Death of critical thinking in America: Murder, suicide or natural causes?

[Bossy Monkey]

As murder is going to run away with this, I think you should reply with suspects. Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch strike me as leading contenders, but I'll listen to all who say Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.

[Hello_Kitty]

1. Murder she wrote. Murdoch, Robertson et al were the planners

But the mainstream media whores were the triggermen.

[Bossy Monkey]

2. I don't think we'll ever know who the planners were, but Murdoch and

the televangelists between them did the heavy lifting. It's the Fox News viewers who flunk all the current events tests. The rest of the mainstream media isn't as liberal as we would wish, but they do a reasonable job, at least relatively speaking.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Up with trash TV, down with education because

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans...
...unless they have too much education and vote Democratic,
which proves there can be too much of a good thing."

---KARL ROVE, Bush's long-time political guru and White House advisor

------------------------------------------------------------------------
FIGHT! Take this country back one town and state at a time!
http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/electionreform.htm

[Bossy Monkey]

17. Do you have a link to the Rove quote? Despicable, but I might want to use

it some time. Thanks in advance.

[GreenPartyVoter]

18. I got it from the Bushisms site. Maybe you can get the source?

http://www.bushisms.com/

-----------------------------------------------------------
FIGHT! Take this country back one town and state at a time!
http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/electionreform.htm

[Bossy Monkey]

19. There's a source here...

but here is pretty strange-- a pro-"re"-election blog with a bunch of stuff about how profoundly anti-democratic they are. As transparent as PNAC, or maybe a Democrat infiltrated:
http://bushblog.us/?q=node/view/1371
Anyway, the source is as follows: (3/19/01, "The Daily Texan") Rove is in appropriate company: Hitler, Stalin, Goering (on the blog, not necessarily the Daily Texan).

[RafterMan]

4. Enlightenment

Reason is not all it's cracked up to be.

[Dookus]

5. pre-meditated murder

the death of reason in America was plotted out and executed by a cabal of right-wing religionists.

[Bossy Monkey]

8. I think it was the corporate guys funding the religionists

I'd put religionists in quotation marks, too, but it would kind of look like I'm attacking you, which I'm not. (Just them :)) I figure it was after the '64 landslide. Also when they glommed onto Reagan, but that's pretty much public record.

[SmokingJacket]

6. Suicide: it was in a lot of pain.

Critical thinking was all alone in the world. No one understood it. It had no friends because it was constantly trying to drag people out of their comfort zones.

Plus it was critically injured by Limbaugh's fat butt.

It drank the KoolAid, lay down, and died.

[omnithrope]

7. What do you mean death? Was it ever alive?

nt

[MsTryska]

9. I don't think it's that cut and dry.

imo critical thinking was pushed to the edge, but in the end jumped to get away from it all.

[laruemtt]

10. suicide by mental sloth. n/t

[Xipe Totec]

11. Lead in the Water

Now you understand why the GOPers want to relax limits on heavy metals in our water and air. Makes the sheeple easier to manage.

[Bossy Monkey]

12. I think you may have something there. Notice all the blue-staters drink

bottled water. Just like... EUROPE!:)

[Bossy Monkey]

13. Can't believe Suicide won. Damn Ohio voting machines! :) n/t

[andym]

14. Critical thinking didn't die, it's always been fairly rare

Critical thinking didn't die, it's always been fairly rare.

Btw, the absence of critical thinking crosses political, economic and cultural boundaries. Even on DU, there is ample evidence.

The biggest problem is that America has had an anti-thinking cultural bias for a long, long time. I think this explains why only 7% in the national exit poll stated that intelligence should be the most important factor to select the President.

Here's a little history:
http://bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/symbols/yankee.html

"Yankee Doodle Dandy" was a very uncomplimentary song that was adopted by British surgeon Richard Schuckburgh to poke fun at the American colonists during the French and Indian wars. It was then used by the British against the Americans in the Revolutionary war, until the Americans took it up as their own. Why was the song uncomplimentary: a doodle is an idiot, and the line about Yankee Doodle sticking a feather in his had and calling it "macaroni" (a fancy Italian way of dressing) illustrated that Americans were unsophisticated country bumpkins. But it was adopted by the colonists because they were proud of this very unsophistication. This pride lives on to this day, and GW Bush is an embodiment of this pride.

[RobinA]

15. Neglect n/m

*

[deek]

16. govt control of schools

Purpose is to create noncritical thinking masses designed not to question their government or other authority figures.



Can't find the article I wanted, but here's an interesting tidbit:

"The era of McCarthyism, at the height of U.S. society's rejection of all systems except capitalism, probably also represented the height of suppression of critical thinking in public school curricula.

Other than in hodgepodge fashion through isolated bits of instruction in science or literature, students were not encouraged to think.
They were instead trained to internalize and parrot the values of current society and prepared to assume their roles in the post-World War II workforce.

~and~

Other sociopolitical forces were also at work shaping the 20th century curriculum--specifically, economic forces. An industrialized, compartmentalized, assembly-line driven society (DeBerry, 1991;1993) required citizens capable of following orders and completing rote tasks"



from: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~snm3/ihp/logic/

[sister moon]

20. It was sacrificed

on the altar of TV. Sit in front of glowing box, let brain atrophy, put children in front of said box, developing brain is stunted. Repeat in millions of households. Voila! Meet the new America.

[hatrack]

21. Television: the cathode-ray 12-gauge

That's the bottom line. For as long as hundreds of millions of people are willing to self-erase their brains, or let the Happiness Box raise their kids, kiss the "informed electorate" goodbye.

[Bossy Monkey]

22. I think it's more the tv advertising. There's always been some quality

content on tv, even in the Gilligan era, but willful manipulation and misinformation has always been the norm in advertising. Once you get people to respond to those levers, it's pretty easy for the money power to get them to buy whatever slander they hear the most often, which will always be their side's.

[ydya]

23. OTHER: Negligent homicide

Critical thinking starved to death while people were busy jerking off to TV.

[Comicstripper]

24. Murdoch was the hitman

Rove hired him.
Critical thinking was sleeping at the time, Murdoch took a pillow to it's face.

[Hatalles]

25. It began with right-wing radio.

It began with RW radio -- which got people interested in politics (who otherwise would have no interest) and injected RW ideas into them. FOX News, Ann Coulter, Christian Fundamentalism, etc. all strengthened the RW hold on their minds.

The result was a populace very interested in politics but not very informed.

[Bossy Monkey]

26. Pat Robertson started 20 years before RW talk radio. Richard Viguerie's

direct-mail juggernaut about 10 years before. This war's been going on all my lifetime, and I'm pretty old. Frankly talk radio and Fox News were more the icing on their cake.

Edit: damn rented fingers:)

[Hatalles]

29. I see.

But the result is the same... a populace very interested in politics, but very uninformed. What happens to a democracy when a large portion of the voters are blinded by those they elect? What happens to a democracy when the voters serve the elected and vice versa?

[Individualist]

27. Death by media whores n/t

[Toucano]

28. Muurrder....murder most foul! n/t