IGNORANCE ISN'T BLISS; IT'S...IGNORANT

Check out this chart at http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm. It's going around the net, you've probably seen it.

Actually, while this may be fun, the Economist, which originally printed the chart, printed a retraction: "Last week we published a list that purported to show the IQs of states voting for George Bush and Al Gore in 2000. Alas, we were the victim of a hoax: no such data exists. By way of apology, here are two very crude ratings of states' intelligence—and how they voted." http://www.economist.com/World/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2692859

But so what. One sign of a truly stupid person is making the choice to remain ignorant when presented with facts. This explains not only the election but abstinence-only programs, creationism, and their time-honored tradition of selectively choosing passages from the bible to support their particular loci of ignorance. After all, why let a fact stand in the way of a good opinion?

What else would one expect from people who believe in The Rapture; 17% of those 70 million self-identified Evangelicals believe the world will end (the Rapture) in their lifetime. So we are now in the end times, according to them. After Israel is established, God will swoop down and transport only the true believers to Heaven, and smite everyone else, including the Jews--except for 144,000, and I have no idea why. Comic relief?

Bush is one of those evangelicals.

But of course there's more to this story than ignorance. There's venality. Oh, there's plenty of that.

Look at Bush denying global warming, encouraging homophobia, and prohibiting stem cell research from that perspective. Denying established scientific consensus certainly appeases his conservative Xian "base" so widely blathered about, as does his homophobia; but he has more than one base. Now that the cabal has again stolen the presidency*, he can concentrate on his real base--the rich and powerful robber barons of capitalism, whose allegiance he cemented--as if he needed more stickiness--with his tax cuts. Who benefits most from ignoring environmental concerns? Big Energy,of course. Who benefits from prohibiting stem cell research? Big Pharma. Explore every issue where this administration obstructs or overturns progressive policies and name your industry that benefits. Those Christians ain't benefiting on the material plane, that's for sure. They're getting screwed over as much as we are; in fact even more, since those red states rely even more on government largesse than the blue states, and most of that largesse these days is going up the chain, not down. Another fact they choose to ignore.

It sure is annoying, though, that their willful ignorance so negatively impacts the rest of the sentient world, and for long beyond their much-prized Rapture date.

While I'm fairly sure Bush's membership in his religious cult is hearfelt (with this man and his co-conspirators one can't be truly sure of any integrity), his desire to please and enrich his corporate daddies trumps most of his dedication to his fellow religious bonkjobs. Religion is his foil. He used it, as so many have before him, to maintain power. And he maintains power for the main purpose of increasing tribute to plutocracy.

*How do we define "stolen?" Will it prove to be voting corruption again, as many progressive organizations are investigating now? Maybe. But a cabal that wins by the nastiest lying and distortion of fact I've ever seen, by manipulating a system filled with loopholes in the most corrupt way, by stooping so low that the bar is on the floor--well, that's theft to me. Regardless of how the voting recounts come out, this team has stolen another chunk of our still-evolving democracy and threw it into the garbage disposal. They've stolen more than the election. They've stolen hope that America could become the idealistic Democracy that 54 million voters, in their unrelenting ignorance, think it already is. That's a capital offense.