The Ease of Stupidity

Perhaps because I am a teacher, I care more than the average person about getting it right. I never want to tell students something that is wrong or inaccurate and I am the first to apologize and correct, if I get it wrong.....(seldom happens). Anyway, it has become so easy to be wrong and to be inaccurate these days. With bloggers that do not check facts, newspapers and TV shows that stress entertainment value rather than journalistic standards, and 140 characters and the sound byte mentality, we are becoming a culture of superficiality. It is so easy to say "no new taxes" or "death panels will kill grandma" or "don't spend a dime helping others" or "send all the illegals home"...these kinds of statements resonate with a population that has neither the time, nor unfortunately the inclination to explore with the depth necessary to make informed judgments. The worst of it is that we have people running for high office that prey on such misinformation because they know the public will listen to a sound byte and respond. Our leaders have the responsibility for getting it right and of all the things that frustrate me the most, it is the stupidity and inaccuracies stated by our politicians. I was joking to myself last week about giving a test to all politicians before they are allowed to run for high office and lo and behold, David McCullough on Charlie Rose not so tongue in cheek, said the same thing. We need better, smarter and more knowledgeable people running Congress. In the past few months we have had candidates express with inaccuracy the realities of slavery during our founding, get the facts of our Revolution wrong, give inaccurate economic history regarding the realities of government spending, present dubious arguments about job creation and change positions on issues as frequently as the waving direction of the flag. Our system of government is and should be about debate and difference of opinion and some demagoguery will always be part of the dialogue, but we are now at a state when politicians with no knowledge of economics or any education on fact based opinions are putting our nation at risk. Getting votes by being stupid has short and long term consequences that we may not be able to recover from this time. Wake up people. Read a book, get some facts and listen closely....Let brains prevail. Where are you Americans for reason and truth?