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FOR SOME REASON OR ANOTHER, 21ST-CENTURY AMERICAN SOCIETY--OTHERWISE EXPECTED TO BE ENLIGHTENED AND REFINED--has stooped to the point where ignorance and stupidity are being excused as "virtuous" among the Great Unwashed.

And that such exercises in stupidity are to be seen as "healthy" and "necessary***to protect those in positions of power and authority, confidence and trust;" any displays of Knowledge and Intellectualism are to be seen as one with "Communism" or otherwise being in league with His Satannic Majesty.

Up there with the Oceanic police state of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four--only such exercises in stupidity were to be looked upon as using doublethink to protect Big Brother and Ingsoc.

Leonard Pitts, Jnr., who writes for the Miami Herald, tells us "Not so fast, bucko!" thus:

I love comic books.

For 41 years, I've studied them, collected them, written and read exhaustively about them. So I hope you'll agree I'm qualified to judge the merits of a comic book created by one Brent Rinehart as a tool in his campaign for reelection as a commissioner of Oklahoma County, Okla.

It is really, really bad. You may see for yourself by clicking the link to be found at www.anorak.co.uk/anorak-in-new-york/185867.html.

Now, you may think my less than glowing appraisal stems from its rank anti-gay bigotry, including a depiction of a gay man with horns. Or from the artwork, which looks like something scrawled by a gifted 6-year-old.

Well, yes. But here's the main reason Rinehart's work offends: It is astonishingly stupid.

Voters should support him because an angel does? His opponents are in league with Satan? Old Scratch is working to ''get kids to believe homosexuality is normal'' and Rinehart is their only defense? And I haven't even mentioned the creative punctuations and multiple misspellings.

I am not an Oklahoma County voter, so maybe you wonder why I care about Rinehart's campaign. I don't. What I do care about is what I will call the ongoing stupidification of America, of which this is but one glaring example among many. Think of the congressman who advocated bombing Mecca to teach Muslims a lesson. Think of the ''zero tolerance'' policy that required a 10-year-old to be suspended for bringing to school the tiny toy gun from his GI Joe. Think of the ''Jay Walking'' segment on The Tonight Show where average Americans cannot answer basic questions of civics and history. Think of those cable shows where we are theoretically entertained by coarse women vying for the affection of washed-up rock stars. Heck, read your junk e-mail.

And then tell me you don't feel the nation's collective IQ dropping like stocks.

I am not talking about ignorance. Ignorance is a lack of information; we're all ignorant in one way or another. Nor am I talking about people prone to punctuation or spelling errors; we all make mistakes.

No, I'm talking about stupidity, which I define as an inability to analyze, draw conclusions from, or otherwise use information even when one has it. And stupidity is often characterized by smug indifference. When a CNN anchor drew Rinehart's attention to his spelling errors, his reply was, ''I don't necessarily care.'' This is, I feel constrained to remind you, the elected representative of 220,000 people.

For as much as we obsess over black vs. white and red vs. blue, I suspect the defining division of this technology-driven era will be between those who have and can exploit information and those who do not and cannot. Between intelligence and its opposite. One wonders how long we can continue to equate stupidity with ''keeping it real,'' being a regular Joe or Jane, and hope to continue leading the world.

There's a movie, Idiocracy, which posits a post-intelligent future in which the stupid have inherited the Earth. It's not a great film, but there is a truth to it. You watch the characters watching a reality show that consists entirely of some guy being kicked in the testicles and you realize you wouldn't be surprised to see that show on VH-1 tomorrow.

Why not? In recent years, we have seen intelligence demonized as the sole province of the ''elite,'' a term that once described accomplishment, but is now used to condemn anyone who looks like he might have accidentally cracked a book or had a thought.

Not long ago, I gave a commencement address in which I told young people I am less concerned with what they think than that they think. Because we are losing that skill. Me, I find that alarming.

Maybe you disagree. I bet you'll feel differently when Brent Rinehart is president.

As for the Zealots and True Believers in Neo-Conservatism--Good Christians All, remember?--they will blame "Public education! Public education!" in that annoyingly grating singsong meme in the key of "Ring around the collar! Ring around the collar!" for same, and guess what they'll recommend as the ideal antidote:

Nothing better than tuition vouchers "opening the magic doors to freedom of choice" as turn out limiting access to religio-sectarian "Christian Academies" placing an idealised "Traditional Values" syllabus over core skills, reinforced by parroted-out bumper-sticker slogans virtually on cue @ assemblies ... mandatory prayer and chapel as is really nothing more than a drunken tirade ... mandatory paramilitary training with live ammunition ... in short, a general climate of "healthy [and] patriotic" fanaticism rivalled only by Nazi Germany and, to a lesser extent, apartheid South Africa.

Or, alternately, using same towards homeschooling materials whose syllabus is essentially the same as apartheid South Africa's Nasionale Christen Opverdoing such--again, placing an idealised delusion of "Traditional Values" over core skills, reinforced by deliberate social isolation based on the delusion that Knowledge must be some class of a Loathsome Disease requiring all manner of quarantine lest the end result be in the same league as that scene which seems common in films of the Godzilla stylee: Otherwise innocent people in the streets suddenly screaming out their lungs, running in outright panic en masse while police sound trucks repeatedly proclaim "Please remain calm! Do not panic!" and air-raid sirens wail all over town in the "attack" mode in the prelude to a general state of mayhem tinctured by paranoia.

Otherwise known to psychatrists of a certain time as "schizophrenic germs," based on a lack of medical, let alone psychological, knowledge about the root causes of schizophrenia or schizoid-spectrum disorders, as if suggesting that "schizophrenic germs" were something in the vein of germs as can cause typhoid, influenza, common colds, tubuculerosis, even the HIV/AIDS virus, among other Loathsome and Disgusting such.

Which probably speaks volumes of the 21st century, expected years ago to become the Age of Aquarius, now becoming the Age of Doublethink in service to a warped and misguided agenda. And to be excused as "healthy" and/or "patriotic" if and when asked.

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MEANWHILE, YOU MAY HAVE HEARD WHERE FOX PROLEFEED ACTUALLY REFUSED(!!) TO ACCEPT PETITIONS SIGNED BY SOME 350,000 PEOPLE the other day, as called on Fox Prolefeed to stop pandering to latent feelings of racism and bigotry among its Great Unwashed audience and start being a serious "news" channel for once.

Prompting Your Correspondent to wonder if Fox Prolefeed is actually receiving super-secret payments from racist and white-supremacist organisations to advance their "talking points" in the guise of "news and information," and--if such be the case--failing to disclose the fact to viewers. Not to mention resorting to elaborate ruses to avoid arousing suspicions among "meddling Secular-Progressive bloggers."

Up there with what I said in a previous Open Letter about whether Fox Prolefeed is engaging in a "cash-for-comments" scam designed solely to advance conservative "talking points" for "winning of hearts and minds" in the guise of news reportage, with intent all the while to mislead or confuse viewers by not disclosing such payments, or the exact emouluments thereof, or how same are made.

As if that weren't enough, Fox Prolefeed should be reminded that their "mothership," News Corporation, shows a general tendency towards reckless and irresponsible journalism, as the recent Invasion of Privacy case Formula 1 president Max Mosley brought against the News of the World (and for which Herr Mosley, son of British Fascist majordomo Sir Oswald Mosley, won some £60,000 in damages the other day) revealeth.

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OH, AND ONE THING MORE (as Paul Harvey oft closes out his news bulletins absent a "For What It's Worth" item):

How do we know these same Zealots and True Believers in using stupidity as a device to keep the Lower Classes in line all the more aren't secretly plotting designs on delibertately feeding into culturally-deprived environments a carefully-crafted, and @ once deliberate, stream of "eleegant poornoo!" (yes, that phrase was spotted of Your Correspondent in a "spam" e-mail promoting adult websites) in its crudest forms of depravity?

Especially the kind of "poornoo" as is, put simply, explicit hardcore, as if suggesting where Kankerdom is quickly bored by "schoolboy" soft porn of the Playboy/Penthouse/Hustler stylee, that their "folk culture" actually "tolerates" indecent jokes, songs and stories in mixed company--especially such involving farm animals, children and "inferior" peoples.

Not to mention generically packaged as Adult Sex Videos cheap and cheerful, all lacking any sort of underlying plot or story--in other words, just nothing more than random sex scenes over a reechy-sounding travesty of Muzak as soundtrack, with the occasional scenes of animals mating slipped in for variety. And without the common courtesy of a warning that such should not be sold or rented to anyone under 18 years of age, let alone the usual "nonsense" (as the conservative "foundations" likely subsidising the project will claim in their usual anti-regulatory mode) about "all models in this video are certified to be 18 years of age or older."

The latter, perhaps, concealing the likelihood of child-sex scenes somehow being slipped into these videos "for variety" as turns out to be deliberate, yet all the while denying responsibility (or expected to) if and when pushed.

8 hours old

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