Sunday, September 18, 2011

Backwards At High Speed

MoDo

THERE are two American archetypes that were sometimes played against each other in old Westerns.

The egghead Eastern lawyer who lacks the skills or stomach for a gunfight is contrasted with the tough Western rancher and ace shot who has no patience for book learnin’.

Gee, I could never guess where this is going...

Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C’s, D’s and F’s and still run for president.

Fuckin' swell. I suppose this was inevitable now that ignorance is a right-wing virtue and actually using your brain is "elitism".

So we’re choosing between the overintellectualized professor and blockheads boasting about their vacuity?

The occupational hazard of democracy is know-nothing voters. It shouldn’t be know-nothing candidates.

Double jeopardy. Reverse synergy - the whole is considerably less than the sum of its parts. To the detriment of all and everything.

3 comments:

mandt said...

Neither Democracies nor Empires survive on stupid.

Fixer said...

... the whole is considerably less than the sum of its parts.

The GOP a la carte don't add up to much either.

BadTux said...

MandT, yeppers, the British Empire disintegrated because the upperclass English twit descendants of the original vicious empire-builders came to be in charge. All that inherited wealth (which is what rules the GOP) is good for is making people vicious, small-minded, and cold-hearted, it's no good for making you smart.

Fixer, it's not the lack of smarts that scares me about the GOP. It's the lack of smarts PLUS the same vicious mentality as a meth-addled mongoose. The GOP is a party of mean drunks, the kind that, when they get smashed, smash things up just 'cause they like being mean. Except they're smashed all the time.

- Badtux the Observant Penguin
(word verification: "liest". hmm, nice abbreviation for "Wall Street":).