college-educated woman that I work with thinks Iraq is right next to Afghanistan. When I told her that Iran is in between them, she claimed that Iran is a small country, so really Iraq and Afghanistan are not far apart. She thinks Iran is a smaller country than Iraq. I tell you, I could go on and on…… most Americans are completely oblivious to what has happened to Iraqis and Afghanis, and they would tell you that things are going pretty well now. They think the refugees in other countries are returning home in mass. They are totally clueless.

That brings me back to Obama. He has been able to inspire people and give them hope, even to the point that they think he will do things that he is highly unlikely to do – like pull our troops our of Iraq; or close down Guantanamo; or restore our Constitution or Bill of Rights; or outlaw torture again. His domestic policies around health care are not so hot either. But by they time the November election rolls around; people in the US are going to need hope, because our economy will be doing very poorly.

I suppose this is the best we can do for right now. However, I sure wish we had an intelligent election cycle instead of all this nonsense. I wish we had about two dozen parties instead of just two parties with little difference between them. I deeply wish that Americans knew something about current events, geography, economics, energy, and the environment. I deeply wish they were not so very dumb.

Hey, in a letter to the editor to our local paper, someone on the forum decided to do some research on me, and found out I am connected to the Progressive Democrats, and claimed I am a “Democratic Party Operative”. So, what I wrote above is just my little part to help out the Democratic Party, HA, HA!!! Amazingly, this same guy thought that the only area where I might be qualified to offer an opinion is the field of medicine! That was funny too. I don't get into arguing with those right wing nut cases on forums much - it is like arguing with jello. And that's because they are really, really, above-average dumb.

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