California Girl
Rookie
- Oct 8, 2009
- 50,337
- 10,058
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- Banned
- #41
I don't think we're stupid. I think Americans, generally, can be shallow and breathtakingly ignorant of the rest of the world.
Having said that, the Brits ain't a whole lot better. I recently spoke to someone who thought Los Angeles was a state. I did laugh at that.
Like 'empty vessel' Palin thought Africa was a country? One BIG difference, that Brit wasn't running for the office that is 'a heartbeat away' from having their finger on the nuclear trigger.
Building a Nation of Know-Nothings
Its not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.
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In the much-discussed Pew poll reporting the spike in ignorance, those who believe Obama to be Muslim say they got their information from the media. But no reputable news agency that is, fact-based, one that corrects its errors quickly has spread such inaccuracies.
So where is this media? Two sources, and they are no surprise here the usual suspects. The first, of course, is Rush Limbaugh, who claims the largest radio audience in the land among the microphone demagogues, and his word is Biblical among Republicans.
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On the Muslim deception, Limbaugh has sprinkled lie dust all over the place. Obama says hes a Christian, but wheres the evidence? he said on Aug. 19. He has repeatedly called the president imam Obama, and said, Im just throwing things out there, folks, because people are questioning his Christianity.
You see how he works. He drops in suggestions, hints, notes that people are questioning things. The design is to make Obama un-American. Then he says its a tweak, a provocation. He says this as a preemptive way to keep the press from calling him out. And it works; long profiles of Limbaugh have largely gone easy on him.
Once Limbaugh has planted a lie, a prominent politician can pick it up, with little nuance. So, over the weekend, Kim Lehman, one of Iowas two Republican National Committee members, went public with doubts on Obamas Christianity. Of course, she was not condemned by party leaders.
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Climate-change denial is a special category all its own. Once on the fringe, dismissal of scientific consensus is now an article of faith among leading Republicans, again taking their cue from Limbaugh and Fox.
It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or arent sure from which country the United States gained its independence?
But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.
Its one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?
Like Obama thought we had 57 states?
Are you actually capable of original thought or not? Because all you ever do is post other people's words.