breadandwine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Tue Sep-14-10 03:56 AM
Original message
••• Moore: 40 million illiterate. This is the UNDERLYING reason this country is so easy to brainwash
Michael Moore says there are 40 million adult Americans who are functional illiterates, which means they can't read and write above 4th grade level.
I think this is the ultimate reason we have all these fundie wackos turning our political system upside down. There are too many people in this country who are so easy to brainwash.
And they are going to resist attempts to educate them.
"I may not have much ejucation, but I's got me enough ejucation ta know yer wrong!"
I think we should co-opt and buy out the fundies.
If we had a school choice compromise program that paid lip service to school choice, funneled a bit of money into it (Supreme Court, till we replace those coup plotters, says it's constitutional) and a lot of money into public education, two things would happen.
One, people would get more educated.
More people would put their kids in religious schools but they would be the more moderate ones, swamping the wackos.
Once we take back power from these wackos we get rid of the current Supreme Court and get back to the way things used to be.
Religion is too tenacious for a direct assault. If the communists in Russia had said, you can have your religion, we just want to redistribute income, today the whole world would be communist. (No, that's not an endorsement of communism.)
Religion is too tenacious to be hit with a direct assault and needs to be enlisted in the left. Many of the greatest progressives in history, such as the abolitionists, were religious men. I think we need to co-opt and also enlist the religious in the progressive movement. One of the reasons Martin Luther King was such a threat to the power structure was that he spoke in the language of faith.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9129927That right there splains why Mikey has a career and isn't a fry guy in some Micky D's that plays Fox News on the tv all day.
datasuspect (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Tue Sep-14-10 05:48 PM
Response to Reply #1
26. anything with God behind it means you got some ****ed up shit
yep.
More of that world famous liberal tolerance on display.
breadandwine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Tue Sep-14-10 09:57 PM
Response to Reply #17
29. Thousands of tea partiers were on display at the Glenn Beck rally
and they were interviewed and they are the most miserable ignorant hicks from the sticks. This tells you more than some poll where people are asked if they agree with the tea party which is not the same thing as being a card carrying member.
Yet those ignorant hicks know more about economics than all you sooper geniuses.
breadandwine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Tue Sep-14-10 10:28 PM
Response to Reply #19
34. Wow. Those linked statistics deserve posting -----
*50% of Americans can identify at least two members of The Simpsons, but only 25% can name more than one right guaranteed by the First Amendment. 22% can name all five members of the Simpsons family, but only 0.1% can name the first 5 amendment guarantees.
*Less than 20% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 daily read a newspaper or news website.
*In 2003, a Washington Post Poll showed that a whopping 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9-11 attacks. Nearly 80% of Faux “News†viewers believed the same falsehood, and over 50% of Americans still believed it after the publishing of the 9-11 Commission Report. The night before we attacked Iraq, a poll concluded that more than half of Americans thought that at least half of the global community was in favor of our actions.
*Only 40% of Americans can name all three branches of government.
*According to a CNN poll, only 1 of 7 people can locate Iraq on a map or globe.
*Only 20% of voters are aware that there are 100 Senators.
*Only 33% of Americans know that it is (supposed to be) Congress that declares wars.
*Only 20% of Americans know who the current Sec. of Defense is. Do you?
*On election night in 2008, 23% of Texans believed Barak Obama is a Muslim. The national average was closer to 10%, but 40% did not know what religion he is.
*A 1991 survey found only 1 of 4 Americans know the length of a Senators term in office.
Less than 50% know that America was the first nation to use an atomic or nuclear weapon.
*30% of Americans don’t know what the Holocaust was.
*Climate change as an issue? A 1996 study showed that less than half of Americans understand that the Earth orbits the Sun yearly. About 15% don’t realize the Earth orbits the Sun at all. One study indicates more than 10% believe the Sun orbits the Earth.
*As we are constantly told by the Religious Right, we are a Christian nation, but half of Americans do not know the name of the first book of the Bible.
(That tells you a lot about how the right has taken over religion in this country.)
*A 2007 report published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute found that 14,000 randomly selected college students from 50 schools scored under 55% on a test of basic American civics. Less than half knew that the Battle of Yorktown was the last battle of the Revolutionary War.
*During Sandra Day O’Conner’s term as the first woman on the Supreme court, fewer than half of Americans could name her.
*Less than half of Americans can name their own state’s senators or congress persons.
*Only 35% know that Congress can override a presidential veto.
*Almost half believe the president can suspend or override the Constitution (apparently Bush supporters).
*In 2003, the Strategic Task Force on Education Abroad investigated Americans’ knowledge of world affairs. The task force concluded: “America’s ignorance of the outside world†is so great as to constitute a threat to national security.
(When ignorance rises to the level of a national security issue, you know you have a problem.)
*Less the 25% know that Social Security system runs a surplus budget, despite the fact that the surplus is about $150 billion annually and has done so since 1983. Both Reagan and Bush the Lesser used this surplus to help hide the otherwise implausibility of their tax cuts.
*Only 10% know what radiation is.
*Want to debate stem cell research? Less than 1/3 understand the basic concept of DNA or what a cell is.
*The United States, at 98, scored the lowest on standardized IQ tests out of 22 industrialized nations surveyed. People who identified as “very liberal†scored an average of 12 points higher than those who identified as “very conservativeâ€.
And that last one says it all.
Here is something that will confuse the hell out of you DUmmies. I first learned that the earth orbits the sun in a Christian School. See if your tiny minds can process that.
KittyWampus (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Tue Sep-14-10 02:49 PM
Response to Original message
23. If it was about education, Democrats could just as easily "brainwash" people. It's about fear
as another DU'er pointed out above.
It's about security and who is dominated by their reptilian brain.
God knows they try. One example Obama saying premiums will go down if we pass health care. Now that's it passed the latest spin is those 35% increases would be like 50% if we hadn't of passed it.
breadandwine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Tue Sep-14-10 10:30 PM
Response to Reply #23
35. I disagree. Fear is an emotion. The mind has the capacity to rule over the heart.
No brain, no intellect, emotion rules.
The brain has the capacity to overrule emotion.
If you have one.
Education matters.
Sounds like liberalism to me. Taxing the rich feels good to the poor so that must be the answer to everything.
breadandwine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Wed Sep-15-10 04:47 AM
Response to Reply #28
37. Theories are nice. Look at the real world. How many progressives go around saying "Dang!"
I bet all you goons say "dang!" when you realize all your pot and money are gone by the 7th of the month.
