... they can see how pathetic a society we are ... and it amuses the rest of the world

You will not find a more accurate dependency- intervention essay this year ... blunt, crude, brutally honest and should be required reading for everyone who still lives in the "it's not too late crowd."

The rest of the crowds in mamby-pamby land and the arena of pretend patriots wouldn't understand it.

If you are insulted by the import of this essay and its title, bite your proud lip, gird up your loins and find the courage to read, ponder and start asking questions.

If you are content to have someone already giving you answers to questions you have not really asked and ignoring the ones you might ask, you just might be the dumb subject yourself. You wouldn't DARE read Joe Bageant all the way to the end now ... would you?


AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?
Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga

By Joe Bageant


Excerpts:

... digital autism: Ever watch commuter monkeys on the subway poking at digital devices, stroking the touch screen for hours on end? That wrinkled Neolithic brows above the squinting red eyes?

... Doubting readers may consider America's health institutions, the insurance corporations, hospital chains, physicians' lobbies. Between them they have established a perfectly legal right to clip you and me for thousands of dollars at their own discretion. That we so rabidly defend their right to gouge us, given all the information available in the digital age, mystifies the world.

... Purposeful ignorance allows us to enjoy cheaper commodities produced through slave labor, both foreign, and increasingly, domestic, and yet "thank god for his bounty" in the nation's churches without a trace of guilt or irony.

... Americans fail to grasp this because the most important fact (that a helluva lot of folks can't afford to bid, and therefore get to die early) never gets equal play with capitalist political propaganda, to wit, that if we give free medical attention to low income cleft palate babies, a wave of Leninism will seize the nation. That is cultural ignorance. We breathe the stuff every day of our lives.

But when Americans too poor to buy health care nevertheless vote to retain the corporate auction process, that is cultural stupidity.

... Cultural ignorance dictates that the best way to stop foreign terrorists flying into the country is by humiliating American citizens flying out of the country. Go ahead, grope me, X-ray my dick and for god sake don't let anyone bring a large bottle of shampoo on board. In an obedient, authority worshipping police state, physical insult and surveillance are proof of safety. 

It's profitable too, and not just for scanner manufacturers. The brouhaha over body scanners and crotch groping provide media with titillating fuel for ratings, thereby driving up TV advertising rates, which is passed on in the price of products we buy.

So we pay to be insulted, have the hell scared out of us, and to unknowingly have our behavior shaped. Under American style capitalism, this mobius strip of cultural ignorance is called a win-win situation for everybody. 

This also conveniently distracts us from the everyday human insult we practice on one another, as a result of state manufactured cultural misinformation -- fear.

... Societies declining into obsolescence understandably resist looking forward, and hang onto their past mythologies. Consequently, both liberals and conservatives in America feed on myths of political action which died in Vietnam. The results are ludicrous.

Tea Partiers attempt to emulate the 1960s protest gatherings by staging rallies sponsored by the richest beneficiaries of the status quo. For the average TP participant, the goal, near as I can tell, is to "start a new American Revolution," by wearing foodstuffs, screaming, threatening, and voting for nitwits. Media pundits proclaim the Tea Party "a historic populist movement."

... Progressives also fancy a revolution, one in which they participate through the Internet petitions, and media events such as the risk free Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity, where no one risked even missing an episode of Tremaine. Seeing people like themselves on television was proof fighting the good fight.

The Stewart rally was nonetheless culturally historic; we will never see a larger public display of post modern irony congratulating itself. 

To my kids and grandkids: It's YOUR future not mine. People of my generation in charge have done nothing to disprove the dumbness. Besides, why would you take serious the opinions of past-their-prime oldisters while you are convinced that you are just now moving into yours?

It's time you stopped fiddling around in the on-deck circle while aging never-were-stars keep swinging in vain for the fences with your lives and treasures.

If it's not already too late, turn your cute little cap around, drop your cell phone, turn off your HD, forget about who can dance, who can survive and whose birth certificate is in the Smithsonian.

Come on!

Step up to the plate and take charge.