Category Archives: opinion

dumbness, opinion

Near and Dear

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Near and dear to my heart is the dumbing down of the populace I see each day. Little things like simple math skills gone missing. A complete lack of knowledge of the world around us and how it works. Attention spans approximating that of a gnat.

All of these problems I believe are symptomatic of a change of attitude in society as a whole. A few generations ago, education was regarded as the way to a better life. Parents emphasized education as a way to a better life to their offspring. Somewhere along the way the whole process has been ditched in favor of  the many faces of the cult of idol-ism. So now we have a growing group of semi-literate and scientifically uneducated people who follow the dictates of the talking head of the moment without critically examining anything. It scares me for the future.

One of the oft overlooked consequences of the dumbing down of America is the increasingly strident opinions of the populace. One of my favorite quotes puts it succinctly:

People are getting dumber but more opinionated. — Philip Roth

Can’t be much clearer than that. Check out your favorite letters to the editor page for classic examples. (Or listen to a call in radio or TV program since many are no longer capable of writing a coherent letter.)

On the other hand, my rationalist mind demands that I also ponder if the dumbing down is real or just a a figment of my imagination. After all:

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. — George Orwell

So what do you think. Is the increasing stridency of modern opinion due to the dumbing down of the populace or ….?

newspaper, opinion, weather

Moody Monday

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Today was one of a sequence of odd weather days here on the plains. It was close to 60 degrees today and is forecast to be 70+ degrees tomorrow. This is happening during a time of the year when it typically reaches a high of -10 for the day. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t object to the anomalous warmth. At least not if the wind would die down a little. Today the wind was gusting to 60 mph and stayed windy all day. It is almost like the Santa Ana winds from when we lived in LA. The negative ions in the air make everyone a bit testy and the continuous howling keeps things (and dogs like Molly) on edge. Oh well, give it a week and it’ll probably become more seasonable and I’ll be complaining about the cold.

One of the local newspapers emailed me over the weekend to get my opinion for their weekly opinion piece. You know, one of those “the roving reporter asked these people X and are their one liner responses with a bad picture of their heads” type of piece. The paper must be planning a special piece connected to their inaugural reporting. So anyway, the question was “What issue should the new President first address? (and why)”

This question is one which could take literally days and 100’s of pages to fully explore. In fact, I am sure that Mr. Obama and his transition team have been doing exactly that. He is probably forced to read a couple of hundred pages of position papers from the team every day. But since this is a one liner type of reportage (the twitter of news?), I have  to be brief and concise. And I don’t have to consult with my transition team either.

So what did I answer? I was short and sweet:

The economy should be addressed first. If people are working, housed, and fed then the other problems can be handled on a more timely schedule.

How’s that for a typical politician’s waffle fest? In this case it happens to the the truth from where I sit. I suspect there are other views and positions, but to me it seems clear that the biggest problem preventing considered action on the myriad of other problems *is* the economy. People are running in fear. Those who have already lost their jobs are facing  homelessness and hunger. Those who haven’t are scared of being put in those situations. People who are scared and running in fear tend to be neither able nor amenable to solving problems

So how would you have answered the question?