Thanks, Leigh, for forwarding this great rap!
Something is going on in our society that is categorically unworkable.
But the educational system would not have failed unless something much deeper -- embedded in the fabric of our culture -- had not failed first.
We are an extremely violent people -- in former NY governor Mario Cuomo’s assessment, “the most violent society in the history of the world.”
As a people, we are possessed by pre-suppositional dedication to violence.
Our core reflex is to assume that any problem can be solved by the application of sufficient force.
Problem not solved?
Just add more force.
These yahoo-vandals (no matter how smarmy-sweety their superficial "Christianity" seems to be) are spearheaded by folks who argue with their carotid arteries pulsing purple that “We would not have lost the Vietnam War if only American leaders had given us permission to drop the atomic bomb.”
And, unless we forget, we are the only nation that has dropped the atomic bomb -- when the war in Japan was already winding down, and the emperor had already lost the empire he had gained.
Notably, it was not enough for Americans to level Hiroshima.
Uncle Sam also leveled Nagasaki, the most Christian city in Japan.
And although our moral sensibilities are becoming more brutish all the time, it remains a VERY Big Deal that Uncle Sam chose to drop The Big One on urban areas —- and not just once, but twice!!
Ultimately, the witch’s brew of America’s value system is based not just on the application of brute force, but on the use of violent force that knows no limit, or in Christian theological terms, we use force with no sense of "proportionality."
And so we have developed foreign policy that either perpetrates (or collaborates) with the Military Industrial Complex in aiming at the goal of reducing entire societies to rubble.
We started by stealing the North American continent, simultaneously doing our best to exterminate Native Americans.
General Sheridan (of Civil War fame), held - indeed he preached - that “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/sites/default/files/docs-resources/CIS-Resources_PrattSpeech.pdf
As I see it, the chief difference between Canada evolving into a civilized country, and the United States ending up a hodgepodge of yahoos and barbarians is that Canadian colonists decided to evolve out of their colonial status into sovereign sovereign nationhood (an eventuality that took place in 1867 -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Canada -- whereas American colonists were greedy and rapacious by nature, and, not satisfied with limitless amounts of free, fertile land — they decided to pollute the wellspring of the United States by shedding blood without need.
Adding insult to injury, the reason given for the bloodshed in 1776, was - as it is now, - a foundational desire not to pay taxes.
Add to this witch’s brew the rugged individualism of protestant Christianity — now morphed into so-called “conservative” “Christianity” (which is neither) — and we find ourselves a nation of unthinking, uneducated, fancifully self-professed "Christians," all of them terrified that their punitive, vengeful, retaliatory God might send them to hell to roast for all eternity without possibility of reform or “salvation.”
Whether the chicken or the egg came first, 40% of the nation (enough for an electoral plurality) are now made in the image of Malignant Messiah, utterly convinced that God wants them to believe and to act in any way they like.
These deliberately ignorant - boastfully ignorant - evangelically ignorant people (well-meaning as they may be within their families and local churches) have neither a desire nor a clue about how to undertake the epistemological work of “testing hypotheses” and “probing assumptions” in order to arrive at a widely-respected set of criteria for how to realize what is true, even if it arrives at the truth that Trump himself eventually arrived at when he admitted that Obama was born in the state of Hawaii of a native-born American mother, and that he (Trump) actually, factually lost the 2020 election.
It is beyond the intellectual capability-and-pursuit of these people to ask themselves: “If Biden was able to manipulate a false outcome to the 2020 election when Joe was not even "in power," why didn’t he manipulate a favorable outcome to the 2024 election when Biden was the president of the United States?”
These people, literally, don’t know how to think.
And so, goaded on by the most destructive, compulsive liar of all time, they just make shit up as they go along, randomly believing any Goddamn thing if it helps them keep their bogus belief systems alive.
Earlier Today, I Heard A Trump Supporter Say: "You Don't Know What To Believe." Once Trump Gets You To Throw Up Your Hands, You Won't Be Able To Determine What's True. Instead, You'll Be More Willing To Accept Lies As Truth. This Is Why Trump Lies So Much And Says "Who Knows? We'll See" So Often. Hannah Arendt Has The Details
I must confess that this topic is "right up my alley," and I could - literally - spend the rest of my life writing about it.
The upshot, however, is that something is happening in America that is intrinsically unworkable.
And it has to do - fundamentally - with the dimwitted assumptions and self-centered presumption of “white Christian nationalists” who are the most dangerous people in the world, bar none.
Even now, many of them are praying for Armageddon as the necessary prelude to Jesus coming back to make all the boo-boos go away.
The prospect of Armageddon -- indeed, the fact that many "Christian" "conservatives" are Armageddon Cheerleaders does not phase them at all.
Astonishingly, it is a source of great consolation for many to know that the world is going to be swept away in a “righteous” conflagration.
Tragically, if they only read enough, studied enough, and thought enough, they would realize that Trump is an essentially cruel, vengeful, solipsistic shell of a man who cares only about himself.
How To Save "Conservative" "Christians" From Themselves: An Experiment In Reading About Notable Human Beings
No wonder Trump loves the uneducated, and has his sights set on taking down Harvard and the whole Department of Education.
By taking a modicum of care, Armageddon Cheerleaders and their allies could become part of the solution rather than take up permanent residence in the heart of His Malignancy's darkness.
Remember.
Trump and his followers are people who proudly declare (if only to themselves): “I wouldn’t believe that even if it were true.”
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