The Dumbing-down of America

Sometimes I feel like the chairman of the bored.  Three days ago I was in a major state of financial crisis but mercifully everything panned out successfully.   But it’s pretty pathetic that the only excitement around here is negative developments.   I think all of these radio call in show hosts are “running out of gas”.  Back about twenty years ago Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedies was on the Michael Benner Sunday morning show, and I think that's where I first heard the term of "the dumbing down of America".  Maybe it's me but I feel that even then - - there was an entirely more intelligent clientel on television and radio talk shows.  Unquestionably you had people at least with a general respect for Intelligent thought and perception - in general.  And as far as statements by right wing tea baggers they don’t even register on my radar any more.  They’re just noise and static to me.  The LA Lakers are down 0 and 2 to the SA Spurs.  Now all they have to do is to win four games when San Antonio only has to win two.  The Clippers are up two and 0, which is good.  David Cruise was on some rant about how Latino families need to learn English.  And he blames the parents of these kids for not speaking English in the home.  But most of all he blames Spanish only TV stations.  We’ve only had these for fifty years.  It’s funny how you wake up one morning and decide that something which has always been - - is suddenly news.  Most of the Latinos I encounter have perfectly adequate English - - and probably more literate than your average Mississippi high school graduate.  Then I got tired of that and Katie Kuric had this thing on Selene Dion for the entire hour, all about how she was discovered by this much older men- - when she was just twelve.   I blame lack of academic skills, if anything, to “teaching to the test” and all of this wide spread cheating- - by teachers and school district officials.  Also there is a massive Dumbing Down of text books, most of which come from Texas.  Apparently there was one middle school Biology test in Texas where the students were asked such questions as “Dinasaurs lived a hundred million years ago”.  The correct answer is False.  Or “Humans and dinosaurs existed at the same time”.  The correct answer to that question is true.  Or various historic events in American history have been taken out of school text books.  But for Christ’s sake don’t blame the Latino culture.  You still have - - it was one Judas Latino on the air who disses everything even vaguely Latino- - and even suggests not only should Latinos abandon Spanish and think in American terms, but even to avoid traditional Mexican food.  Personally my biggest complaint, now that I’ve taken the time to think about it a little- - is that today we have the “Dumbing Down of the Internet”.  Pretty soon you’ll be able to finger paint with Excel.  They design these programs today for blithering idiots, and the blithering idiots have taken over the air waves.  I’ve seen a noted drop in the intelligent level of the Internet even in the seven and a half years or so I’ve been ON the Internet.  Back twenty years ago you didn’t have this problem because if you were using LINIX or something to access the Internat you had to know something about computer syntax.  Now you don’t even have to know how to read a map.  You ask your car for directions and your car gives them to you, verbally.  I may do a thing about life forty years ago.  In those days few people knew about computers and if anything computers were seen as “a good idea that never caught on” and basically a joke because they would send you a refund check for three hundred thousand dollars or something for over-paying your bill.  And there is Judy’s remark of just the other day saying “Corporations may have every intention of complying with your request, but once something gets in the Computer, it’s nearly impossible to get it out”.  It used to be I was surprised to learn I was smarter than nine tenths of the math students in applying for college.  I’m going to have to reassess that today.  I’m convinced I’m smarter than about 98% of the people in the general public.  They say a lot of these right wing know it alls are unable to name even one present Supreme Court Justice.  And there are all these comical errors students make about World War II.  And of course there are all these product recalls because after a hundred years or so, this or that product is deemed as “unsafe”.  Apparently there was some old rich lady who had all of her extensive rose garden removed from her Estate- - because she didn’t want her two and three year old great grand children getting pricked by thorns.   The way I see it- - maybe we should have a mild form of “natural eugenics” to keep some of these blithering idiots from reproducing.  Fred Mac Murry once made a statement that could apply to today’s computer software but at the time referred to equipment aboard a battleship.  And that is “Military equipment is produced by geniouses designed to be used by idiots”.  Now in a move tword idiocy- - Wendy Gruel has suddenly gained ten points on Eric Garsetti.  I wouldn’t be surprised is some media news was designed for “the herd instinct” in human beings.  Once one animal heads off in a certain direction - - the entire herd then follows him.   Maybe people of LA who want to go back to the bad old days of Tom Bradley deserve to go back into a forty year time warp.   I think I’ll save the spring l973 flashback.  Let’s just say that back then we had Hi Fi and stereo and cassette tapes, and color TV.  The Sonny and Cher show was one of my favorite programs from the period.  Back then Richard Nixon was considered one of the dumbest politicians ever to walk the face of the earth.  By today’s standards he’d be considered one of the smartest, not to mention – most progressive.  They even had Video cameras you could buy back then.  But strangely, calculators were considered an almost novelty device.   Personally I wouldn’t mind being forty years younger.   And remember the most important fact on this page about forty years ago.  And that is buying power of workers’ wages was at its all time peak, and Labor Unions were things that Archie Bunker types joined.

People have said it but few want to hear it.  America got off really lucky last week considering the way things could have turned out.  Three people died but to quote Stalin, "One death is a tragedy - a million is a statistic".  Who cares about all of the deaths from guns and pollutants in our society causing various cancers- - - go golly we are going to "git" those Al Qaeda people.  This even though those two brothers by all accounts were "self radicalized".  This is like slapping a paternity suit on a virgin who only masturbates twelve times a day.  The Chechnyans have on multiple occasions disowned this action.  One person on the radio stated that "even a Terrorist has to have some sort of - Agenda, or reason for doing what he does.  Their war is with the Soviets and not a Marathon where people participate from all over the World.  Think about it.  Now we are told from two sources that the brothers intended to go to Times Square and detonate one of their pressure cooker bombs there and they had six more bombs ready to go.  It's strange but true that sometimes people complain about how bad they've had it, and suddenly they have an eye opening experiance that makes them realize they actually got off Easy.  (Selah)

Of course you realize that the rich among us have such fantastic amounts of money- - it’s almost unfathomable to the rest of us.  I know I am blessed to have a good HD TV and this computer - - etcetra.  There is some merit in “playing with the card deck you are dealt”.   Actually we need more people like Nicole on Days of our Lives, who does a major good deed for two people, and she actually has to be reminded what a brave thing she did.  When it comes to monetery wealth - - one may think of the adage "You can't take it with you".  There is a line in an Eagle's song of,  "Why do fame and fortune shine on some people, and let the rest go free".  This whole idea of being judged on what you HAVE is perhaps the chief sin (among so MANY chief sins) of the Calvary Chapels.  What people ARE in terms of their character is far more important.  In terms of "caring for something you regard is valuable" the question may less be "how hard you worked to get it" but rather of "If I were to lose it, how hard would it be to replace?"  People often strive for things which, once they get them for whatever reason they reassess and decide they'd be just better off without it.  This is particularly true when it comes to a "losing philosophy of life' as well as a losing stock on the NYSE.  There is no virtue in hanging on to a turkey no matter how much emotional comittment you have in it.  Too many of these “live and local” people on KTLK at the nine o clock hour like I say are hung up on marriage and family life and speak of stupid decisions celebreties make concerning money or whatever.  Then Moe spouted some fantastic “facts” that just aren’t true.  He says there’s no such thing as a singer, for instance from the early sixties who had one big hit and lives on their residuals, for a song they didn’t write.  Elvis and Sinatra got famous on songs they didn’t write.   He comes up with the fantastic claim that if you had a million album seller ten years ago you probably got only a hundred thousand dollars for it.  That would mean at ten dollars a CD, which you can’t buy an album for- - the chief artist, the album’s reason for Being in the first place, with the star’s picture on the cover, the Artist gets only- - by Moe’s calculations- - way less than - - one percent for each CD sold.  He also stated as fact that no Artist gets royalties for records sold in a store ten years after production but that only in the first year or so does the artist get to collect on a record.   But I owe Moe.  Thanks for reminding me that for people who "invest" in you to pump you up - - - it will only come out of your Future Karma.   I see a lot of accountants working overtime in the Born Again sector in the next life.  Before this I had Mike Papentonio on.  These past two mornings he’s been talking about the “Gigantic fraud” perpetrated on the US Economy by President Obama “buying into this deficit myth” and that “austerity never works”.  He stated that interest rates remain low, so this isn’t the same as Ronald Reagan running up a record deficit when interest rates were running fifteen percent or something.  Granted.  Mike also stated that if we taxed foreign money of the rich – that we could indeed lower tax Rates- - and solve all our financial woes overnight.  Clearly throughout world history the rich have always exploited the poor, and the few have routinely dominated the Many.  So the question is why don’t all these Hollywood Stars just be shown where to sign to put their money in the Caaman islands or something- and protect their earnings from taxation.  Why doesn’t that happen, Moe?  I think rich trans-national corporations do have some kind of a “Racket” going on, where money is being leeched or to use Judy’s word “vented” from the economy in fantastic amounts.  Mike also points up that when anyone heard the word Deficet in a sentence- - the hear is pre programmed to think in terms of “drop in earning power” and “stolen investment capital” and eventual poverty because we all know “deficets cause unemployment”.   We are also told that there is no such thing as a government job building bridges and roads, or fire or police or dams or what have you?  And yet these Same people will insist that building a pipeline for - Non US dirty oil to pass through - - is somehow NOT a "temporary job" or that the idea of plunging into the past of a hundred years ago isn't somehow like "a pig returning once again to wallowing in the mud" as the Bible talks about.  To hear people like Judy talk- - there really “is no work out there” so you have to “create a job artificially”.  Then Judy points to horror stories like China building a subway nobody rides, or a sports arena that goes unused, and perhaps uncompleted.  According to Judy there just “Is” no work or employment that can be had by all of these unemployed, there unemployment numbers are destined to only stagnate if not get worse, like Mort Zuckerman preaches - - week In and week out.

Many people today have called today's economists "flat earth people" or to be fairer, Dante economists.  You see Dante believed in a round earth of sorts.  The "learned people' of the middle ages, believed in the Universe of the Ptolomy's of Egypt.  These scientists had an amazing system of spirals and loops to explain the movement of the planets.  It might make a cute graphics program, but it strange but sometimes the Truth of the matter is a whole lot Simpler than they'll ever see.  It's like any poor person rightly knows that the Rich are somehow getting more of a shrinking economic pie.  They don't even need a degree in economics to conclude what they intuitively Know.  Asking questions is good.  Many for instance might want to ask me "If a planet surrounding Aldeberan exploded in 1967 we should have seen it 38 degrees later in our telescopes in the year 2005, and we didn't.".   All I can say at this point is "The entire planet must have been cloaked".  Thus I am pointing to a Technology to explain my lack of evidence, whose existance has not been established.  I wouldn't be the first person to resort to such logic.  Many attack me assuming things 'whose existance there is no present evidence for".  You can't start off with a Belief or notion and then scour the earth trying - hope against hope- to come up with some shred of evidence that will validate your cocameme theories.  When you listen to tea party people talk, often they will just interrupt the line of dialog merely to spout one of their "Memes" or "talking points" or one of their "Everybody Knows - " type of statements.  Many people have these "trance inducing statements" that's somehow more valid if uttered in Greek or Hebrew, or in David Cruise' case, Spanish.  I don't care if you say it in pig Latin.  I know that contrary to the axiom, I'm a guy who "really does have something to prove' and I'll freely admit it.