When I was young, there were hundreds of statesmen, perhaps thousands who had a talent for mediating and placating all sides of a debate to reach beyond the limitations of class, party or ideology. There were many hundreds more who developed a gift for singing their messages and creating interesting and diverse types of music to elaborate upon the culture that was available to them at that time. There seemed to always be a few who knew intuitively what would surely come next, if we all just cooperated. Since Ronald Reagan started slashing national education budgets twenty or more years ago, oh, wait back up to when he was Governor of California, there has been a concomitant dumbing down of American children. This is putting the most severe damper on our economy that many of us will ever see. The failure to prepare our children for the future might be the surest way to create either an all-out “Idiocracy”, or allow the wealthy to purchase our government outright. There have been “civilizations” that allowed the wealthy to drive them to ruin, do we want to become another example of what not to do?
By dumbing down the Republican Party, are we now trying to appeal to all the dumb folks we have not educated and can seeing stupid people running for the highest office in the nation help the stupid to feel better about their own limitations? We’re not running a corporate cheer leading session or trying to placate anyone. These are just a few valid questions that deserve thoughtful answers. Being trained as an educator, I have always sought to spread the good word to folks. As I have matured I have begun to like the motto: Comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comfortable. Those who feel themselves on a steady trajectory toward certainty need a bit of a shake up from time to time. Those in complete free fall into destruction can often use a bit of comfort. I by no means want to take anything away from some of the talented individuals, who remain, but the ratio seems to be way down, especially judging by what passes as music, film and art today.
Where will the race to bottom end? I have heard disturbing numbers of people saying candidate X, Y or Z would be their pick for someone they would like to have a drink with. Not the credentials one would hope for in a world leader. I have said it before, but at the risk of being boring, who decided to let all the cheaters who used to sit behind us in school gain access to the halls of congress?
After all, who can argue with people so ignorant of world affairs, that they think that knowing where Libya is or why it might be important is too much to ask of a presidential candidate? I declare the season of stupidity in full swing and we are fully one year away from the Presidential General Election. What will be left for the Republicans if they can’t find anyone of substance in the next year? If we all hide our heads in the sand a little while longer, we might be able to ignore the writing on the wall. The get big or get out crowd has run roughshod over local economies for nearly all of recorded history. The outcome is always the same. Redistribution of wealth can only come in one of two ways. One route to revolution is bathed in the blood of the martyrs, and of large numbers of innocents. The preferred route in my opinion is in taxing polluters to help pay for the social costs that unbridled capitalism has foisted upon the vast majority of the world population.
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