Now they have Rush Limbaugh.  I read that somewhere yesterday and it resonated.

Conservatives seem particularly upset about the quality of education.  It seems that people can go through college and not be prepared for a job, that being the educational systems failed goal.   Upon reflection one can see why they are upset.

100 years ago and earlier, kids toured the world after High School, getting an idea of different cultures, languages, peoples.  They would develop an appreciation that there are several ways to do things.

In college they often studied Latin, Greek, read the classics, foreign literature, and took math and some science.  They learned how to think, how to reason, how the world works.

Now the “system” doesn’t want thinkers, it wants technicians for the ultra-wealthy and mega-corporations.  It wants engineers, physicians, weapons scientists, machinists enough to keep them and their gadgets going.  Truck drivers, janitors, landscapers, especially cheap ones, are the goal.

The result of those policies shows up all over these boards, and all over the political landscape.  People who can add and subtract, read directions, and buy “stuff”, fill out credit applications but hire Rush Limbaugh to do their thinking.  Uncomfortable around thinkers, they want more consumers and less of anything like understanding.  More guns and airplanes and bombs, and less hearts and minds.  That’s sort of sissy, rewarding the bad guys.

And how’s that working for us?  Right now we have two asymetrical wars going on and are getting the shit kicked out of us by folks who spend next to nothing.  9-11 was a brilliant operation, using out own planes to take out the WTC, and provoking a response which is costing us trillions and trillions of dollars in wasted security, wars, weapons, and costing us the respect of the rest of the world.

Not working well, I’m afraid.