Letters to the Editor
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Patridiotic
Patriotism is a myth which is used as emotional blackmail by Conservatives to get others to do what they (usually) would not do themselves given a choice. It is a sliding scale version of three card monty where the targeted person can never guess the proper approach and where the definition varies according to whom it is applied.
Today we live in an age of Neo-Barbarism where the majority of younger people are lucky if they understand all the words in their Sunday newspaper. The primary cause of this is the deliberate dumbing down of education which occurred as a direct result of the protests against the Vietnam war. In the ‘60s and early ‘70s, the US government was faced, for the first time in history, with a relatively educated populace which was opposed to its foreign policy. The solution to this problem for the government and for the plutarchy of Wall Street investors, the actual owners of this country, was clear. It was to narrow public education to the mere basics of rudimentary reading skills, simple Mathematics and minimal Science. Gone were the studies of the Arts, Literature and World History as well as anything else which might lead to the ability of having critical analysis skills.
Replacing them also was an onslaught of teachings which were overt boosterism of the godliness of the nation, how the United States excreted ice cream, peed lemonade and could never, ever take actions which were not rubber-stamped “Approved” by God Himself. Nothing in US history ever had any causes; things just happened. The best example of this is how 9/11 could not possibly have anything to do with 50 years of oppressive international intervention by the CIA and US military. The country was told, “They hate us for our freedoms” and people actually believed it. An ignorant populace is a docile populace which can be easily steered toward anything like sheep as we all saw in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Make the realm of education so narrow that the citizenry can run the machines, total the accounts and read the propaganda fomented by the government and spread by the corporate media owned by the plutarchy of the investor class. Period.
Proponents of this philosophy are as Un-American in their ideals as any external enemy this country has ever faced. They are happy to sit safely at home in their Stratolounger and cheerlead for something they obviously do not understand, while better men than themself die for their foolishness. This brand of cowardly warmongering makes me ill. I certainly didn't see any of them in Vietnam either, although they were plentiful at home while we were being maimed and killed daily over there.