In an apparent effort to bring the American experiment in democracy to a close, the past 30 years of Republican dumbing down of its citizens comes to fruition with this. Americans, by strong majorities, want President Obama and Congress to enact policies that would spend money on infrastructure, provide support to states to curtail public employee layoffs, and reduces the Federal deficit through a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes. Good news, America! These are the policies for which President Obama and Democrats in Congress have advocated consistently for the past couple of years. Your prayers are answered!
Except, of course, in the same poll, Americans strongly disapprove of President Obama on the economy, which makes sense because Americans are stupid. Yeah, I'm talking to you, you mongoloid simpletons. You're a conspiracy of dunces if ever such a gathering could be organized. Jesus.
This type of poll result has been cropping up for decades now. Americans deeply wanted a total renovation of their healthcare system in 1992, but overwhelmingly disapproved of Hillary Clinton's proposals to do just that, even though her ideas aligned perfectly with what Americans said they wanted. Americans have never approved of the Republican agenda, but they're also too goddamned stupid to know that the Republican agenda is what they hate. Yeah, trust the Republicans on fiscal matters, you halfwits. Cuz we don't know where that leads, right?
People have made hay out of teabagger idiots screaming "Get your gummit hands off my gummit-funded healthcare" for a couple of years. It's funny and it perfectly frames the divide between extreme Republican policies and reality. But the thing is, that old douchebag with the fundamental lack of understanding about where his bread is buttered is, in only a slightly milder form, representative of the American electorate. Americans actually don't have a clue that the things Republicans do when they're in office are the things Americans want the least.
Nobody wants to see Medicare ended. Nobody wants to let Social Security become insolvent. Nobody wants to lay off cops and firefighters and take their chances on their own against crime and disaster. Nobody wants what Republicans consistently hand them, and yet here they go blaming a Democratic president for the policies and obstructionism of a Republican machine. Gah!
So I put it to you that, despite conventional wisdom, the problem that Democrats have in selling their brand to reluctant Americans isn't a matter of messaging. I've heard that for over two decades now, and it never resonated with me because it's simply not true. Americans know who will keep Medicare alive and who'll smother granny with a pillow to save a buck. How could they not know, when every single Republican in Washington since Reagan has explicitly endorsed eliminating the social safety net? This isn't a matter of saying the magic words or selling the goodness of government to a center right nation. Americans are big ol' socialists, when their own interests are concerned.
No, the problem isn't that Americans aren't exposed to good messaging or that they need to be convinced that government can be a positive force in their life. The problem is that they're too fucking stupid to keep so many things in their head. It's too hard for them to remember history, understand nuanced policy, and cut through the bullshit of the Fox fear machine, all at the same time. And that's because the Republicans didn't just sell their snake oil to the masses, they prepped the audience first by compromising the quality of our excellent public schools system. Think it's an accident that Americans can't fucking read when they graduate high school? Come on, kids. Dumb workers are cheap workers; smart workers are difficult to manage and impossible to fool for long. And what these corporate overlords want is cheap, pliable, stupid Americans who have enough education to work, but not so much that they start to think. That's what they've always wanted.
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, (A)nd if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
Thomas Jefferson
That's why we have to protect and nurture teachers. We have to raise up the profile of that noble profession and we have to remake schools into palaces of learning. We have to pull our treasure out of wars for corporations and put it into schools for our kids. Instad of putting a rifle in the hands of our civic-minded kids, we need to put them into classrooms. We can't let our kids be dumbed down the way most Americans have been.
We have to do better than our parents have done for the past 30 years. Republicans are trying to do to America what Paul Ryan tried to do to Medicare. They're trying to change it from a land governed of, by, and for the people into one of, by, and for the corporations. They'll still call it America, but it won't bear any resemblence to that high ideal. And that's what will come to pass if their other project, the stupidization of America, continues to progress unchecked. Srsly.