Trouble

I'm having trouble.

Hear me out, because I feel that you'll question my sanity if I tell you about this trouble.

You see, On the one hand, I am, more or less, what you might consider to be an average American of the 21st Century. I shop for groceries, work an 8-5 job, constantly obsess about whether I'm eating too much fat and carbs, and like Grey's Anatomy.

But when I allow myself to turn on the critical thinking device between my ears, I usually get alarmed.

I get alarmed because I read things.

Like today, I read an article about a man who holds considerable power over the education of the children of Texas. He's on the state board of education. He wants global warming denial to be written into Texas science curricula. He wants to "clean up the image of Joe McCarthy and downplay the contributions of the civil rights movement to society." Also on the agenda: "Ensure that Ronald Regan is portrayed as having created the positive economic conditions of the last 20 years by cutting taxes."

I read an article describing the defeat of marriage equality in the New Jersey Senate yesterday by a vote of 20-14. Then I read the spin by hate groups citing the "almost 2 to 1 victory for 'traditional marriage'". (This of course follows similar stories of a close defeat in New York, the reversals last year in California and Maine, and the contentious battles still playing out in other states.)

I read an article that detailed a major player in the conservative political arena who called a Supreme Court Justice "a goat-fucking child molester" publicly. His response to the president winning the Nobel Peace Prize? "I didn’t realize the Nobel Prize committee had an affirmative action quota."

When I'm not reading, I'm listening to co-workers tell me how they believe Cap-and Trade legislation will increase their property taxes. Or how they heard that Obama's birth certificate is a fake. Or how health care legislation was "forced through congress" and republicans weren't given an opportunity to participate in the process. See, See?!? Obama was totally lying when he talked about "bipartisanship!!"

I hear these things and become afraid. Then I become pensive. Then I become cynical. Then I turn on the TV.

Is it crazy to start to believe that the American experiment is failing? That ideologues have completely taken over all debate, crowding out calls for reason and equality, fairness and justice? That the ideal to strive for in public debate has shifted from "factual correctness and rhetorical superiority" to "say what heats up your base at volume setting 99 and keep repeating it until enough people believe it"?

The only way I can explain what is happening in America is that people have stopped thinking. We assume that we can see the world today through the same lenses our grandparents did. Or that we can coast by, never delving too deeply into things that we can't understand, and let others do the heavy lifting. We have accepted the fact that 4 or 5 or 6 hours of TV is not a bad idea, and we fill all our non-work time with mindless activities.

We have forgotten how to think. Except it is only through an engaged electorate that Democracy has any chance of escaping the downward spiral into oligarchy or worse.

So I'm caught in this paradox. I continue to completely take part in the system. I get up early, complain about how tired I am, drink too much coffee, go to work, procrastinate a little, come home in the evening, cook dinner and watch TV. But simultaneously, I'm constantly bombarded with images and information that lead my relatively balanced brain to conclude that the way we're living is VASTLY UNSUSTAINABLE. Not just environmentally, but socially. Spiritually. Rhetorically. Ideologically.

How can we continue to function as a society if more and more people on the inter-tubes call for a second revolution in response to the democrats passing health care?

How can we avoid social disaster when an increasingly large minority are willing to believe that health care overhaul will lead to "death panels" and "socialism"? Or that gays and lesbians are evil child molesters? Or that the Bible should be the foundation of law?

How can we, as a nation, continue to enshrine inequalities in our legal system, and justify civil injustice as religio-morally sanctioned?

I'll tell you how. When most people can't understand a complex thought such as these, they'll have no problem brushing their consequences aside and turning back to a re-run of American Idol.

I fall victim to this myself. I read things that make me doubt the viability of America as nation, let alone a place to live and raise a family. I begin to wonder whether I'll ever be able to marry the love of my life. I question whether I will ever be able to share in the benefits my co-workers spouses enjoy. I tear up at the thought that he might not be able to see me in a hospital, make end of life decisions.

The crushing weight of evidence shows that the trajectory of informed thought in America has been declining for decades.
I'm faced with the possibility (probability) that my life will be consistently devalued by the conservative majority of my fellow citizens. That an uphill battle is all I can ever hope for.
So I go back to the Grey's re-runs on Lifetime and wolf down another brownie. My other escape is to mentally plan for the time, in some hazy future, when I'll force Kris to help me live out my fantasy of being self-sufficient on a working sustainable organic homestead.My friends, we're in trouble. When the idiot-revolution comes, The critical thinkers will be the first to be stoned. Bible style.