USA Becoming more Ignorant and Hatefilled

April 25, 2011 / Posted in  Education, GOP, Iowa, Koch Brothers, Labor, Martin Luther, Poverty, Uncategorized

Stupidity and ignorance are not synonymous. Stupidity is a state of being stupid: lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind (being dull), being foolish, or senseless lacking meaning in words or actions. Ignorance is lacking demonstrative knowledge, learning, and information based on objective criteria (usually settling for criterium). The USA is growing in ignorance as demonstrated by the fact that 42 million Americans cannot read, write or perform simple math, while another 50 million citizens of the USA cannot read past the fourth grade level, and over 100 million cannot interpret simple messages in cinemas, use street English daily (even in formal settings) and are unable to define simple concepts (see: Frosty Wooldridge, “7,000 US High School Students Drop Out Every Day [,] One Every 26 Seconds” (a fact reported by CNN on August 30, 2010), at http://www.rense.com/general92/7000.htm). To put it into the most simple of terms, Wooldridge noted “Eighty-four percent of the 23,000 people who took an exam for entry-level jobs at New York Telephone in 1988, failed.” 

In the State of Indiana, 127 students leave their high schools every day. (See: http://www.ypress.org/news/drop_out_2) By 2008, more than 1.25 million high school students failed to graduate. Few, if any, of these students will secure a good (well-paying) job, for they do not have the basic skills to cope with new technology or to be able to communicate with all people.

According to the U.S. Department of Education and the Manhattan Institute, the national high school graduation rate is just 69.9 percent. Nationally, the graduation rate for white students was 78 percent, compared with 72 percent for Asian students, 55 percent for African-American students and 53 percent for Hispanic students.  Minorities (racial and sexual–such as transgender and homosexual) tend to drop out faster and in greater number than Anglos, because of rampant racism taught in the home and fundamentalist churches.  This is especially true in seaboard states, where Maryland showed a 2006 graduation rate of 73.5%, and Virginia slid further down with a graduation of 69.2%.  Seventeen of the nation’s fifty largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50% (for example, Baltimore, Maryland inner-city schools had a graduation rate of only 34.6%, while its suburban schools boasted a graduation rate of 81.5% as the suburbs are primarily white and upper-income; see: http://baconsrebellion.com/2009/06/16/alarming-high-school-dropout-rates-virginia-is-not-immune/).

The failure rate of uneducated citizens of the USA now is at a crisis level, and is the primary cause of rising crime, human misery and failures, and with it the fascism in the USA is on the rise with the Tea Party, KKK, and American Nazi movement all of which have cannibalized the GOP. How bad is this crisis”

• Dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than those who graduate from high school.
• Dropouts are 8 times more likely to be incarcerated than high school graduates.
• Dropouts are 4.3% less likely to find legitimate work than high school graduates.

As illiteracy rises (as seen in Governor Scott Walkers attack on educators in Wisconsin, the Texas Education Board’s attack on textbooks, and the House in the Iowa Legislators assault on peaceful protests unleashes the slurry of Annette Sweeney of Alden, Iowa) the US Constitution will falter more than before when it was attacked by Antonin Scalia and Thomas Clarence, and with it democracy will die.

Among the most ignorant actions on the world stage is that illiterate and destitute mothers give birth to an additional 77 million new babies annually. They birth so many unwanted, uncared-for, unfed or underfed children that no third world country can manage to educate those children, and the same insanity is occurring in the USA where the Tea Baggers control Congress, deny funding for family planning, and now in such backward states as Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, etc. are trying to deny women their right to a sane and safe abortion. To make things worse, the biblical illiterate and evangelicals are demanding not only that a woman carry an unwanted fetus to term thus adding to the overpopulation, but that homosexual men and women are to be “deprogrammed” (as Scott Lively opined when speaking with Exodus International, an anti-homosexual mind-altering organization) and encouraged to have “more babies.” Mass illiteracy begets mass human population growth that feeds into more human misery on scales heretofore unknown to humanity while land becomes more scarce as construction soars, water is polluted (especially by Koch Industries), icecaps are melting leading to the diminishing of clear drinking water, and temperatures rise with global warming and earthquakes are moving entire nations, such as Japan from their traditional locations as tectonic plate collide (Japan moved 13 miles closer to the USA).

The American “dream” of every family owning its own home is disappearing rapidly, with many retired Americans moving to cheaper Third World nations to eek out a livelihood on dwindling pensions and a threatened Social Security net.  While the South American nation of Perú will most likely be a country without any water by 2060, the future of the USA is as dark and forbidding (see the DVD “Blind Spot” at www.snagfilms.com/films/title/blind_spot/).

Who are the dropouts?

• Students from low-income families are six times more likely to drop out of school
• Females who gave birth during their teen years.
• Youth whose parents did not complete high school.
• Youth who attend public schools where education is weak and time is given to “life-time experiences” rather than the mastery of subject matter and the arts and sciences.

Dropouts earned $17,299 compared to $26,933 paid to high school graduates. Dropouts regularly depend on public assistance programs, while those who stay in school seldom seek welfare assistance.  Most people are told by tabloid journalism (Fox News, National Inquirer, etc) that it is the teachers’ fault. This lie has been paid for by Koch Industries money, with Michelle Rhee, former Washington DC schools chancellor working feverishly to undermine and destroy teachers’ unions in lockstep with Scott Walkers attack on teachers in Wisconsin, while the most ignorant politician on the east coast, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg asserted that effective teachers need no experience and has made it his official policy to eliminate seniority when determining layoffs (it’s hard to think of another field in which experience is considered a liability and those who know the least about the nuts and bolts of an enterprise are embraced as experts).

Chris Christie (R-NJ; vacations in FL when there is a blizzard in NJ)

Chris Christie, New Jersey’s Koch-owned governor, has slashed $1.2 billion from state school aid while blasting teachers’ unions, and calling, in Hitleresque fashion, for a “final solution” to pull money out of public schools and give $360 million in tax credit for a tuition voucher system for the parents to use for any school they believed best.  Objective analyses suggest that removing ineffective teachers is an excessively slow and arduous process, and the fault lies with the administrators who are reluctant to fire cronies or keep statistics on teaching effectiveness. The LIFO system (last in – first out) for layoffs does need reform because it contributes to high turnover in the most disadvantaged schools that are schools hardest to staff especially in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.  In these metropolitan areas many veteran teachers have found ways to avoid being assigned to such schools–or leave teaching to be replaced by incompetent, lazy, and inexperienced younger people who see teaching as a temporary step before marriage or “getting a real job” in the world of business or industry. It is the student that suffers, and this pain grows as the books used in these schools become less reliable and literature in all fields becomes suspect based on political expediency–but teachers, nationwide are fight back against fascists like Scott Walker, Michael Bloomberg and their gaggle, but holding workshops for parents, organizing special school programs for low-income and people of color as well as for students who have English as a second language. Strong, well-qualified teachers are teaching new and less-qualified teachers in California. English as a Second Language learners are offered tutorial help, and people of color are a part of a school sponsored program for advanced skills. (For more, see: http://www.thenation.com/article/160090/teachers-arent-enemy)

Literacy and education today are, at best, a bad joke; in reality, literacy and education is a lie and self-promotion, as with Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea (it was raved at http://www.threecupsoftea.com/) where he claimed he slept in his car to save rent so that he would be able to fulfill a promise to build a school in remote northern Pakistan (read: Mortenson, Greg and Relin, David Oliver (2006). Three cups of tea : one man’s mission to fight terrorism and build nations– one school at a time (New York: Viking) which has gone through several printings). The book became so popular that it was at the top of the reading list for US troops being deployed to Afghanistan, even though the Pakistani knew it was a lie but were never listened to as they denounced the imposter. Americans accepted the lie as they were desperate for an American hero in a war-torn nation (Pakistan) and a divided country (the USA).  The startling part was that Mortenson picked Gilgit-Baltisan, which is a peaceful (predominantly Ismaili) region whose inhabitants see the Paris-based Aga Khan as their spiritual leader (because of a strong Tibetan Buddhist influence). While Mortenson pushed that he was waging a lonely, almost solitary, battle against ignorance, the Aga Khan Development Network has been building hundreds of schools in the region and staffing them with qualified educators–who give Gilgit-Baltistan one of the highest literacy rates in Pakistan and a model for the rest of the nation that drones like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rand Paul cannot fathom (http://www.alternet.org/story/150716/exposed_literary_fraud_reveals_lengths_americans_take_to_deceive_themselves_to_justify_war_and_intervention?akid=6879.92205.I4v4b4&rd=1&t=21).

Ignorance is deliberate denial of reality or the transmogrification of reality. Hatred is the justification of self-induced and self-created ignorance. This hatred built on ignorance is increasingly a daily event in the USA and the world. It can be especially seen in this week’s attack in a McDonald’s in New York City.  It occurred when a transgendered individual was beaten brutally while a person of color chortled and filmed the assault (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/mcdonalds/mcdonalds-employee-filmed-brutal-beating-640128). To condone the assault is common among those so filled with hatred that they match Congressman Steven King (R-IA), who declared that there were no hate crimes–that such occurred only in the mind. 

Steven King (R-IA) claims hate crimes are a "state of mind"

Steven King of Iowa’s 5th Congressional District has a long record of hate speeches. When the US Congress attempted to pass an anti-hate crimes bill, Iowa Representative King, joined by Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX), admitted during the hearing that he is opposed to all hate crimes laws, even offered an amendment to add “immutable characteristics” such as eye color, hair color – or lack thereof – to the classes covered by the bill in order to make a mockery of the legislation’s purpose to protect actual targeted minorities from hate violence (http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/republican-congressman-thinks-hate-crime-is-a-thought-crime/legislation/2009/04/22/1958).  Over King’s protestations and fuming on the floor of the House, not only was the bill passed into law (2009) but carried with it the name of the Matthew Shepard Act in memory of a teenager crucified on a barbed-wire fence and left to die in a blinding snowstorm in Wyoming.

Matthew Shepherd crucified in Wyoming blizzard

Iowa’s Republican Congressman is so hate-filled that he is a disgrace not only to Iowa’s 5th Congressional District but to the mortal race. The only paleoeccentric that comes close to matching Steven King of Iowa is US Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) who joined King by condemning consideration of a class action lawsuit brought by black farmers against the US Department of Agriculture for discrimination–which King said was tantamount to “modern-day slavery reparations”. King contended “It seems like today everyone gets to claim they’re a victim except the most persecuted minority: The majority–white people.” What King and Bachmann ignore is that the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a formal report that found that only three out of the 15,000 claims processed in the first round of Pigford were fraudulent. (http://bit.ly/feGUE9; http://bit.ly/e4Lz; cp. http://iowaindependent.com/48369/stephen-colbert-highlights-kings-slavery-reparations-comments)

Latinos make up a small part of the GOP but their group is growing–yet without any love for Iowa Rep. King. They see King as a divider, rather than a uniter, and one who would drive Latinos out of the GOP. GOP/Tea Bag Latinos are especially worried about King’s insistence on “birther status” (denying USA citizenship to Latino babies born in the USA to illegal immigrants). (http://washingtonindependent.com/103273/latino-gop-group-steve-king-leading-on-immigration-would-kill-the-partys-2012-chances; cp. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/roughsketch/2010/09/stephen_colbert_comes_face_to.html).

Steven King’s anti-Muslim sentiments came to the front during the 2008 presidential race between John McCain (R-AZ) and Barrack Obama (D-IL). King has been recorded as prophesying: “I don’t want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name – whatever their religion their father might have been,” I’ll just say this: When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States — I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam? I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaeda, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror. Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world…If he were strong on national defense and said ‘I’m going to go over there and we’re going to fight and we’re going to win, we’ll come home with a victory,’ that’s different. But that’s not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he’s elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror.” (“Local News: King announced bid for fourth term (03/08/08)”. Spencer Daily Reporter. 2008-03-08. http://www.spencerdailyreporter.com/story/1316727.html.) A constant critic of President Obama, King called the nation’s leader a racist: On G. Gordon Liddy’s radio show, King said, “The president has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race – on the side that favors the black person.” (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20007729-503544.html, cp. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37710180)

Any public assistance was not only a plot against white people “of means” but according to Tea Bagger Steven King of Iowa, Obama’s proposed universal medical care plan was an “affront to God.” (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000771-503544.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody) For more hate from Steven King of Iowa, consider:

• King compared immigrants to “livestock” in proposing an electrified fence for the southern border (http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/13/king-fence/).
• He has called undocumented immigration a “slow-moving terrorist attack” (http://hispanic.cc/groups_cite_hate_in_immigration_debate.htm).
• King said that each senator who votes for the comprehensive immigration reform bill should “wear a scarlet letter A for amnesty” (http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2007/06/15/news/iowa/7cb56032b3a91748862572fb001048ba.txt).
• King said the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib amounted to little more than “hazing.” (http://freshpaint.blogspot.com/2004/05/into-pot-with-him.html)
  

  Steven King (R-IA) says that murder at Abu Gharib prison was not torture

Abu Ghraib prison (US military tortures Iraqis, approved of by GW Bush)

• King refused to vote for an innocuous House resolution commending the Muslims on the Ramadan holiday. (To attack those who did, he turned around and proposed a resolution commemorating Christmas. King, who never finished college nor studied liberal arts or humanities and is short on academic understanding has no knowledge of the difference between the word “commend” and “commemorate”.) Watch flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/12/kingchristmas5.320.240.flv and read http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2007/12/hastings-im-no.html
• King has decried an “assault on Christmas” from “secularists” who want to “eradicate Christ from Christmas” (http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/12/king-christmas-ii/).
• King released a “report” baselessly claiming that undocumented immigrants have murdered more Americans than the combined death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 (http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/9201.html). This was refuted even by the conservative http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008597.php
• King praised Joe McCarthy as “a great American hero” (http://barkingdingo.blogspot.com/2005/11/rupublican-congressman-thinks-mccarthy.html).
• After the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed, King derisively said he was now at a place where there are 72 virgins who “probably all look like Helen Thomas” (http://www.clickorlando.com/news/9409191/detail.html).

In addition to his impressive record of hate (http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14826.html#more-14826), he has also been prone to remarks of pure idiocy. For example, King said in 2006 that the average civilian in Washington DC is probably “at far greater risk” of being killed than an average civilian in Iraq. After Bush vetoed a bill that would have expanded children’s health insurance, King declared it a “victory” for children. The Des Moines Registerwrote in October 29, 2005: “Spare us more embarrassment: Replace King.” King is heavily sponsored by American Future Fund, funded by the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries that rank in the top ten of the world’s polluters.

Michelle Bachman (R-MN) claims that health care is not a universal right

The only person to equal in ignorance and hatred of Iowa’s Steven King is Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachman, a would-be Tea Party presidential contender in 2012 (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-somPndtLY and http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=michele+bachman+hate+speech). She wants to criminalize same-sex marriages where they are legal (http://chicago.gopride.com/news/article.cfm/articleid/17738401/michele-bachman-calls-for-criminalization-of-samesex-marriage-during-speech-in-iowa), rejects any form of national health care or environmental concern and wants to close the EPA as instructed by the Koch Brothers  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/25/michele-bachmann-state-of-union-response_n_813972.html) claimed that members of Congress were anti-American (http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/michelle-bachmann-gives-voice-rights) rejects the right to peaceful protests (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/12/michele-bachmann-new-hamp_n_834978.html) has no knowledge of USA history, on par with Bristol and Sarah Palin, and argues that the Blacks were not slaves in the colonies, that John Quincy Adams was an abolitionist, and that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were fighting against slavery (although they both owned slaves, and both had forced sex resulting in babies with slave women), and Home Depot builds Mexican slums (http://wonkette.com/435940/incredible-michele-bachmann-speech-gets-every-single-historical-fact-wrong). The all-time record was set by Bachman when she declared that the passage of hate-crimes legislation (Matthew Shepard Act, more precisely) denied people free speech: We just saw the hate crimes law pass…really that bill is more about restricting free speech and free expression of American citizens, in contradistinction to the First Amendment that wants free speech and expression for all of Americans.” (http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2010/January/Michele-Bachmann-GOPs-New-Front-runner/). Like a former German leader in the 1930s-1940s, Bachman gives all the credit for her speeches and politics to “the Lord” in the same manner as Martin Luther detailed that peasants have no rights and that the leaders of the country had the right to kill anyone who disagreed with the leadership (Luther, Martin (1524-1526), Wider die räuberischen und mörderischen Rotten der Bauern) or sought to change it from its traditional path (Luther, Martin (1543) Von den Jüden und jren Lügen; Luther wrote: Luther describes Jews as a “base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.” Luther wrote that they are “full of the devil’s feces … which they wallow in like swine,” (Oberman, Heiko. Luthers Werke. Erlangen 1854, 32:282, 298, in Grisar, Hartmann. Luther. St. Louis 1915, 4:286 and 5:406,) and the synagogue is an “incorrigible whore and an evil slut” (cf. Michael, Robert (2006). Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 112.). An Armageddonist, Luther declared that all power lay with the nobility and that Hell could open at any time: He even venerates those who fight against the peasants, stating that “anyone who is killed fighting on the side of the rulers may be a true martyr in the eyes of God”. He closes with a sort of disclaimer, “if anyone thinks this too harsh, let him remember that rebellion is intolerable and that the destruction of the world is to be expected every hour”.  It is equal to any speech by Steven King of Iowa or Michele Bachman of Minnesota.