I'm Angry

For the last several weeks, Americans have been demostrating just how dumb they are. It is a testament to not only how "no child left behind" has failed in engendering any kind of critical thinking skill, but how the constancy of lies in our culture has just made people too apathetic to look beyond the initial report regardless of the source. In fact, the more we rely on the internet and FOX for information, the less fact checking, nay THINKING seems to be going on by the average American and his or her counterparts in government.

Not long ago, there was a news story about a stock dip that United Airlines experienced because someone reported to Bloomberg that the company had filed for bankruptcy. In fact, the news story was six years old, but because the reporter had learned how important hype and sensationalism are, he had neglected to do the first thing a reporter should do and check his source. Had his little exercise in negligence actually bankrupted United, there might have been repercussions. However, it was just another little blip on the news; an oh well, there's another thing, big deal.

But it is a big deal. Why isn't anyone incensed about all the lies. Sure if you read the comments in the New York Times op ed pieces, there sure are some angry people. However, generally the people who are already reading the Times are choosing education over ignorance. Why then are so many others going the opposite route, complacent in their beliefs even if they are completely wrong.

This blatant disrespect for the powers of reasoning that we as humans have -- one of the very things that sets us apart from other species is frightening. And fear, as is so often the case, can spawn irrational anger, which has now got me in its ugly grasp. So when a student of mine says to me, "John McCain has the best record on the environment," all I can do is gasp, horrified, and say, "how so?" At this point, the student tells me all the bad things he can about Obama instead of answering my question, sounding at best like an anchorman from FOX News, at worst a message that was approved by John McCain. Thank goodness the young man is actually too young to vote. Instead of climbing over my desk and strangling him, which is the reaction brought on by the emotionality of this election, I direct him to a website that tracks the candidates actual comments made about each topic.

Will he go check it out? Of course not. For we are no longer a nation of intellectually curious individuals, striving to better ourselves. Instead we are content being mediocre, and are looking for candidates who are just as bad as us so we can relate to them.

There was a time when the greed and entitlement that seemed to grow in the 1980s, seen in students from high school through college and into the "real" world was looked down upon. Now it is the norm, and those who deviate and believe that it is hard work and sound judgement based on research that merit success are branded "liberal", "elitist", "condescending". Is it any wonder that we embrace such backward thinking as stripping women of the rights they so recently fought to receive, rejecting the scientific learnings of brilliant men and women collected over the last several thousand years, and ignoring the environmental changes that are occurring every year, now wreaking havoc on the very states that disacknowledge global warming and seek to teach creation in schools.

Is it any wonder our dollar has plummeted in value, the young men and women just learning how to vote will find their college acceptances displaced by draft cards, we have the highest infant mortality rate of developed nations, and our environmental and educational views make us the laughingstock of both nations that already embrace democracy and those on which we force it.

I wonder if anger begets revolution. And I wonder if there are enough of us out there, because this has become a very uncivil war in a nation not divided so much by politics as by ignorance.