How can higher education be bad? Because it opens the mind to new perspectives?
I'm so tired of the anti-intellectualism of the right wing. Nixon started it in 1952, when he called Adlai Stevenson an 'egghead.'
It took less than 20 years for the party to formulate an elegant and far-reaching plan to quash American intellectualism so the populace could be tricked into systematically giving its tax money to corporations in the form of tax breaks, tax loopholes and defense contracts rather than insisting our money be used for programs and services that make our lives better.
I refer, of course, to the Powell memorandum written in 1971 to the US Chamber of Commerce. This memo laid out the strategy to get this nation to where it is today, hastened by Reagan allowing the Fairness Doctrine to die in 1987.
A mere 30 years later, where do we find ourselves? With a polarized population on the brink of civil war, the anti-intellectual side heavily armed (who needs a book when you have an M-60 machine gun?). With earned benefits programs like Social Security and Medicare threatening to disappear as politicians who have long since eschewed statesmanship solemnly mouth the lie that they are 'entitlements." No...we EARNED these benefits by paying into them for years and years. They are not entitlements.
We find ourselves in danger of having the rest of the social programs gutted so the capitalists can privatize everything, because hey, the old invisible hand of the market will take care of everything for us. So we work longer hours, take shorter vacations, watch our wages stagnate while prices of everything go up, watch our children bury themselves in student debt courtesy of predatory private colleges, and shiver in fear when talking heads tell us we aren't safe and need more and more money routed to 'defense.'
Oh, and by the way, the freedoms we enjoy - we need to curtail those because we can either have the Bill of Rights OR safety, but not both.
And, say the big-oil executives and the politicians they've bought lock, stock and barrel, we can either have a clean environment OR jobs, but not both.
The university educated executives on Wall Street laugh at us while bundling derivatives, because Republicans have tricked us into acquiescing to gutting them 'job killin' regulashuns.' Bubble anyone?
Meanwhile we have the Freedom Caucus - with intellectual giants like Louie Gohmert telling us we cannot afford even the most basic services, and thieves like McConnell and Ryan who don't think Americans deserve ANY healthcare but don't have anything to replace what we have except their own version of death panels.
And the populace? Nearly 20% still think Obama is a Muslim. 25% don't believe in evolution. Millions believe the world is less than 10,000 years old and the Bible is the inerrant word of God.
So....this isn't very cheerful, is it? That is what stupidity does. And stupid and mean? That's a REALLY bad combo, and we've got that now.
But we don't want no edy-cashun, cause that might cause us to be lib-er-ul.
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