Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree
EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY
EDUCATION IS THE KEY TO OUR SURVIVAL
Mindless, self-serving politicians like Donald Trump, and groups like QAnnon, are a direct result of America’s growing love affair with ignorance. The primary reason that a large segment of Trump’s base can’t see through his relentless lies, deception, and idiocy is due to a lack of education and their inability to think.
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During the Reagan administration conservatives embarked upon a concerted effort all across the country to dumb-down America. It started with a brutal assault on our educational system. Conservatives decided during the 70s that they never wanted to contend with another generation like they had to deal with during the 60's ever again. They were enraged by the fact that it was filled with arrogant elitists who placed humanism above "our great American traditions". They considered the educated progressives who came out of the 60s an un-American bunch of wild-eyed elitists radicals who embraced the ridiculous concept that all men, and women, were equal.
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And they were right. During the 60s the pursuit of knowledge came into vogue, and many young people began to think independently, and unshackled themselves from the traditions and attitudes of the past. They began to recognize that life in America wasn't just another episode of Ozzie and Harriet, and that the human rights of a large segment of our population was being completely ignored.
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The 60s was a generation when Black people became more educated, and a functional educational system informed many poor and middle-class Whites that they too were victims of the rich and powerful. As a result, they became part of a mass movement for justice and equality in America. But in response to this "horrific" change in thinking, many conservatives – who are dedicated to “conserving” past traditions - decided that the mass education of the public had to come to an end, because it was impossible for their agenda to thrive in an enlightened environment. So, they mounted an assault on our primary educational system, withholding funds from our K-12 schools, and made it much more difficult for the average American to obtain a college degree.
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That should have been a clear indication to their conservative base that their support of the conservative agenda was also undermining their own lives, and the lives of their children, but their blind allegiance to conservative leaders made them oblivious to that fact. They lacked the insight to recognize that contributing to the least among us was an investment in the nation as a whole. Instead, they allowed themselves to be convinced by conservative demagogues that attending to the concerns of the least among us (which included poor Whites) constituted "socialism", while allowing the rich to rob us blind was the great American way.
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In spite of the conservative contention that they're defending America from socialism, America has always been a socialist nation. The only distinction between capitalism and socialism is how the fruits of our social resources are distributed - and in this case, instead of the fruits of socialism going to society as the term suggests (giving priority to society), it's providing welfare to the rich.
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Why shouldn't we have "Medicare-for-all", for example? We all pay for Police-for-all, which protects the assets of the rich; we pay for Fire-protection-for-all, which protects the property of the rich, and we pay through the nose for a Military-for-all, which further enriches and advances the interests of the rich. Yet, they tell us that having Medicare-for-all to protect the lives of the poor and middle-class is a socialist concept. That's a ridiculous contention that can't stand up to either rational or objective examination. To protect the welfare of one group - the rich in this case - is no different than protecting the welfare of another, the people as a whole. So, people who have allowed themselves to embrace such nonsense are obviously giving emotion priority over objective thought. .Such people have been taught to have a knee-jerk revulsion to even the word "socialism", because it smacks of Communism, but they lack the education to recognize that social equality and Communism don't equate. So demagogues use just the illusion of one word to convince their followers to fight against their own interests. Thus, many of the conservative base have been brainwashed into believing that any policy that benefits the people as a whole, instead of the rich, is un-American, and that was an easy thing to do, because due to this country's racist traditions, "poor people" is interpreted by many to mean Blacks. So the conservative base has been trained to cut their own throats in an attempt to undermine Black people.
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These people fail to realize that it's actually people like Donald Trump and the Republican Party that's un-American. Microsoft News reported, "Representative Denver Riggleman, a Virginia Republican, said that people close to him have called him a 'traitor' because he recognizes the reality that President-elect Joe Biden won the election against President Donald Trump.
"In an interview with Forbes published on Saturday, Riggleman described Trump and his loyalist supporters as ‘anti-American’ for pushing unfounded conspiracy theories that the election was rigged. ‘[It] really speaks to where your intelligence level is...to believe in that type of operation,’ the Republican lawmaker said."
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So many conservatives take the despotic position that what's American is what they say is American, and since they support Donald Trump's attempt to subvert the will of the people, even though it's against the Constitution and anti-democratic, anyone who stands up against them is a traitor. That's the attitude of a dictator's base.
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Republican administrations have specialized in exploiting this mindset to get the American people to buy into Ponzi schemes for years. Trump gave the rich a huge windfall of $3 trillion, and then they used the money to buy politicians to convince the American public that the economy was thriving. Thereafter, even though the people at the bottom were suffering, they told us, "Just wait. The benefits are coming". But we've been told that before by another Republican, and we've been waiting for Ronald Reagan's "Trickle-down" scam to bear fruit for 40 years now. But all we got in return was a huge national debt that the poor and middle-class ended up having to pay for.
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That's been a recurring cycle every since the Great Depression - Republicans come into office and rob us blind, and then Democrats are returned to office to cleanup the mess they've left behind. One of Bill Clinton's major accomplishments was cleaning up the national debt left behind by Ronald Reagan, and one of Barack Obama's major accomplishments was saving the world from a second Great Depression left behind by George W. Bush. Now, Donald Trump has left the nation deeply in debt again, in an attempt to maintain the illusion of a thriving economy. Yes, due to their windfall, they did put a few people to work, but now the nation is left with having to pay back the $3 trillion debt that Trump's left behind. So, essentially, under Republicans, we live on a credit card, where the rich live in luxury, while the poor and middle-class are left with the bill.
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But the average person in the Republican base doesn't recognize that fact, because they've been robbed of an education, and therefore, the ability to think. When I was in college it was virtually free. I took getting a free education so much for granted that I thought even having to pay for my books was a rip-off – why couldn’t they just provide the books like in high school? But now young people - the children of both Democrats, and Republicans - have to mortgage their futures just to get a bachelor’s degree. As a result, a generation later, we're left with even politicians who are woefully undereducated and completely devoid of the ability to think - Matt Gaetz and Sarah Palin immediately comes to mind - so they too propagate the exploitation of the American people.
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The number of people who are so profoundly incompetent that they continue to fight passionate battles against their own interests is frightening.
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The battle over wearing masks to mitigate the spread of a deadly disease is a perfect example of that idiocy at work. Many in Trump's base are willing to place their families and the entire country in jeopardy just to make a political statement - a political statement that they've been brainwashed into believing by Donald Trump. Trump was desperate to make America believe that it was safe to reopen the country because his personal businesses were hemorrhaging millions of dollars due to the shutdown. In order to do that, he had to convince America that they had nothing to fear from the Coronavirus, and the deadly disease was nothing more than a bad case of the flu. But as a result of that deception we now have one American dying a minute, and the hospitals are running out of space due to the number of people coming down with Covid-19, and all of that is due to ignorance.
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Trump was only thinking of his own interests, and he didn't give a damn about either the lives of his base, or the lives of their families, but their profound ignorance prevented them from seeing that. Donald Trump was their hero and they loved him. They love him for two reasons - because they don't have sense enough not to, and because he hates the same people that they do. So, once again, these people are acting on emotions rather than intellect.
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Just a casual observation of Trump's antics since he loss the election makes it abundantly clear that the man is profoundly unstable. So, due to the ignorance of his base, we just barely dodged a bullet that could have destroyed this nation. That's a clear indication that education is the key to maintaining a healthy democracy, and it behooves all of us to recognize that fact before it’s too late. .
I’m proud to say that Black women are ahead of the curve in recognizing that fact – but, of course, Black women have always had to be a step ahead just to survive, both society, and many of their men. They are currently the most educated group in America – even ahead of Asians. So, I encourage Black men to catch up and see the light. While I’m sure it must be nice to gain wealth and fame by bouncing a ball for a living, the entire Black community won’t fit onto a basketball court, so we can't have an entire generation of Black minds focused on hitting the lottery. The point of moving forward is to prosper as a group. So, as long as we allow the powers that be to distract us with individual wealth and fame, the Black community will never be able to rise as a whole. It's through class that they've managed to keep White folks divided. So, there should only be one class – a class of enlightened human beings. .
I continually tell anyone who will listen that God (or, nature if you prefer) made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. God made man's ability to think our primary means of survival, and it's essential that we adhere to our nature. When man was first placed here on Earth, he wasn't as strong as the elephant, as ferocious as the lion, and he couldn't fly above danger like the eagle, so the other animals had a word for him - food. But through the development of our intellect, we can now build machines that can crush any elephant, slaughter any lion, and fly far beyond the eagle's domain. Thus, man was created to be an intellectual creature, but just like the birds, fish, and other animals, we must adhere to our nature to survive.
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So, if we want to maintain our way of life, and protect what's left of our democracy, it's essential that we focus on rebuilding our educational system and make it relatively free for anyone with the desire to get an education, and we must reward that desire like we reward sports stars and entertainers to encourage it. We must bring the pursuit of knowledge back into vogue, because ensuring an educated citizenry is the most important investment that we can make in America, and to humanity as a whole. And we must always remember, everything we do that's destructive to man, and everything that we call evil, is actually a form of ignorance. Thus, all dysfunction is a result of ignorance, so education is the key to our survival.
Ewattree@Gmail.com
BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS
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Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
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