CT Blue

Today’s theme is stupidity, the stupidity often enforced upon us by an increasingly more powerful ruling class and the propaganda which has almost totally replaced all other sources of information to which the masses in this country are exposed. The topic finds it’s way here serendipitously, being suggested by various things upon which I’ve stumbled today as I’ve wandered around the web.

I recommend first that you check out today’s Doonesbury, in which Garry Trudeau takes note of the war on science and reason, in this case taking aim at a Louisiana law that requires teachers to teach myth alongside evolution. I would submit that maintaining a superstitious populace, exalting truthiness over truth, is just one more brick in the wall being built by our overlords to keep the masses in their proper place. It is, after all, preferable that the people believe that their prison is of their own making, and, of course, the children of the nobles won’t be taught this garbage.

Next, for your consideration, this wonderful diatribe from Bill Maher. My only criticism would be that while it is necessary to be stupid to be a non-rich Republican, it does not appear to be sufficient, as there are a host of stupid Democrats.

If you don’t have time to watch, here’s the money quote:

“The moneyed elite in this country are dragging a bag filled with your future down the steps, and [the Republican base’s] reaction is, ‘Hold on there, that looks heavy. Let me give you a hand getting it into your trunk.'”

Finally, the most depressing example (that I’ve heard today) of the campaign to stupidify (I know it’s not a word, but it is now) the entire country. It seems high school students are not capable of reading the Great Gatsby, so instead of educating them to the point where they can read, understand and appreciate the book, we are dumbing down the book, in a manner more shocking than the recent rape of Huckleberry Finn. Here’s the end of Gatsby in the old fashioned style:

“Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Here’s the new and improved version, penned by one Margaret Tarner (assuming the perpetrator allowed his/her real name to be used):

“Gatsby had believed in his dream. He had followed it and nearly made it come true.

Everybody has a dream. And, like Gatsby, we must all follow our dream wherever it takes us.

Some unpleasant people became part of Gatsby’s dream. But he cannot be blamed for that. Gatsby was a success, in the end, wasn’t he?”

Well, actually, no he wasn’t. Roger Ebert confines himself to calling this an obscenity, perhaps because, for once, there is no word in the English language sufficiently strong to describe this literary crime. The book is cleansed at once of meaning and poetry (and what, I ask is life without a touch of poetry in it?).

Speaking of poetry, there’s no reason the Vandals should stop with prose. I recall Mr. Manchester, my high school English teacher, striving valiantly, but unsuccessfully (at the time) to convey his love for Whitman’s poetry to our then unappreciative minds. In my case, at least, his efforts bore deferred fruit, but perhaps he may have met more success had he changed the opening lines of Song of Myself from this:

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

To something more like this:

“I talk about myself, it’s true
It’s something you should also do
For you’re like me, and I’m like you”

It comes closer to Whitman than Tarner does to Fitzgerald.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to argue that keeping us stupid helps the autocrats keep us in our place (thereby keeping the sheep quiescent), in order to preserve the system I’ll let Whitman describe, without alteration:

“Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,
To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,
Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going,
Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving,
A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.”

(Credit to my Octopus son for this quote)

Postscript: If you’re confused by the title to this post, well you just had to be there, and even then you might be confused.

Yet another postscript: Looks like the video was blocked. I sort of figured that might happen.