Why Dumb Down Our Government?

Should it surprise us that we, the people, are smarter than the politicians we've elected? Maybe the money machine it takes to get elected these days has discouraged more Mr. Smiths from going to Washington.

Or, maybe the Facebook revolution that is connecting youth and students worldwide has enabled us to circumvent the corporate-owned mass media that controlled the 'message' moneyed interests wanted us to hear.

In fact, it looks like the majority of us are way ahead of the politicians in knowing what to change to ensure a future for us. It is our government that has been dumbed down, and Main Street has outdistanced the pols because 99 percent or so of us see a decent future slipping away.

So it is no wonder that the so many are staging protests all over the world, as in #OccupyWallStreet. They see politicians who are blatantly ignorant of the most basic science -- who ignore global warming and evolution, for instance. Or basic accounting rules. Or a working health care system. It doesn't take a graduate degree to know how to pay down our record debt that is holding back a recovery, or bring down health care costs, yet politicians can't seem to figure it out.

The dumbing down is non-partisan. Even some Democrats are opposing Obama's new American Jobs Bill that could create 1.9 million jobs and grow the economy an additional 1 percent.

And #OccupyWallStreet is nonpartisan. Interviewees have stated on NPR and other venues that they didn't want to be labeled Democrat or Republican. Why? Because the winner-take-all American political system needs at least a third-party to get around the sclerosis of a two-party system that is locked into their respective ideologies.

How did it start? Back in July, an idea by Kalle Lasn and his colleagues at Adbusters, a nonprofit magazine run by social activists, had started to come together, said a Washington Post Blog article. It was to bring about our own Egyptian Tahrir Square protest via the Internet that has been spreading to other cities and other countries. Why has it caught fire?

'They look at the future and see just one big black hole,' said Kalle Lasn, in the Post interview. 'They look at a world with climate change that will be much hotter when they get older, at a political crisis and corruption in Washington, at the American democracy not working any more at a time when America is in decline, and at a financial crisis in which the Dow Jones could plummet tomorrow. If we don't stand up and fight for a different kind of future, they realize, we won't get one.'

The list of demands is familiar, per CoupMedia.org:

• Restore the Glass Steagall Act repealed in 1999 that separated banks from investment banks that made risky bets.


• Punish the Wall Street wrongdoers who caused the financial markets to crash.


• Give some mortgage relief to the 11 million homeowners with underwater mortgages from the unused billions that were set aside for mortgage modification but never used.


• Congress should enact legislation to protect our democracy by reversing the effects of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which essentially said corporations can spend as much as they want on elections.


• Congress should pass the Buffett Rule on fair taxation so the rich and corporations pay their fair share & close corporate tax loop holes and enact a prohibition on hiding funds off shore.

The list of demands goes on and on, from universal health care to greater environmental protection, but the intent of #OccupyWallStreet protesters is clear. Bring back the democracy that has been lost to the moneyed special interests. We are seeing a public consciousness that is rising above those private interests that have tried to stamp out the public sector's interest in a responsive government, and sustainable future growth.

Alas, much of the dumbing down we see is intentional. It is an anti-intellectualism of the far right, including the Republican leadership, that hopes their electorate, at least, will not notice the world crumbling around them. Paul Krugman, for one, calls it terrifying should one of the anti-intellectuals succeed to the White House.

"It's a terrible thing when an individual loses his or her grip on reality," he said. "But it's much worse when the same thing happens to a whole political party, one that already has the power to block anything the president proposes -- and which may soon control the whole government."

But that doesn't have to happen. Intelligence will win in the end, if we are to preserve the real world. The dumbing down of government will be reversed when it represents our common intelligence. For what else can bring back hope in any future, but citizens taking back their power?

Harlan Green © 2011

 

 

 

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Comments

[sailingfurther]

12:07 AM on 10/25/2011

Tax use Accountability,(taxes levied used for the purpose they are set in place to be used for IE no slush fund tax use system). No Stock portfolios for Elected and Appointed political and government officials, Median average salaries for all Political and Government Officals Eleted or appointed,(Serving your country is an honor and privelage not a profit driven Career). Eliminate the Tax Breaks and offshore banking for all Profit Driven Corporations, Give greater Tax Breaks for Privatly owned businesses, Eliminate Prevaling Wage policies for all outside contracted servives, Practice Disarmament at Home and minimalize the military. Stop rediculous salaries and benifits paid to organized professional sports players and organisers. Bring back war bonds for necessary military defence actions. Open Borders world wide,(people are free? let them be, I know who i am i dont need no id). Food, Fuel, Oxygen cleaner HEMP FOR VICTORY!
Peace out

[recoater]

08:54 PM on 10/24/2011

We need to require all people in congress to ware jump suites with there corp. sponsors like race car drivers and this president could ware a few also with his speech today he put the burden of the housing crash on the America taxpayers so heres a campain trick that didnt cost him a dime but a huge burden on the working people time to clean house and send people to Washington that has business common sense and not educated idoits.

[dbailey]

12:27 PM on 10/24/2011

It is intentional and its infuriating! I received an email from my TX senator Cornyn today saying he voted against the jobs bill because the government needs to get out of the way. This was my response:
Get out of the way are you kidding? The role of government is to rally to the aid of it's citizens, not GET OUT OF THE WAY! We already go out of the way and LOOK WHAT HAPPENEDED? Did the market rally to our aid? NO! So far this administration has:

Ended the war in Iraq
Taken out 3 national terrorists
Expanded health care to cover more citizens Diverted a nationwide depression

What have you done for America lately besides "take a look at it"! You and your party, GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!

[Computer Geek]

12:12 PM on 10/24/2011

Up until lately, there has been no down side to the ignorance. But those costs will continue to go up until there will be no going back. You can't legislate morality and you also can't legislate intelligence. Part of the problem has been that lies have been allowed by the public and the media to be told as if they were just as viable as truth. That's a huge problem that needs to be addressed before anything will change. I would like to hear the media asking the question (over and over): Do you have any evidence to back up your assertion? If not, then it should be ignored as opinion and nothing else. I am sick and tired of spin and lies. You cannot make an intelligent decision about anything without knowing the facts to begin with.Being a business person just means that you know how to run a business, not that you know anything about the other 20 trillion things it takes to keep a society from decimation. It is time for people to accept that simple truth and stop voting for those who tout business experience like it is manna from heaven.

[HarlanGreen]

11:09 AM on 10/31/2011

Read excellent NYTimes last Wednesday Op-ed by economic historian and Rutgers Professor James Livingston--"It's Consumer Spending, Stupid". He is one of first economists to factually verify that business profits don't drive growth, but consumer spending does from 1900-2000. He says, “…corporate profits do not drive economic growth — they’re just restless sums of surplus capital, ready to flood speculative markets at home and abroad. In the 1920s, they inflated the stock market bubble, and then caused the Great Crash. Since the Reagan revolution, these superfluous profits have fed corporate mergers and takeovers, driven the dot-com craze, financed the “shadow banking” system of hedge funds and securitized investment vehicles, fueled monetary meltdowns in every hemisphere and inflated the housing bubble.” Hallelujah...someone speaking truth to power.

[iridium53]

11:36 AM on 10/24/2011

It's not "dumbing down."
It's "selling out."

Politicians at all levels, but particularly at the federal level, are lazy, corrupt, coin-operated, corporatist kleptocrats that serve and act only at the pleasure of their owners - the major donors.

Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all the people have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. The assumption to democracy is that those individuals elected to serve will do so, at least to a great extent, with their constituents' best interests in mind. In the United States, that is provably no longer true. A govenment that develops a budget that kills social security and medicare, programs that 80% of the people like and want - is no longer a government that is supportive of the people.