Americans Funny? Or Pathetic?
—Only some enjoy fruits of education!
I want a Greening of America but my discovery keeps leading me to a Dumbing of America. Am I looking for hope in all the wrong places? Any ideas?
I posted on Facebook the below NBC news story about 21,000 year-old fossilized footsteps discovered in the state of Arizona.
A friend jokingly responded asking whether the footsteps were Italian. It then dawned on me that lots of folks in the US, who saw this same news story, likely think those footsteps were made by Americans.
Why think this?
Let’s find out.
There’s always a fog in war and it manifests itself in varying and certainly cruel form. This is particularly true when it comes to America’s wars on terrorism. Very few Americans understand Middle Eastern nations where Muslim culture dominates. Even fewer understand competing sects of Muslim religion.
For example, according to 2013 Pew Research, only half of all Americans could identify Syria on a blank map, this when Syria was front page news. America, at the time, had been planting the seeds for what would become a 10-year long war. Today, the US controls Syria’s wheat crops, its oil fields and has military blockages on Syria’s international highways leading East. The US, under Trump, also endorsed Israel stealing Syria’s oil and water-rich Golan Heights region. US maps now reflect this as geographical fact.
It’d be nice if more Americans knew some or all of the above. But they don’t! This is due to five conglomerate corporations monopolizing 90% of all the news that reaches Americans.
We began getting dumbed down during the Reagan-Bush administrations. Many Americans became long-term victims due to actions of political operatives like Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and more recently by the Trump operatives. Meanwhile, Third Way Democratic propagandists today seemingly behave like the GOPwinger operatives, Russiagate being a perfect example.
The fact is, our nation has become the American Oligarch Enrichment Project, an oligarchy where only the very wealthy get rewarded (see 2014 Princeton Study on Oligarchy). Both political parties and the media, in essence, function as what I describe as Oligarch Protection Units (OPUs). America’s executive, judicial, diplomatic and legislative branches are all under OPU influence.
Moreover, US news is controlled. I can’t think of anything that personifies this more than the fact that Donald Trump has become considered and exaggerated as the chief spokesperson against fake news.
The table has become set such that Trump can now easily now whirl his own version of fake news! It is to a point whereby true criticism has become canceled, this while main media has formally fired all ombudsman critics and has potted-planted its downsized investigative reporting.
So long as US media tycoons have Trump at the top leveling criticism they don’t have to pay attention to voices like Noam Chomsky, Seymour Hersh, Abby Martin, Cornell West, Chris Hedges or Consortium News who articulately are able to completely tear the system apart with serious high-grade criticism. Few Americans get to hear these voices!
Trump’s criticism is low-grade — it’s cast off and evangelically assigned to a herd. Trump, a billionaire and television huckster, knows this very well and he acts accordingly helping billionaires while pretending he’s draining swamps.
General Thinking of Some Americans
A December 2015 Public Policy Polling survey found 41% of Donald Trump supporters (19% of Democrats) would bomb the city of “Agrabah.” What’s astounding is Agrabah is a city from Disney’s film Aladdin. 54% of Trump supporters would ban Muslims; and 45% would shut down their mosques.
In 2020, a Morning Consult survey found only 28% of registered voters could point out Iran on a zoomed-in map of the region.
>>>”A similar experiment in 2017 had Americans trying to point out North Korea on a map, and in 2014, they were asked to find Ukraine, with similar results. Disturbingly, in both surveys, there was a positive correlation between not knowing where the country in question was, and being in favor of airstrikes or deploying US troops there.”<<<
Americans When Faced With a Really Difficult Question?
In 2019, Americans were asked: Should schools in America teach Arabic Numerals as part of their curriculum? 56% responded: No!
- 72% of Republican respondents said Arabic numerals should not be taught in US schools.
- 34% of Democrat respondents and 57% of Independent respondents said no.
- 11% of Republicans, 26% of Democrats and 12% of Independents responded they had no opinion.
Oh, well. Here’s more to chew on!
Do you think my writing this article helped? Or have I made you feel like Marvin the Robot in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy who always is depressed?
Let’s take a poll: Is it funny or pathetic?
