Lynne said:
It is frightening to see at hand the affects of the dumbing down that has been happening in the U.S. over the last, what, 100 years or so. You have kids graduating from high school who can't read or write. They can't do simple math. And they have no interest in what is really going on in the world. All they care about is playing video games which emphasize killing, doing dope, drinking, having sex and seeking thrills. Acquiring knowledge is not on their agenda. They go with the flow of their peers, who go with the flow of the media which goes with the flow of the PTB. They do not know any better as that is how they have been brought up. This is what they are taught. If not at school then by their parents or their friends.
A correspondent recently wrote to me:
There are two ways to be damned: telling what ought to be the truth and telling people what IS the truth as represented by countless others: eg Galileo. Evidently, this truth stuff is a dangerous thing. Probably should not be attempted by boys and girls and is best left to the professionals.
The problem is that Americans redefined freedom to mean endless consumption, endless physical gratification, and a culture with no values other than Japanese gold, cash from drug trade, and robbing Peter to pay Paul in order to buy enough time for the current generation in charge to make it safely into the grave.
The right promoted a culture of greed, profligacy, and selfishness and the left endorsed sexual decadence across the board. (Here, sexual decadence is defined as exploitation of other people, sex without intimacy, and sex itself, as in pornography, etc.)
On the surface, it appears that the reaction of Christian conservatives is in response to this culture of greed and selfishness, but I don't think it is that simple since many of the so-called Christian conservatives are as inured in this culture of exploitation as anyone. That is because the so-called Christians have been programmed to believe that freedom and democracy always depended on prosperity, and not on the Constitution or laws. As "God's Chosen People," they believe that America needs imperialism to perpetuate the prosperity (they are the inheritors of the world, doncha know?). Unfortunately, imperialism is the parent of totalitarianism.
To both the Christian Conservatives and the average American who is ignorant of the rest of the world and history, defending the American way of life really means seizing the resources of other countries and killing whoever gets in the way. Taking other people's stuff for your own and believing you have a right to do so is easily grasped even by the masses (because it is an infantile attitude) and that is why it is so popular.
And so, with the backing of Christian Conservatives and masses of very selfish people - deliberately programmed to this selfishness - Americans opted for warfare and assassinations, covert and overt intelligence operations, to sustain their standard of living. And, when that happened, America basically agreed to give power to psychopaths.
When psychopaths come to power, for whatever reason, the end result is always a bloody horror for everyone. Those that do not remember history, are doomed to repeat it. I should add that those that don't even KNOW history are in even worse shape.
"For to everyone who has will more be given... but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away"? (Matthew 25:29, spiritual Neoclassical economics!)
Gospel of Thomas saying 70: "Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you."