*NOT* what the righties want to see in print...
 

What Americans rarely acknowledge is that many of their social problems
are rooted in the rejection of critical thinking or, conversely, the
glorification of the emotional and irrational. What else could explain
the hyper-patriotism that has many accepting an outlandish notion that
America is far superior to the rest of the world? Love of one’s country
is fine, but many Americans seem to honestly believe that their country
both invented and perfected the idea of freedom, that the quality of
life here far surpasses everywhere else in the world.

But it doesn’t. International quality of life rankings place America
barely in the top ten. America’s rates of murder and other violent
crime dwarf most of the rest of the developed world, as does its
incarceration rate , while its rates of education and scientific
literacy are embarrassingly low. American schools, claiming to uphold
“traditional values,� avoid fact-based sex education, and thus we have
the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world. And
those rates are notably highest where so-called “biblical values� are
prominent. Go outside the Bible belt, and the rates generally trend
downward .

As this suggests, the impact of fundamentalist religion in driving
American anti-intellectualism has been, and continues to be, immense.
Old-fashioned notions of sex education may seem like a relatively minor
issue to many, but taking old-time religion too seriously can be
extremely dangerous in the modern era. High-ranking individuals, even in
the military , see a confrontation between good and evil as biblically
predicted and therefore inevitable. They relish the thought of being a
righteous part of the final days.

Fundamentalist religion is also a major force in denying human-caused
climate change , a phenomenon that the scientific community has accepted
for years. Interestingly, anti-intellectual fundamentalists are joined
in their climate change denial with unusual bedfellows: corporate
interests that stand to gain from the rejection of sound science on
climate.

Corporate influence on climate and environmental policy, meanwhile, is
simply more evidence of anti-intellectualism in action, for corporate
domination of American society is another result of a public that is not
thinking critically. Americans have allowed their democracy to slip
away, their culture overtaken by enormous corporations that effectively
control both the governmental apparatus and the media, thus shaping life
around materialism and consumption.

Indeed, these corporate interests encourage anti-intellectualism,
conditioning Americans into conformity and passive acceptance of
institutional dominance. They are the ones who stand to gain from the
absurd levels of fear and nationalism that result in militaristic
foreign policy and absurdly high levels of military spending . They are
the ones who stand to gain from consumers who spend money they don’t
have on goods and services they don’t need. They are the ones who want a
public that is largely uninformed and distracted, thus allowing
government policy to be crafted by corporate lawyers and lobbyists. They
are the ones who stand to gain from a prison-industrial complex that
generates the highest rates of incarceration in the developed world.
They are the ones who stand to gain from unregulated securities markets.

Americans can and should denounce the racist and gun-crazed culture that
shamefully resulted in nine corpses in Charleston this week, but they
also need to dig deeper. At the core of all of this dysfunction is an
abandonment of reason.

http://tinyurl.com/npyanrh

*NOT* what the righties want to see in print...
 

On 6/21/2015 12:03 PM, Keyser Söze wrote:
What Americans rarely acknowledge is that many of their social problems
are rooted in the rejection of critical thinking or, conversely, the
glorification of the emotional and irrational. What else could explain
the hyper-patriotism that has many accepting an outlandish notion that
America is far superior to the rest of the world? Love of one’s country
is fine, but many Americans seem to honestly believe that their country
both invented and perfected the idea of freedom, that the quality of
life here far surpasses everywhere else in the world.

But it doesn’t. International quality of life rankings place America
barely in the top ten. America’s rates of murder and other violent
crime dwarf most of the rest of the developed world, as does its
incarceration rate , while its rates of education and scientific
literacy are embarrassingly low. American schools, claiming to uphold
“traditional values,� avoid fact-based sex education, and thus we have
the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world. And
those rates are notably highest where so-called “biblical values� are
prominent. Go outside the Bible belt, and the rates generally trend
downward .

As this suggests, the impact of fundamentalist religion in driving
American anti-intellectualism has been, and continues to be, immense.
Old-fashioned notions of sex education may seem like a relatively minor
issue to many, but taking old-time religion too seriously can be
extremely dangerous in the modern era. High-ranking individuals, even in
the military , see a confrontation between good and evil as biblically
predicted and therefore inevitable. They relish the thought of being a
righteous part of the final days.

Fundamentalist religion is also a major force in denying human-caused
climate change , a phenomenon that the scientific community has accepted
for years. Interestingly, anti-intellectual fundamentalists are joined
in their climate change denial with unusual bedfellows: corporate
interests that stand to gain from the rejection of sound science on
climate.

Corporate influence on climate and environmental policy, meanwhile, is
simply more evidence of anti-intellectualism in action, for corporate
domination of American society is another result of a public that is not
thinking critically. Americans have allowed their democracy to slip
away, their culture overtaken by enormous corporations that effectively
control both the governmental apparatus and the media, thus shaping life
around materialism and consumption.

Indeed, these corporate interests encourage anti-intellectualism,
conditioning Americans into conformity and passive acceptance of
institutional dominance. They are the ones who stand to gain from the
absurd levels of fear and nationalism that result in militaristic
foreign policy and absurdly high levels of military spending . They are
the ones who stand to gain from consumers who spend money they don’t
have on goods and services they don’t need. They are the ones who want a
public that is largely uninformed and distracted, thus allowing
government policy to be crafted by corporate lawyers and lobbyists. They
are the ones who stand to gain from a prison-industrial complex that
generates the highest rates of incarceration in the developed world.
They are the ones who stand to gain from unregulated securities markets.

Americans can and should denounce the racist and gun-crazed culture that
shamefully resulted in nine corpses in Charleston this week, but they
also need to dig deeper. At the core of all of this dysfunction is an
abandonment of reason.

http://tinyurl.com/npyanrh



Yet 2 percent of the world's total population (150 million adults) pick
the USA as the country they would most want to immigrate to. That's the
highest of any country in the world.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/153992/150-million-adults-worldwide-migrate.aspx

*NOT* what the righties want to see in print...
 

On Sun, 21 Jun 2015 12:03:17 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote:

What Americans rarely acknowledge is that many of their social problems
are rooted in the rejection of critical thinking

===

And Harry, what you fail to acknowledge, is that in many other
countries you'd be in jail by now, perhaps worse.