Someone somewhere recently pointed out that fascism tends to rear its ugly head every 100 years because everyone that experienced it last time has to be dead before it can happen again.
Americans specifically have had it generally good for so long that anyone incapable of picking up and absorbing information from a history book, which is most Americans, simply don’t know how bad it used to be. So they fucking sleepwalk into fascism or allowing regulations to be rolled back.
You’d think that having a written language to chronicle all our mistakes would ensure that we moved forward without repeatedly making those mistakes, but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.
Hence, the defunding of education, and specifically critical thinking. That is by design. You can’t easily control the population when they can read and think for themselves.
Exactly. Critical Thinking is the literally the most imoportant skill you cn learn. Critical Thinking is what allows people to recognize nonsensical propaganda immediately upon hearing it, and reject it.
It worked for me back in the late 80s, when Rush Limbaugh got started. He had a very entertaining delivery, but I was easily rejecting his unsourced bullshit and blatant lies, while people were calling in praising him for “opening their eyes.” Dude, he’s entertaining, I get that, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t lying to you.
I was 12 or so when my dad started listening to Limbaugh. I had zero clue about politics, but I could tell the guy was a scumbag. So glad he’s dead. I danced a jig in my cubicle when I found out.
He used to support tobacco companies, was a tobacco cancer denier, and wanted to end the embargo with Cuba so he could get their cigars cheaper. His cigar habit ended up killing him prematurely.
He deserved the cancer that killed him, but I wish his death had been so much worse.
I think it would help to have history-oriented comics and manga in schools. I learned to enjoy history, in no small part on account of Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe series. Making things approachable is how people progress from knowing nothing to being a college graduate.
Someone somewhere recently pointed out that fascism tends to rear its ugly head every 100 years because everyone that experienced it last time has to be dead before it can happen again.
Americans specifically have had it generally good for so long that anyone incapable of picking up and absorbing information from a history book, which is most Americans, simply don’t know how bad it used to be. So they fucking sleepwalk into fascism or allowing regulations to be rolled back.
You’d think that having a written language to chronicle all our mistakes would ensure that we moved forward without repeatedly making those mistakes, but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.
Hence, the defunding of education, and specifically critical thinking. That is by design. You can’t easily control the population when they can read and think for themselves.
Exactly. Critical Thinking is the literally the most imoportant skill you cn learn. Critical Thinking is what allows people to recognize nonsensical propaganda immediately upon hearing it, and reject it.
It worked for me back in the late 80s, when Rush Limbaugh got started. He had a very entertaining delivery, but I was easily rejecting his unsourced bullshit and blatant lies, while people were calling in praising him for “opening their eyes.” Dude, he’s entertaining, I get that, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t lying to you.
I was 12 or so when my dad started listening to Limbaugh. I had zero clue about politics, but I could tell the guy was a scumbag. So glad he’s dead. I danced a jig in my cubicle when I found out.
He used to support tobacco companies, was a tobacco cancer denier, and wanted to end the embargo with Cuba so he could get their cigars cheaper. His cigar habit ended up killing him prematurely.
He deserved the cancer that killed him, but I wish his death had been so much worse.
I think it would help to have history-oriented comics and manga in schools. I learned to enjoy history, in no small part on account of Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe series. Making things approachable is how people progress from knowing nothing to being a college graduate.