Dumocracy
Every single day, for as long as I can remember, stretching back to when I was a toddler I have tried to learn as much as I can about the world around me.
And, every single day since I was 17 or 18 and discovered that the key to getting the most out of being a member of the so-called most intelligent earthly species was to be conscious, to study and think deeply, I have also sought to develop awareness, of myself, others and that same world, starting right in my little family and radiating outward.
Radiating outward to encompass the neighborhood, the city, the region, the country, the world, the universe.
If I want to be healthy, I have to study hard, a lot of complex subjects that include biology, physiology, anatomy, chemistry, biochemistry, agriculture, climate, ecology. Just for that one endeavor.
When I buy a car, I do extensive research, now made easier by dozens of online sites that put every car on the planet at my fingertips.
So too any household products or a vacation or an academic course or a home to buy or rent.
This is just common sense to me. It is the way I was raised. My parents counseled me to do whatever I could to the very best of my ability and to stretch beyond what I thought were my limits, so I could grow. And the ultimate goal was not only to ensure my own success but that of those and the world around me too.
That is why the current mental sophistry is so unfathomable. When did learning — excellent learning — and reaching higher toward the best that human beings can be and do become suspect?
I can understand the fear about job scarcity and terrorism, while vehemently disagreeing about the way they are being handled. For example, the current administration head has lied and given coal miners the false hope that those jobs are returning. They will not return, because the owners are increasingly mechanizing operations and clean energy manufacturing is becoming more cost effective than fossil fuels production. Terrorists have caused fewer violent deaths in the US than toddlers with their parents’ guns. But, those lies appeal to the fearful. Those I can understand because people are reacting to the world emotionally and not thinking it through or doing their homework with sound information sourcing.
What I cannot understand is the reverse intellectual snobbery that attends the destruction of our information sources, sciences and schools. A small group of dark, destructive men is taking over all three areas.
Clearly, there are dual motives in attacking our free public education system: power and money grabs. But, learning systems cannot be based on profiteering. They must be founded in scientific and empirical knowledge of human (i.e., child) development and a sound, thorough understanding of the physical and social world in which that child is held. Ideology is fine, theorizing a natural outgrowth of human study, but there are actual provable traits and features of human growth that must form the basis of a curriculum. You can’t just dream things up in your head and then ramrod them through by force, if you want an educated, thriving species.
According to the man who runs the White House, the white nationalist, Stephen Bannon, a main aim of the new regime dictating US policy is to “deconstruct” the Federal government. They will be bolstering defense and national security (lucrative defense and weapons contracts, building of private prisons, an enormous militarized deportation force that will involve the erection of massive detention centers and of course the infamous ‘wall’) but destroying other structures such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education under a completely unqualified woman whose only credentials are being the sister of the man who formed Blackwater and marriage to a billionaire.
When do you ever hear of benevolent entities wishing to disasssemble protective apparatuses and strip ordinary people of basic human necessities?
Even Glenn Beck, someone I rarely agree with, has sounded the ominous bell about the minds behind the new isolationist and white national philosophy of this administration, the late French philosopher, Jacques Derrida who came up with the idea of applying Deconstruction wherever one wishes to dismantle ideology and Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian who promotes economic nationalism. According to Beck, Bannon is dangerous.
It is highly irresponsible for people to vote for figures who will determine the world’s fate without knowing what beliefs and agenda are behind their actions. Apparently, 25% of the American adult population did exactly that. No, good paying jobs in obsolete sectors are not being created by these people. They are not improving the economy for the average person and greatest number of people (for example, the middle class will see virtually no tax breaks at all under their plan) and worst of all, they have aimed their deconstruction at education.
By the way, the world’s “white” population is only 10%. So who are these malicious white nationalists doing this for? Certainly not humanity writ large.
Now, as they blatantly defend their ties to the Russian government and a growing circle of illicit oligarchs, they attack the free press and begin to take down the schooling of the populace. If you want to take away someone’s rights and resources, that is how you do it. Keep people disinformed and diseducated.
When you vote, you have to be more proactive than apparently this 25% were. What investigation of this group did they do? Are they willing to give up these intellectual freedoms for the fools’ gold they were promised last year? How about those who did not vote or protest voted for a third party candidate. How will they make this up to us?
I am sorry for being so serious, but this is a grave forecast. This is the aspiration of Steve Bannon and his coterie of nefarious puppetmasters with their megalomaniacal dream of upheaval and world domination. And make no mistake, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, who have economic aspirations to transfer massive wealth to their corporate cronies, are quietly sitting back and handing the keys to the kingdom to these rasputins.
Again, every single day, I strive to be awake and aware, no matter how painful. Yes, I would like to bury my head and wait this out. But at the other end of this process, which may be a full 16 years from now, America and the world will be very different places if we continue on blithely ignoring what is unfolding right in front of us. No science, no education, no legitimate press, in other words, no facts, no truths, just lies to keep us compliant. 1984 will look like a picnic when these people are done with us.
They need to keep us stuck on stupid. And we are still doing little to stop them.
Image: Wikimedia commons
Beth Byrnes 
Beth, ever since Bannon was ensconsed in the Trump campaign, and now the White House, I have seen him as a Rasputin. Trump thinks he is smart, but he is not. He may be educated, but that does not make him smart. Bannon is a European intellectual, and is using his intellect to turn Trump’s vacuous, narcissistic head against us all.
Just yesterday, members of the mainstream press (CNN, Politico) were barred from access to a session with Spicer, and the two Republican heads of the intelligence committees in the House and Senate admitted they were “asked” by the White House to contact the media to ask them to lay off stories of the President’s (and aides’) dealings with Russia, that it was a “nothing” story.
The only Republicans in Congress with any cojones seem to be McCain, Graham and sometimes Marco Rubio. The others are certainly not listening to their constituents, who are screaming at them at town hall meetings because they’re not being heard in polite conversation.
I tell you, even though I’m praying for Trump and Congress, I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes people have see the darkness of rock bottom before they see the light. Perhaps the country will have to see another Watergate before we see the light of a new administration. And even if that new administration is Pence, at least he will be honest, and Bannon and Miller will be out.
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I agree 100% Susan.
And, not only is Trump not very smart, he is not all that educated. He only transferred to Penn in his junior year from a nothing city college. Wharton then is not the Wharton of today. Even his daily speech has been graded as at a 6th grade/11 year old level.
Bannon is the brains there and the implementers are Miller, Stone, Manafort and their ilk. A frightening group of machinators who hide behind the scenes and do their dirty work.
Our rep, Steve Knight, has scheduled a very restricted one hour town hall meeting in the top corner of the district, in an obscure building for early next Saturday. People were told to bring ID, no phones allowed, no cameras, no recording devices and only a first-come, first-served basis, restricted to about 250 people for a district that has over 300,000. This is typical of the Republicans hiding and dancing around to enable the Trump team to run over our Democracy. They want to end it.
This is Watergate on steroids.
He has to go!
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Oh, you can tell by his speeches hes’ not very intelligent – particularly the ones his cabinet has to correct. I believe the 6th grade ranking, and I’m certain he does nothing to improve himself, thinking there is nothing to improve.
And yes, this is definitely Watergate on steroids. Frankly, if “reasonable” Republicans are smart, they’ll be meeting with Pence behind the scenes to position him to eventually declare Trump unsuitable for office. But again, they have to grow up and develop the cojones to do it.
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I think we may see that happen. I don’t think That Man wants this job. I think he will tire of it and either do something that gives him cover to leave or slip up one time too many for Kelly/Mattis/Pence and they will have him removed. Even though Pence is way too far right for me, I would welcome him over That Man.
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Me too, Beth. And his latest general is far too independent to put up with Bannon, Miller or the Prez’s ego for long, especially the way he treats our foreign allies.
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Thank goodness for McMaster. Finally, someone with principles that will stand up to these tyrants.
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Amen. You first mentioned wise and prudent shopping as something you were taught and nurtured. I’d say that encouraging mindless spending was the first stroke. TV and media have been at work for a long time, the hate and fear fostered by politicians and also by the entertainment media has had an effect. Fight for reason and common sense/ science education.
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That’s what we have to do, Stephen: fight. These people only understand strength. All nuance is lost on them.
I do think Hillary’s campaign was successful. The tricks, traps, gimmicks and lies that the other side employed to game the system and slide into office were beyond the pale. Going lower than these people would be difficult for us, because we progressives/liberals/Democrats are warm-hearted ethical folks.
But, we don’t have to be silent and conciliatory. I am ready to take these monsters on.
Prudence, wisdom, conservation, all great traits, but love, kindness and generosity are even higher.
Thank you Stephen!! 🙂
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🙂
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“What I cannot understand is the reverse intellectual snobbery that attends the destruction of our information sources, sciences and schools. A small group of dark, destructive men is taking over all three areas.”
As well as an uninformed woman holding so desperately to her ignorance she didn’t even bother to cram for her own confirmation hearing, knowing that it didn’t matter to those who were determined to put her in the post despite her TOTAL lack of qualifications for the job.
I cannot join those of you to believe that the Pencil would be any better, however – he DID cast the deciding vote for DeVoss, and followed it up with that self-satisfied soundbite to the press. Watergate will seem like playground antics compared to what is planned and what is coming.
“When do you ever hear of benevolent entities wishing to disassemble protective apparatuses and strip ordinary people of basic human necessities?” NEVER. Evil is as evil does.
You said it well: “1984 will look like a picnic when these people are done with us. . . . They need to keep us stuck on stupid. And we are still doing little to stop them.”
Important post, Beth. Unfortunately, it will be read primarily by those of us who are already thinking similarly. How DO we reach the others? How can we get him out?
xx,
mgh
(Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMORE dot com)
ADD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder
“It takes a village to transform a world!”
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It’s so awful, Madelyn. I don’t know how we get this guy out. I think only Comey can do it and does he have the spine? He clearly puts himself first when the choice has to be made.
Every night, we listen to the litany of new horrors and outrages: agents of another country, Roger Stone colluding with Wikileaks, Azerbaijani oligarchs funneling Iranian money into sham projects that Ivanka oversees — the Ivanka who is now in our administration somehow, with what preparation or approval? And then Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway getting on TV and lie and lie and lie, blatantly, laughing while they do so, to cover it all up.
When did the American people become so gullible and servile?
The people in West Virginia, 30% of them self-medicating their abject poverty away with opioids, trusted these evil-doers and are about to die for it when their health and mental care are stripped away.
Forty-six US Attorneys fired last night because Hannity told That Man he should do it. All their criminal cases in limbo for the foreseeable future.
And those are just from yesterday! OMG!!
Hugs, Madelyn.
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I saw those headlines before I went to bed very early this morning, and chose to hold reading details for when my brain was on board again.
I don’t own a TV, but I strongly prefer to read in any case. I need the distance. Watching makes me literally ill anymore.
God help us ALL!!! Hugs back.
xx,
mgh
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To my more skeptical community friends here: Think I am exagerrating? Check this article:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/trump-steve-bannon-destroy-eu-european-union-214889
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