Dumb and Dumber, By Choice

Dumb and Dumber, By Choice
Dan Kennedy
Friday, October 23, 2009

Uh-oh. According to a report in The Futurist Magazine, from 1982 to 2007, reading declined by nearly 20 percent for the total U.S. population and 30 percent for young adults aged 18-24. Presently, a huge percentage of the population – some 40 million Americans – read at the lowest literacy level.

A big, fat percentage of voters can’t read. Another bigger, fat hunk of ‘em won’t read. Refuse to read. And they, full of opinions, utterly uninformed and ignorant, blithely go about imposing their will on us all. This is a cancerous threat from within to our very survival as a nation, hardly being mentioned by the media.

Perhaps this explains the minimal public outrage over the open fact that the vast majority of those in Congress aren’t even bothering to read the legislation they’re voting on, including the health care reform nonsense. Most of their constituents wouldn’t read it either, which suits those politicians, since they certainly don’t want us reading it.

I often ask Obama supporters if they have bothered to read the two books he authored, in which much of his socialist intentions and anti-American sentiments are made very clear in his own words. I have yet to find one who read Obama’s own books! When they confess this, I tell them they have zero right to any opinion about him, and that I refuse to discuss his politics with them – because they are willfully ignorant; discussion with them no better than discussion with an illiterate baboon. Or a global warming-troubled polar bear. I recommend this as ‘acid test’ for the liberal Obama defenders you encounter.

Now we have an epic, transformative-as-promised transfer of private power, wealth, and privacy rights from citizens to government underway, out in the open to great extent, absent mass protest. Why? Ignorance, laziness, complacency. But mostly ignorance. Asking around I can’t find a single person who says they are “for” Obama-care who has read any in-depth analysis of it anywhere or can answer the first five questions I ask them about it. The Viet Nam War had huge numbers of people constantly, aggressively, even violently protesting on college campuses nationwide, marching on Washington daily. Overwhelming citizen protest. Where is that, now, about this?

This past week, some clowns in Congress proposed a tax credit of up to $3,500 a year for pet owners. It was reported as something amusing by the media. But is it funny – or frightening? Doesn’t it speak to the confidence our Royalty in Washington has about the ignorance and stupidity of the peons they rule? As does Obama’s proposed $250.00 bribe to seniors, the asinine contention that they will magically take $500-billion from Medicare without cutting the benefits it delivers, the even more asinine assertion that the near trillion dollar costs of the new socialized medicine plan will be offset by savings from stopping fraud and waste in the already existent, smaller socialized health care plan. these are all the very same kind of insults to intelligence.

All these insults display the same run-amok arrogance. The same power mad abuse of authority. The same contempt for you and me. They have decided that more than enough of us are ignorant idiots, easily pacified with empty promises and a piece of candy, happy to be done with all responsibility to think, busied with funny videos on YouTube and 146-character Tweets and X-Box and ordering complicated drinks at Starbucks. They know that five times as many people watch the climactic episodes of “American Idol” than watch TV news programs, let alone read a newspaper and news magazines. They know that more people participate in fantasy football leagues on one Sunday than watch “Meet the Press” in a year of Sundays. They are certain of – and rely on – the growing ignorance of the American public.

To me, it’s embarrassing to share citizenship with people who choose to be fools. To see language and communication regress from carefully composed letters to hastily shorthanded e-mails to 146-character tweets to – soon – caveman grunts. To see people brag about never reading the newspaper or a book. To see a comedian hosting a pretend news program ranked as ‘the most trusted man in America.’ It is frightening to know that King Ozbama and the entrenched Royalty may be correct in their contempt, safe and secure from consequences, able to rape and pillage our rights, our private companies, our entire economy with impunity.

Having no rational defense for their chosen ignorance, many may call me a curmudgeon, but that would compel them to use a dictionary and look up the word.