Oh, it’s so overwhelming. This guy over here says this – but then this guy on TV says something else – but then John Boehner said that this was gonna happen – and then Obama said it sure would. Can’t someone just collapse all of the world’s complication into three or four bullet points that you can shout while you vote for a candidate who just looks like he’s right for the job? Can’t someone couch important issues that require legitimate open debate in terms of religion, so as to stifle desperately needed dialogue and motivate the most lunatic fringe to hit the polls? Can’t someone talk a big enough game that the electorate feels comfortable enough to fall back asleep? Well Obama talked a big game, but I’m talking specifically about Republicans. Obama’s not really any better, but he didn’t come up with this garbage – he just subscribes to it. But the Grand Old Party has utterly mastered how to frame issues for ignorant/religious/credulous people. In some ways, it’s less shocking to see the country run into the ground by known sociopaths than to see your fellow citizens taken in by the garbage that passes for a “conservative” political point of view.
Why? Well, I’m a thoroughly educated person. I'm not trying to make claims about my intelligence - I just mean I went through 16+ years of the system. My parents came up through higher education and, being of the Boomer generation, reaped the economic gains that such education provided at the time. It became clear to them that there was a pretty reliable path to a better life – get smart, work hard. The American Dream, in other words, seems to me to be the idea that if you’re willing to work, then America is ready to give you the best possible source of opportunities to benefit from that work. If that definition seems a bit forced, it’s only because I’m trying to couch it in a socialistic way, particularly as benefits from work in this country right now have become unbelievably privatized. But back in the day, the middle class was on the rise, and that rising tide did lift all boats. So I was to be educated – college minimum, and well, I was just such an academic at heart it was probably graduate school in the works for me anyway. Probably.
One lie (or misassumption) that the education establishment fed us constantly, though, was that education was necessarily linked to a better job and more money. There was actually a time in this country where that was true – graduates were snatched up for business and research start-ups all over the country and starting out at what today would probably be 40-50 grand a year, plus all the benefits you could handle. But that has changed drastically, and nobody bothered to disillusion us - when you (your parents) pay to go to private school, I suppose that’s hardly surprising. In some ways, you’re paying for the illusion as well. So I’m a bit annoyed (to put it mildly) at the current economic situation, and many of my relatives and friends of my generation have been commiserating with me about it. But let’s put aside the absurdity of having to pay for an education with loans that will not be affordable with the jobs you will be able to get as a result of that education. Let’s just ignore that for now.
Despite the economic disappointment I have experienced, I am so eternally grateful for the education I received I can hardly stand it. The mind is like dull metal – education sharpens and polishes it into a blade, to cut through untruths. This is why education is so essential - none of these half-assed Republican lies can withstand even a casual questioning by a moderately informed voter, never mind a withering tirade of statistics and facts from someone like Paul Krugman, i.e. a recognized and renowned expert in his field. Many of the talking points presented as “facts” or “policies” by right-wingers can be exposed as the garbage they are with minimal, and I mean minimal, research. But why is there such a huge section of the population that just hits the “subscribe” button and walks away? I believe it's because they never learned to think critically, or at least never had it drilled into them enough that it became second nature, like breathing. One thing you can be damn sure that an honest academic will do when presented with a claim is to verify it. It’s goddamn rudimentary. I don’t know if Republican voters even bother to consider the intellectual honesty of their candidates, or even if they’re honest at all. I just think most of them are factionalists who want to be on a winning team and don’t give a damn what that team does as long as it wins.
It is education that gives you that impetus to research - to examine, to think critically. Not right away. Slowly. Every day, your teachers are asking you to think about this. Examine the evidence for that. Support your claims. Debunk these statements. After about the thousandth essay or so, something sinks in so that when presented with a torrent of information, your brain starts sorting it by reliability immediately. Outlandish claims are labeled with due skepticism, pure lies ignored entirely, solid facts are leaned on heavily. This is not even a question of intelligence, really, but rather building in a “fact-filter” so that for the rest of your life, you will be automatically educating yourself. Some may find this process easier than others, but I maintain that it is this critical reflex that is the very best outcome of education, because if the average citizen thinks critically about national issues, the chances of capitalists, fascists, and religious fanatics seizing power becomes very slim indeed.
Suddenly, it’s not all that overwhelming after all. This guy over here says this – well, he’s a paid shill of the military industrial complex, no surprises there. But then this guy on TV says something else – Morning Joe is out of his depth again, what a surprise. But then John Boener said that this was gonna happen – incipient fascists never fail to infuriate me - and then Obama said it sure would, because Obama is either a coward or well into the pockets of his hypercapitalist donors. Probably both. But now that we’re in the information age, and we are bombarded constantly, inundated, with information, it is even more important than it has ever been for people to get a high-quality critical thinking reflex. Free public education all the way through university would solve pretty much forever (at least at a scale that affects national policy) the problem of goddamn liars fooling credulous people. I want a citizenry with sharp minds. Let’s stop spending trillions killing children and get back to having the best whetstone in the world, please.
By the way, it is not only Republicans who are guilty of hitting the “subscribe” button and walking away. They’re just the most destructive example. Democratic apologists for Obama do pretty much the same thing when they defend blatant sellouts to Republican demands and brazen giveaways to corporations. Apparently, since Obama is a Democrat, his actions must be, by definition, those worthy of and consistent with the values and aims of the Democratic Party. He must be playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers, because otherwise one might interpret his actions as utterly right-wing, and totally consistent with the capitalist traitors we’ve had in the White House for the past twenty eight years. How’s that for an inconvenient truth?
