The Genie's Out of the Bottle.....

I've never been asked to "guest-blog" before....... and as usual my feelings of joy and validation quickly evaporated and I'm right back to obsessing about shoes. Surely there's nothing of importance to be said by an unemployed blogger from Alaska on sex, religion or politics. Hey wait - there's that other unemployed blogger from Alaska who came up with that little catch phrase "death panel" - and got a whole lot of mileage out of it. What was her name again? Oh yeah - Sarah, Sarah Palin. The girl who is more at home on the pages of the National Enquirer than Newsweek....smack dab in between ads for psychic hotlines and the 7-page photo spread on celebrity cellulite.

But enough on our Sarah. Although she's one of my favorite right wing nutcases to skewer and roast ever so slowly over extra-hot coals, there's another issue that has popped up in recent days. Apparently a Presidential speech on the importance of education directed to students has been twisted into a dark conservative conspiracy that's adamant that a 15-minute speech will convert our nation's youth to Obama's evil socialist creed. Surely their soft, moldable minds will be forever branded with leftest ideologies that might lead to such subversive activities as examining a multitude of different ideas and using rational thought processes. Next thing you know there'll be armies of children with implanted electronic monitoring devices turning them into mindless, goose-stepping drones of the state. One push of a button from some evil bureaucrat's desk (safely hidden away in an underground bunker in east nowhere Kansas) will cause them to murder their parents in the night. Could the cross-breeding of dogs with cats and Paris Hilton receiving a Nobel prize for physics be far behind?

Are these just the ridiculous rants of an aging tattooed rebel with hair colors not found in nature? Thankfully some people can grasp the concept of parody. But my tirade is no more ridiculous than spewings of "good Americans" over an upcoming Presidential speech to students within publicly-funded (gasp!) schools - which surely are no more than a trip to commie hell in a hand basket. Good white "patriots" wrapping themselves up in the flag and pounding their chests accusing Obama of bringing politics into the classroom, saying it's akin "to the propagandizing of Hitler's Nazi Germany." That last blurb was an actual statement from a "concerned parent" from Anchorage, Alaska. The land of Palin, Uncle Ted and the Murkowski dynasty.....

Silly hysterics of a few whose cheese slid off their crackers, right? Then why are school districts throughout the nation are buckling right and left (no pun intended) to the paranoid rhetoric of racists, birthers, teabaggers, dittoheads, conservatives, FOX News fans, Christians zealots, ad nauseum. What's next? They are infiltrating lawful assemblies using hired gun-toting goons to intimidate those "commies" wanting health care... Hmmmm - where was all this self-righteous furor over George "Wingnut" Bush speaking to school children (speaking of the blind leading the blind) - including on 9/11? Or Carter, Reagan, Clinton, etc.?

Can any of these wingnuts actually define "socialism", "communism", "facism", "Nazi", etc. beyond words they like to sling out for shock value? Similar to a three year old saying "fuckhead" to shock mom and dad and earning street cred with the toddler set....

However, it's not the Dark Side's latest outcries over a Presidential speech that disturbs me the most. What disturbs me is the fact that a group of knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, hypocritical right wing zealots can essentially blackmail schools into throwing out the fundamentals of education, free speech and intelligent discourse out over the least bit of controversy (even when the controversy sprung from the voices in their heads). The genie is out of the bottle - even if it is just a rusty beer can.....

Yes, thanks to the right wingnuts, the genie is out of the bottle and poised for all sorts of mischief. Those suburban BBQ's will soon be fueled by burning books instead of briquettes. Soon entire curriculums will be changed to satisfy the politics of denial and bigotry. It'll be so much easier to raise a generation molded by fear and propaganda if we didn't have all this silly academic bullshit! Let 'em learn wood shop and the bible - it was good enough for our forefathers and it's good enough for us!

Yes, the old "dynamite the fish pond" approach. Start spouting bible verses, excerpts from the constitution and whatever Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh said that day. Kill enough fish and the smell will overcome the strongest nose (or intellect). Hey, if Sarah Palin can use fish analogies, so can I. We're the culture of celebrity and 30 second sound bites. I especially like the bible thumpers that mix government w/religion. They forget about separation of state FROM church in addition to their own holy scriptures advocating genocide, slavery, human sacrifice, rape, etc. I especially like Timothy ii, 12, St Paul is quoted thus: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” Guess someone better muzzle Sarah......and Michelle Bachman too.

I think I just stumbled across the Conservanuts' reasons for their outcry over a simple Presidential speech - if you control education, no one will question your version of the "truth." Not the first time that circus came through town though......but they are betting that suppression of an educational system - or a country - that is free to examine any and all ideas will at least keep their freakish side show going on a little longer......