Forget christian, Southern, hawkish. WE NEED DUMB.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

Hasn't anyone connected the outright stupidity of the shrub with the extremely prevalent anti-intellectualism of Americans? I'm sure most of the smart people at DU have relatives, classmates, co-workers, or acquaintances who openly taunt them for reading, "thinking too much", etc.

The only opinions you are allowed to hold at the middle American dinner table are the ones Bush espouses: God, we are the best, we are strong, everything will be fine, blah blah blah. Women and men are allowed to share opinions on a restricted set of matters, and only within their sex (beer, sports, women's bodies for men; fashion, health, men's habits for women). But in general "opinionated" is the worst thing an American can be skewered with. You are an absolute failure as a person if anyone can disagree with anything you say in public.

We need a cypher--someone who acts dumb but has charisma, flubs debates but hammers the same two or three well-picked points in every address.

[fujiyama]

1. LOL

I think you found the thing we're missing.

[Cats Against Frist]

2. Conversation at my house:

Uncle: "What are you going to do to get that "Dr." in front of your name."

Me: "I'm going to study critical theory."

Uncle: "What's that?"

Me: The study of epistemologies and semiotics and postmodernism, Marx is--

Uncle: "Do you expect me to understand this?"

Me: "Studies why we think and believe what we do."

Uncle: I don't want to think about anything like that.

Conversation drifts off...picks up a few minutes later:

Uncle to my Mom: "Yeah, I put in sewer systems for college professors all the time. Some of these people don't even know how to change a light bulb."

My mom: "Education is a worthwhile pursui--"

Uncle: "That's fine, but I don't want to know what's going on or why anything. I just want to drive my backhoe. Some of these college professors think they're so smart, when they couldn't do something as simple as drive a backhoe."


Welcome to the fucking nightmare, people.

[Swamp Rat]

3. The new semiotics: big red tractors, backhoes and other recognizable

symbols like cowboy hats, beerbellies and sixpacks of Coors.

Post-postmodern American epistemology will be founded on primary data such as cereal boxes, the "Left Behind Series," Remington 12 guage maintenence manuals, and Wal-Mart savings coupons, and NASCAR ticket stubs.

I can't wait for Toutatis to return in 2012. :)

[Cats Against Frist]

4. Certainly

and our smileys only cover up the HORROR that some of us know the reason that the GOP is so dangerous is that they're actually trying to disrupt the language and thought processes that we've used to describe the world around us, for our entire lives.

I don't believe in complete objectivity, but they're certainly trying to rid us of what we currently understand as "objectivity," to dislodge it and make their subjectivity the new "objectivity."

:) horror :)

[Swamp Rat]

5. Yes, they are creating, or already have to a large degree, a new paradigm

that is controllable by a select few. Newt Gingrich, who got his PhD at Tulane (my father did too, at the same time), is a good example. Like Papa Doc did in Haiti, the well-educated and privilaged will use their intellectual prowess for "evil" deeds.

So, how do we get Joe sixpack to read Chomsky and Zinn?... oh yeah, they don't read at all. John Lukacs, author of "End of an Age," was right: the age of literacy is over.

I guess we should just :) and have some fun in the New World Order.

[Zorbet55]

6. I'm dumb. Let me run. Help is on the way.

[RafterMan]

7. Intellectuals are quick to peg everyone else as a member

of a self-interested power-seeking class, but cannot recognize it in themselves. Everybody else sees it, why can't they?

The myth of intellectual exceptionalism, presented by sh0rtbus. Ah well, smugness might not win any elections, but it sure is fun.

[wuushew]

8. liberal elites are not selfish

Don't the policies we support benefit the majority of Americans? Seems like good governence not snobbery.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

9. WTF

are you talkin about

[LSdemocrat]

10. No, just someone who can simplify any issue in a 5 second soundbite

[goclark]

11. I have a ten year old cousin that is charming

He could debate the socks off of the Chimp!

[Bluebear]

12. No, it's better to lose the debates

And charming don't cut it, we need "plain-spoken" and folksy. Don't forget folksy.

[goclark]

13. ROTFL

I don't know anyone over the age of ten that could be as folksy and plain spoken as the Chimp.

Let's put an ad in the paper for plain and folksy. IQ under 92.

Maybe Chimpster has a cousin that is a Democrat that fits the bill.

[GarySeven]

14. Well, there's no shortage of idiots in the Dem. party

according to this lifelong liberal. (Meaning ME, if you couldn't figure that out.)

[AntiCoup2K4]

15. OK, then.... I present the ultimate "Dumb-o-crats"

Beavis/Butthead 08!!

[madfloridian]

16. LOL

:hi:

[Mz Pip]

17. The world and geo politics

is conplex. Good luck in dumbing it all down to sound bites.

I don't know how we play to the lowest common demoninator. So we get a Democratic version of Bush. Who would that be? Zell Miller? Do we really want to go there?

Heaven help us if all either party can do to win is appeal to the dumbest most ignorant segment of our population. If that is all that is left, we deserve to fail.

Great powers have failed and vanished into obsurity. Maybe that's what we deserve if our only hope is to rally the stupid people.

MzPip
:dem: