Sunday, March 13, 2011

(Short) Rant about the teachers. (And the rich and powerful)

Ok, I'm a little late to the party here, but this thing with the teachers fucking infuriates me.

Evil suppressive dictator 101: The FIRST things you need to do to subjugate a population are:

1. Make everyone else stupid.
2. Give them religion.

There are very good reasons for this. Stupid people are easily tricked. Ok, maybe stupid is a bit harsh, what would be more appropriate? Oh I know, how about "Uneducated", or "Ignorant"? Yeah they fit nicely don't they?


So this god damn FOX News generation, movement, cult, whatever you want to call it. They are so obvious in everything they do. It used to be funny. Now it's just sad. Fortunately, I think most people think of FOX as a dangerous joke of a network, at best, but if you don't...


Well the expression is "if you're in for an inch, you're in for a mile". If you're dumb enough to believe just one of their carefully/carelessly crafted lies, they get their hooks in to you and before too long you'll be asking "Yeah? That's a good question, where IS his birth certificate?"

So These FOX news trouble instigators are on TV bitching that teachers are being paid too much. The Daily Show has done an amazing job of summarizing:

Here you are, hope it works for everyone.

In fact, Jon did SUCH a good job there's not much else for me to say, hence the "short". There is going to be a lot that I don't cover, but I do want to reiterate my main point though.

They are going for the brains. Get religion in, keep knowledge out. Keep power for ourselves.

One could argue that they are keeping everyone poor, but there's no reason to argue that. Everyone being poor can simply be explained as a side effect of those in power taking everything for themselves. If a conspiracy theory isn't absolutely necessary, it's probably best not to create and invoke one.

This education thing though, these guys attacking the teachers are nothing new. They have had a hard on for new knowledge since, well forever. Sure they like things like new weapons, they can use them to spread the word of their lord and savior by force with those. If you have armor and a nice sword, and you're going up against a peasant with at best, a shovel, then God is on your side, not his. How else can it be explained that you always win the fights you get into, and they always lose?

They seem to like medicine too. Medicine can heal people then the credit can be given to their god. Medicine is awesome. (If one gives a sick fellow some good medicine, God is like, one thousand percent times more likely to answer prayers to heal them. It's true!)

Some things the religious flat out ignore, like our understanding of nature. Who cares that we understand how and why natural disasters happen? Still call them acts of God, and claim that those who "felt gods wrath" must have deserved it, and maybe now the survivors can be converted, people who just survived a near death experience and are in desperate need of aid, are surprisingly-(sarcasm alert) easy to convert.

So what else? I'm sure with enough thought you could sort all of the knowledge we gained since we first used a bone as a hammer, into the three groups: Religion likes it, religion ignores it, and, religion opposes it strongly.

One of the things that REALLY got religious people in an uproar was the whole "we evolved" discovery. Even Darwin knew he had to be very careful with his discovery or risk being killed, and he was rich and well liked and respected.

So then time passes and America becomes "Modern America" I'm putting this point anywhere from 1900 to 1935 or so. I think Depression Era America falls into the Modern Era, but you may not. So in 1925, the Scopes Monkey Trial happens. (WatchThis Movie - Inherit the Wind) Ever since that point religions and schools have been at odds.


Recently the Religious have been hitting the education system with full on assaults. First they tried to sneak Intelligent Design in. They failed. Then they they tried to force it in. They failed harder. They aren't giving up though, ever it seems. They will keep trying and keep trying and keep trying. They say "teach the controversy" "teach both sides" and all this assorted pseudo-intellectual sounding garbage. There is no controversy. Evolution is true. This is not under dispute.

So now their latest assault. They want to take funding away from our schools. Why? A lot of reasons. Like I said, no matter what happens, they benefit from a less educated population. Another desired goal could be that the schools will be more desperate, and likely to take their tainted aid. "Maybe we'll donate money if you let us build an ID study center?" I can see something like that happening. "Oh you can't afford books? Well here let us DONATE some for free, sure they have our fake "science" in it and we bash real science, but you can't really afford to buy those expensive books with actual science in them, can you?"

So this is about more than just lining the pockets of the rich, (and I'm sure they're devastated by that side-effect). In my opinion. This is simply the latest of the constant relentless assaults on the education system that have been being struck for almost 100 years now.

There will be a day (but damn do I hope I'm wrong about this one) these same people try to take our precious internets away from us. They will get rich and simply fucking buy it, and turn it off. They will take over all the hub centers and slowly start turning the crank.

I fear in 5 or 10 years the internet will have regressed into a Web TV, with a big link to Conservopedia  right on top. They do NOT want us to have access to the wealth of knowledge the internet provides.

They will do this in the name of stopping "piracy", stopping "cyber bullying" , stopping "the spread of misinformation and corrupting influences".

I wish I had a big enough hard drive so I could download the entire internet, and preserve it for that not distant enough day. So someday I could show my kids how cool it used to be. They'll look at me as if I'm crazy as they step into their transport tubes to head off to public school to learn about how Jesus cured dinosaurs of their demonically inflicted ailments with his superpowers.

I can't wait.