There is a large segment of Americans and something seems odd about them.

[ck4829]

The thing that is odd about them is...

HOW STUPID ARE THEY?

There are a large segment of Americans who believe...

The work (Anti-GLBT trash) of Super-Fraud Paul Cameron is true and verifiable

In Satanic Ritual Abuse and children being carted off to foreign countries to be sodomized and then returned in the same day

That George W. Bush has moral values

That Tom DeLay is a good man who is being persecuted

That there is a Liberal Media


Doesn't this nation have schools?

Have they ever heard of CRITICAL THINKING?!

[MissWaverly]

1. they listen to their minister

that is why we need real news in this country.

[ismnotwasm]

2. School now teach how to pass tests

Critical thinking has been subverted by WASL tests and the like.

[expatriate]

3. The schools started to seriously dumb down

in the 1970's, when I was still in high school. In one blow, the required classes for high school graduation in Louisiana, were literally cut in half - and it was no longer necessary to take Civics or American History to graduate (once they were required, as were two additional years of social studies). Math requirements, English requirements, science requirements - halved. Classes that gave you a good background in grammar, composition, mathematical calculation, science - halved. Teachers had to start teaching about "creationism" in biology. English classes becamse "Science Fiction Studies" and "Shakespeare Seminar" which was, I kid you not, taught out of comic books.

Similar changes occured all over the country. Classes where people were taught about how their nation worked were replaced with "electives", including real necessary stuff like Bachelor Survival and some stupid class where you carried a baby doll around for 24 hours and that was supposed to keep you safe from teenaged pregnancy.

Now, with No Child Left Behind, most schools are scrambling to teach kids how to pass tests. My late cousin, who taught in Georgia, said that he was required to spend more time rote-teaching the answers to the annual tests than he was allowed to spend actually teaching anything of value.

I can remember teachers encouraging critical thought when I was in school. I was lucky. By the time my kid was in school, the school district he was in depended heavily on having the kids watch TV - and not just educational films, but Sesame Street (for kids up to sixth grade) and popular movies.

Go to Internet message boards, and look for the most illiterate posts. Americans, almost all the time. It's a disgrace.

And of course, people who cannot use and comprehend their own language and who depend on everything to be told to them via passive TV watching, can be very easily manipulated - and they believe things like what you mentioned.

Hell, there are people out there who really believe there is a Bat Boy.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. What? There's no BatBoy?

Tell me it ain't true, man!

[Tace]

10. Don't Worry -- There's A BatGirl

: )

[Jackpine Radical]

12. Is there a BatDragQueen?

[expatriate]

13. Sorry to burst your bubble, LOL

Perhaps you could adopt one of the Bush twins? Jenna comes close to Bat Boy in some photos.

[pretzel4gore]

5. the pigmedia, they lie

if 90 percent of the american people despised bush, yet the 10 percent with money and power to ignore the 90 percent just went ahead as if the ratio was closer to 50:50....maybe you're blaming the victim (but! there are vast numbers of foolish people in usa, just like everywhere)
i think the truth, if we knew it beyond doubt, would astonish and horrify us...that's why the nazipoos hate truth
(pointing out how dense the herd is, is just a waste of time: the bible recounts how jesus looked upon the crowd 'harassed and anxious' and he wept....not because the people are stupid, but because it really is tragic. any trip on a public transit puts a person with 'the people' and they are many things, but not contemptable! bush is contemptable. even a street beggar who steals apples for food is less a pig then that fukkhead)

[madokie]

6. who would want CT when you have ID

:sarcasm:

[6000eliot]

7. Pod people?

[seejanerun]

8. They don't think critically.

They are afraid to ask questions, because if the guys in charge don't know what to do, the thinking goes, we are in deep shit.

I think some of these people have been taught (brainwashed) to do as they're told and others reason that if they're on the side of the people in power, they'll be all right. They confirm their goodness and sense of belonging by defining others as bad.

I read an intersting book by a psychologist named Bob Altemeyer called "The Authoritarian Specter" that talks about the authoritarian personality, and yes, they do tend to be religious. My question is: can such people even believe in democracy?

[European Socialist]

9. Fox news at night-Limbaugh in the day-In church Sunday to pray.

[MN ChimpH8R]

11. No they haven't

and the vast majority are either willfully ignorant or religiously insane.