Friday, February 20, 2015

The Stupid Vote

By Jeff Simpson

Great column by Damon Linker from The Week:



That’s Exhibit B: Walker’s effort to cut $300 million from the budget for the University of Wisconsin system — coincidentally at the precise moment he’s gearing up to compete in the notoriously far-right GOP Iowa caucuses.

I have no idea if Walker actually believes professors are parasites on the Wisconsin state budget — or if he’s merely ingratiating himself to those who do. What matters is that in taking this stance he’s allied himself with the forces in American society that consider Advanced Placement history courses to be a problem rather than a plus, and who know so little about university life that they actually think professors are coddled wards of the state instead of richly educated researchers and teachers who work endless hours for modest pay and (thanks in part to slanderous statements by public figures like Scott Walker) precious little social esteem.

Is this really what America needs now — a scramble to nail down the stupid vote?

2 comments:

  1. Walker does need to win the "evolution is a hoax" vote to become the Republican Presidential nominee. The base is dumbed down and plunging lower.

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  2. From Wikipedia : Anti-intellectualism is a common facet of totalitarian dictatorships to oppress political dissent. The Nazi party's populist rhetoric featured anti-intellectualism as a common motif, including Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.[citation needed] Perhaps its most extreme political form was during the 1970s inCambodia under the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, when people were killed for being academics or even for merely wearing eyeglasses (as it suggested literacy) in the Killing Fields.[2]

    Another candidate for the most extreme anti-intellectual political dictatorship is the one that was implemented under GeneralFrancisco Franco of fascist Spain in the post Spanish Civil War era, in which hundreds of thousands of Spaniards branded as "intellectuals" were either put to death or forced into labor or concentration camps; both which typically ended in death as was the fate of renowned Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez. Much like Pol-Pot in Cambodia, not much was needed to be found "guilty" of intellectualism in Fascist Spain, as one can see from Franco's White Terror (Spain) campaign, as merely being an uneducated farmer or factory worker who was a member of the CNT-FAI or other Spanish Anarchists, Socialist, Communist or Republican labor unions, being a member of the Republican Party, being in possession of certain books (regardless of whether you held the capacity to read them or not), or being related to or even speaking to anyone who was deemed "intellectual" was enough evidence for detention, rape or death; as was the case with possibly the most well known CNT-FAI anarchist acquaintance, Pablo Picasso, who fled Spain to seek refuge. According to theFrancoists and the Catholic Church of Spain, intellectuals were Public Enemy #1, as intellectuals had "done more damage with a pen" than a small army of Reds could do with swords. It was typical for not only the intellectual, who typically was male, to be detained or executed, but also his wife and children, to which the mother would be executed and the children fostered by a Francoist family approved by the Church. The same fate was met by single mothers who either took it upon themselves to divorce or had children out of wedlock, as both were denounced by the Church, therefore they were condemned as intellectuals propagating Women's Suffrage.

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