From Truth Out: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15107-conservatives-the-new-taliban
By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
The Republican Taliban has offered its budget. Taliban, you say? Really?
How does the Taliban work? They keep people stupid. Women are witches. Jews are another species. Westerners are degenerate. Only the “wise and powerful” Taliban leaders know what the Koran really says, because they’re the only ones who can read, write, or tell everybody else what’s real.
There was a time when the Muslim world was enlightened. They invented the writing and math that we use today. They were the center of the world for science. But then, in some places, the Taliban took over.
And don’t for a minute think that it’s really all about religion. Religion is just used to manipulate the useful idiots. It’s really about money, power, and control. And that can only be held by thugs like the Taliban when the people are kept poor and stupid.
Here in America, there’s a new Taliban rising. They fetishize guns, just like the Afghan Taliban. They fear women and education. They want to keep the people stupid and in chains.
They’re the plutocrats and the billionaires who rose to power on the heels of Reagan’s trickle-down economics. And now, what’s trickling down to us is their stupidity.
As Mark Morford wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle’s blog SF Gate, “Six percent of Americans believe in unicorns. Thirty-six percent believe in UFOs. A whopping 24 percent believe dinosaurs and man hung out together. Eighteen percent still believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Nearly 30 percent believe cloud computing involves… actual clouds. A shockingly sad 18 percent, to this very day, believe the president is a Muslim. Do you believe in angels? Forty-five percent of Americans do. In fact, roughly 48 percent – Republicans and Democrats alike – believe in some form of creationism.”
So why do Americans believe in such absurd things? Because they’re being taught these ridiculous beliefs in our nation’s schools, and hearing them from our corporatized media.
All across America, our children are learning from the curriculum of the plutocrats and billionaires. In Louisiana for example, children learn about how hippies were dirty, rock musicians worship Satan, and climate change is one big lie.
But America’s new Taliban isn’t just controlling what’s being taught in our classrooms. They’re also dictating what’s being shown on America’s billionaire-backed corporatized media.
Continue reading at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15107-conservatives-the-new-taliban
