Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The Joy of Being Uninformed

DiploMad 2.0

"Mark Twain generally gets credit for, "If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed." Predating that piece of century-plus old wisdom by another century or so, we have Thomas Jefferson's still relevant observation that, "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
This got me thinking about the joy of living the uninformed life.
Temporarily in California, I run into Obama voters galore, and occasionally ask them, especially the wealthy ones, why they voted for Obama. The answers prove very mixed. They don't really know why, except, well, he is black, and against the "war on women," etc. They have no remedies for the imploding economy or the collapsing federal government. They only vaguely know of Benghazi, and most haven't heard of "Fast and Furious." They already complain about high taxes--and the election saw yet another state income tax raise passed by voters here--but don't seem very aware of what's bearing down on them in the next few months.
They, in other words, live like H.G. Wells' Eloi, wealthy, happy, healthy, and blissfully unaware of the Morlocks about to eat them. Maybe, however, that's the way to go: Driving your Lexus to the Morlocks' slaughterhouse with a smile on your face."
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2 comments:

  1. We wise ones are here temporarily. You're braver than I. I just can't talk to those people.

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  2. During the 2008 election season, a neighbor of mine--a black woman with a master's degree in counseling--was wearing a sweatshirt that had emblazoned on it: "Friends don't let friends vote republican." When I first saw it, I read it outloud, and put a question mark in my voice at the end of the sentence. She looked at me, and serious as she could be, said, "I'm conservative. Very conservative." When I asked why she didn't like republicans if she was so conservative, she began to--for the first time, I think--wonder which was which. After that, she made my life there so miserable, that I had to move. We had been friends until then.

    During the last few years, I have come to the same conclusions as the author of this post. Most of those people he mentions, and most of those who sing the praises of Obama with whom I've come into contact, have absolutely no clue what was at stake, and what we've lost. Makes no difference the color of their skin, their education or income levels. They're just completely clueless.

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