21 June 2010 Unleash the hounds of early summer

21 June 2010 Unleash the hounds of early summer


How Obama changed the right



By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Monday, June 21, 2010

“The rise of the Tea Party movement is a throwback to an old form of libertarianism that sees most of the domestic policies that government has undertaken since the New Deal as unconstitutional. It typically perceives the most dangerous threats to freedom as the design of well-educated elitists out of touch with "American values."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/20/AR2010062002367.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

The Tea Party mobs are composed of the same part of the populace who championed George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. They’re as easily swayed by the quasi-literate efforts of an aging beauty pageant contestant as they were by an aging actor displaying the signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s when first elected.

They complain, endlessly, about the liberal, educated, elitists – presumably anyone with a university degree that reads for education after graduation – but are enthralled by actors and pageant contestants who are participants in far more exclusive social elite – essentially a continuation of the jock and cheerleader/homecoming queen cliques of their high school days.

The animosity toward “educated elitists” seems to become evident in our culture as early as in grade school. In my youth, grade school students were tracked and sorted by reading and math abilities. By Jr. High (middle school) the lines were drawn and they haven’t seemed to vary much since. The VietNam pro/anti polarization that became so evident then seems to have remained mostly a constant since. The pro-war folks were the jocks, the pre-law people, beauty queen contestants, automobile dealership owners, etc. Those who found a safe place to avoid the war, those who enlisted, those who took the blue collar factory jobs, are, all too often just as opposed to the “liberal elite” as they were then. Those who evaded the war, who earned the degrees that put them into helping, construct a social safety net, which became underpaid teachers in underfunded schools, are just as unable to communicate the truths of science, social engineering, and all the reasons we need to choose science over mythology as they were in 1967.

It’s a long and bitter divide that isn’t likely to be resolved any time soon. The right wing will deal in lies and convince the working class and middle class to vote against their own welfare and self-interest yet again. The left will deal in truth, which unfortunately offends the mob that believes the myths. And the theocrats will do all they can to force their particular myth into laws that require everyone else to accept their myths.

Truth may set us free but most people don’t want to hear the truth. If it disturbs their self-image, if it indicates that their youthful glory wasn’t glorious, it is highly unwelcome. That social separation that took place in grade school and junior high is still driving the society today. Perhaps we’d have been better off if our schooling was only about education.

It puzzles me that anyone should hate the “Educated elite.” Education is one of those things that called out to our immigrant ancestors. They wanted a shot at education and the good things it brings. Once we made our voyages here, education became much more accessible. It wasn’t landed gentry who developed manned flight, who built the first nuclear reactor, who took us to the moon and back. It was the sons and daughters of immigrants who valued education as much as life. Somewhere, along a twisted path, we’ve decided that a lack of education, illiteracy, racism, and hatred are alright if you believe the right myth instead of science, if you can throw a ball or sit in a mob watching others throw it better, if your genetic coding provides physical symmetry, if you can make yourself part of the mob.

I’m lucky. While I’m not that well educated, I appreciate what education brings and abhor what illiteracy offers. The elite that draws so much scorn and hatred provides us with medical care, with great music, architecture, works of art, etc. If the mob lacks the ability to see and hear these benefits, I’m still able to appreciate them. I was brought up well, learned to appreciate knowledge for its own sake, quality above quantity.

We would do well to recall the ruinous period of Chinese History when Mao drove his mobs into the Great Cultural Revolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

We’re seeing what may be a similar event building here. The threatened use of private firearms to “protect the Constitution” is as much a potential cultural disaster as what Mao unleashed.

Walter M Miller Jr. may well have captured more of our future than he intended.

Beate Leibowitz, ora pro me!



The pool heater flamed into function this morning. Much gratitude over small matters.