American Mental Disabilities

I remember what it was like in the United States in the 1960s.  There were powerful right wing forces in the political culture which in some parts of the country were supported by a large percentage of the public.  These forces were partially the remnants of the totally discredited political movement known as McCarthyism.  There were others of course such as the Ku Klux Klan founded on racial and religious xenophobia.  National Socialism emerged in Europe before it became an active movement in the United States in the 1930s.  FYI.

This shouldn’t be dismissed lightly as thousands of lives were lost in the rampant anarchy that existed regionally in the post civil war political culture that really wasn’t rolled back effectively until United States federal courts begin ruling that the American Constitution and its amendments did apply to all citizens and that organized mass murder and terrorism were illegal everywhere.  Enforcing it was another matter for the Executive Branch which was at times required to employ federal troops, that is the active U.S. Army, to insure Federal Court rulings were followed.  Specific legislation was required to suppress the most abhorrent of these aberrations of acceptable conduct and behavior.  See for example the history of Civil Rights legislation in the U.S.

Stupidity could be considered an antecedent to the popularity of these beliefs and movements and one hoped and thought that over time the mean level of stupidity in a population would increase.  That is to say that the average stupidity level would represent diminished and declining manifestations of stupidity indices in the population. Now an observer might conclude that perhaps this is not the case, that operationally defined measurements of stupidity show greater stupidity in the population now, that is, currently, than in the past.

I can think for example of the presidency of George W. Bush.  Whether it will be considered a historically failed presidency is really not the issue here.  What one does know is that during his occupancy of the office there were many disasters.  So many in fact that this might be considered the iconic signature of his time in federal office.  The list is long and I’m not going into it but what is interesting is that it took six years before the American voters had suffered so much that they decided to vote the Republican Party his administration represented into a minority in the congress.  Even then, the outcome of the presidential election of 2008 was as much a product of the constellation of a blundered Republican campaign and predictable but largely coincidental events. 

On the final weekend before the 2008 election it still wasn’t certain what the outcome would be.  The condition the country was in was something I summarized in early October as the following illustrates.  For additional insight one may also read my article Living on the Edge of Madness written in September 2009.

Eight Years Republican President, Eight Years Republican Congress, Eight Years Republican Ideology

Fri Oct 3, 2008

* U.S. House of Representatives approves Wall Street/bank bailout

* Jobs fall the most in 5-1/2 years

* S&P 500, Nasdaq have worst week since Sept 2001

* Dow has worst week since July 2002

* National debt topped $10 trillion

One wonders, is this the country the wing-nuts now proclaim they want back? 

In any event,  in 2008 the outcome of the election was still not guaranteed.  Things were still so uncertain that on the weekend before the election, I recorded the following thoughts.

I'm writing this on Saturday afternoon just 3 days before the 2008 Presidential election in the United States.  From what I've seen over the past 6 months, I don't know and can't imagine what this country is becoming or already is.  Knowing there are people out there who express the kind of views I've seen during this timeframe tells me it may be time to look for a better place to spend the rest of my life.  

If McCain is the president elect on November 5, it is likely that he will face court challenges over how votes were counted and how voting may have been suppressed in key states he will have somehow won.  And the wrath directed at the United States from all over the world will be profound. 

Furthermore the Democrats will control both houses of Congress, in all probability by greater margins than they now have.  The savageness, extremism, "do anything to win" campaign methods, there is no need to cite examples, McCain and his running mate have employed in the run-up to this election are hardly going to be soon forgotten. As mentioned, the next president will have to deal with many problems.  

A short list of domestic issues: The fundamentals of the economy are NOT good; we have seen 8 years of greed and corruption.  We are going in to a major recession, unemployment may reach 8% sometime next year.  Major American corporations, not just financial entities, are on the verge of failure.  The rest of the world is leaping ahead of the United States in all measures of a national economy and indications of what a government does to protect and "Promote the General Welfare" of its most vulnerable citizens.

I know how it should end but I don't know how it will end.  After November 4, the United States will emerge as either a bitterly divided racist country and a danger to the world; or a county where the people decisively voted to return the nation to its Constitution and citizens.

I was wrong about the second possible event.  I guess I gave too much credit to the intelligence of the American people.  Because after the election was decided, a concerted effort to discredit the voter’s choice immediately began.  But it was initiated by the losers, that is to say the stupid side.

It can best be understood as an effort to blame the perversions of the past eight years on those who opposed them. Furthermore it was clear that the accumulated problems of the past eight years of Republican orthodoxy had produced were not going to be resolved quickly.  Indeed soon it became obvious that conditions had in fact become much worse than the most ominous evaluations forecasted.   

Sometimes at least Americans have cooperated in times of crisis, the civil war being an exception.  Whether it was an exception is now debatable. 

In what might be accurately called the U.S. Civil War of the 21^st Century, one started seeing events that depicted the stupidity indices found in the 1960s appear retrospectively as an enlightenment. 

These are the typical events and attitudes I saw supporting this conclusion:

It is obvious that all of the so-called “spontaneous” gatherings one is seeing in the United States these days are based on one event: the results of the 2008 Presidential election.  The people one sees comparing President Obama to Hitler, Stalin, Castro who also claim to be “praying” [sic] (one doesn’t “pray” to Satin, one bargains one’s soul) that he will “die from brain cancer just like Ted Kennedy” are being motivated by one issue.  They simply can’t accept an African American president.  The antics of nut cases like the "birthers", the "deathers" , those who dispense the never changing psychobabble on am radio and TV talk shows and the pathetic activities of Palinites - all result from this single fact.  That their act is causing their own self destruction doesn’t matter.  They are reality deniers, who like all conspiracy theorists, believe that what is real is in fact imaginary and the corollary belief that what is imaginary is real.

What it was leading to at this point though was still uncertain.  The new President was taking on the difficult problems and had already gone a long way toward returning respectability once again toward the United States in most of the world.

The failure of the opposition party to rally to a common cause and the totally bogus and illusory Pseudo-Gemeinschaft (false sense of community) like campaign which consists of slightly obscure threats of violence against the Obama administration while remaining completely oblivious to events of the real world.  The most obvious of these was the denial of past reality and the de-linking of these events with what was indeed a crisis in the present tense.

So where exactly are we now?  An alternate reality is not an absurd reaction to what is taking place.  According to the Washington Post/ABC News poll published July 13, 2010:

Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Four months before midterm elections that will define the second half of his term, nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy.

Essentially the current president is demeaned because of his accomplishments.  

Getting health care reform legislation into law.

Bringing regulation to Wall Street and Banks to prevent the reoccurrence of the catastrophic economic failures that became obvious in the fall of 2008.

Attempting to create 21^st Century job opportunities for working Americans.  

All of these efforts would have had a better chance of success without the all prevailing pseudo-Gemeinschaft retrenchment efforts underway even before the results were in from the 2008 general election. 

My feeling is that Americans deserve the pain they are experiencing.  You see, the more stupid an idea is the more acceptance it receives.  This should be no surprise.  It is the basis for all hate and xenophobic mass movements.  The criminal negligence of British Petroleum aka BP had aided and abetted such movements to an extent that defies credibility. 

And of course Americans understand nothing.  Reasonable explanations, basically anything requiring more than 30 seconds concentration on something more complicated than simply speaking without obscenities, are never an acceptable explanation for a series of events when hate mongering and prejudice offer a much less demanding way to view the world. 

It was clear in 2008 what had gotten the United States into the condition it was in then.  And now Americans want more of it.  Or as the pundits say, the “voters” are in an anti-incumbent mood. 

Well of course they are, that is so much easier than dealing with reality, working, actual problem solving and trying to understand and resolve moderately complex things themselves. 

The mindset of the average American today is not capable of dealing with ideas and concepts.  They have had no exposure to science and the scientific method.  This lack of scientific skills also permeates those they would select to govern their country, specifically that same bunch that ran the country from January 2001 through January 2009. 

Make no mistake, there are a few basic facts here.

Obama inherited the financial disaster and the budget deficit from Bush. 

The whole financial structure was on the verge of collapse in the Fall of 2008. 

Americans and members of the American government are not familiar with Keynesian economics.  When an economy is becoming depressed, losing jobs, the public sector must take action to effectively stimulate the economy back to a condition or growth and job creation.  No Republican understands this. 

The Republican Party has benefited more from the stupidity found in the American population that any other entity. 

Right now additional stimulus is needed not less. Deficits – the economic kind – are largely caused by an unregulated economic environment freeing Wall Street speculators and opportunistic banks that Republicans since Reagan have attempted to create.  See Borrow and Spend Doctrine for more on this.

Americans are so stupid they will devote large amounts of time and money to listen to psychobabble from paranoid idiots like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. 

If you are looking for the bottom line, that is it.  At this point I realize that I can rest my case.

In any event, after racism Obama is hated because of his achievements as President and because he is an educated person. Clearly anyone educated and intelligent in America today is considered a threat to the Republican Party, its fellow travelers and the corporations that control it. 

If one is looking for an example of a sick and depraved culture, it is not necessary to look any further.  It is found here right now.  And throughout history the sick and depraved usually find a means for obtaining whatever it is that they want.    

So if you are so stupid that you don’t understand any of this, they you should reread it and check all of my references until you do.  If you still don’t get it, then you are worse than stupid, you are comatose.  You missed the first decade of the 21^st Century. 

There is still help.  You can watch the documentary Plunder: The Crime of Our Time and begin to understand that all of the really bad things happened before November 2008.  And to get an idea of what is being planned to keep you stupid for the next decade of the 21^st Century, you can read Redo That Voodoo.   

EPILOG.

My essays are generally about historical trends and I try and stay on the correct side of history, that is to say the side that contains the truth.  When I make an assertion, I believe that history will validate what I say or I wouldn’t make it.  Current events are generally a topic I leave to the newspapers.

However the behavior of Andrew Breitbart, FOX News (sic) and other right wing factories of character assassination regarding Shirley Sherrod are shocking even to me.  What can one say about an organization like Fox News (sic)?  Have you no sense of decency, at long last have you no sense of decency at all? 

Apparently not, apparently FOX News (sic) is simply an organ of right wing political propaganda whose intentions are not to report news but to pursue a political agenda for purposes one can only speculate about. 

Thus I can only repeat what I’ve said before on numerous occasions.   

Don’t believe anything you hear on television.  ALWAYS get multiple sources and don’t take any quote sourced by FOX News (sic) until you hear the original in its entirety.   

FOX News (sic) does not cover the news, it is a political organ of the right wing majority of the Republican Party.  And the Republican Party is what brought you George W. Bush and the first decade of the 21^st Century and they are attempting a comeback in the second decade. 

Understand them for what they are.  Truth means nothing to them and what they call “truth” one day may not be what they call “truth” the next day.  That’s how it worked with the Nazi’s.  Take note and be attentive.

You really have to be aware of this and the best action you can take is to boycott them completely. 

Good night and good luck.