ThoughtQuarks

Education of the Stupid Classes: Kansas church teaches children to hate

Times like these I want to move to another planet: Polls that show what many Americans really think (“think” being an exaggeration, more like reptilian cogitation). Glenn Beck, Sarah-beyond-the-Pale-in and her ghastly illogic, Tea Baggers, the entire ilk of reptilian cogitators who invade our headlines with their unnewsworthiness. I am still reeling from the Kansas church protestors who came to San Diego, and a child in their congregation–a child– hoisted a sign that said God Hates Gays and Jews.

These people are comprehensive in their incomprehensible ignorance.

It’s the tyranny of the Stupid Classes. Makes me feel so lonely and afraid and shoved into my well-read corner: I can only hope the other quiet people have got the other three. By quiet I mean not making useless noise.

“Liberals” are not just an “educated elite”–we’re just busy reading, thinking, doing, creating, hoping that these mouthy people will crawl back under their planks, go back to their fecund festering dark places; knowing they always erupt in Bruegelian periodicity when the economy sours, when we need scapegoats, when we need labels for chaos and uncertainty.

The whining mewling and frighteningly powerful stupid classes. I tell myself they have their points, they have a few reasonable concerns (the fear of any government wielding too much power). They don’t articulate well (“Obama is the Antichrist”? Global Warming is a hoax? Obamacare is Socialism, complete with Hitler mustache? Gutted and pathetic as the Healthcare bill is, it pales in comparison to what other advanced countries offer its tax-paying citizens). I tell myself that the Noisy People’s ghastly opinions and commentary come from a lamentable lack of awareness, global understanding, basic education (leaving aside scary hidden agendas and a dark desire to manipulate): Lamentations of ”Obamacare” feed right into the for-profit insurance companies who are all too ready to exploit the underinformed.

What’s chilling is that some corporations are using the Stupid Classes to fuel their own commercial agendas and have the money to incite stupidity, leaving us all in their yacht wake of political devastation. Don’t get me wrong. I like to sail as much as anybody, but I will never fill my sails with Global Warming Gassy hot air.

A little integrity please. A little integrity.

I am not of the educated elite. I put myself through an inexpensive State university, which was all I thought I could afford at the naive age of 17 (otherwise, hell yes, I would have gone to Stanford or Yale and if not there, Berkeley), worked hard, studied hard, and continue to read and think past my advanced degree. It’s not so hard, really; in fact, thinking is painless. My grandfather, with his sixth-grade education, read widely and understood far more than the bobble-head rabble-rousers inciting unreason and recruiting membership in the Stupid Classes.

Results from a new Harris Poll:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-22/scary-new-gop-poll
• 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
• 57 percent of Republicans… (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
• 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”
• 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did”
• 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama “may be the Antichrist.”

 (Puppet Insurgency of San Diego sends envoy to protest.)

Here’s one role I never expected to play in life: organic intellectual. It’s when someone stays and works from within a community, instead of bailing when things get uncomfortable and difficult or trying to effect change from some safe haven.

It’s a term I picked up in some college philosophy class. I’d thought, hell, if the Sandinistas, the Nazis, Taliban, nay even corporate pantyhose pillagers are headed my way, I’m out of there.

But we didn’t move to New Zealand after losing the second election.

In fact, we moved to a highly conservative, traditionalist, Republican enclave, East County. We waded through streets lined with “Bush-Cheney” campaign signs, looking for a house.

The farther east, the cheaper the land, and the denser the Bush-Cheney signs. We landed 10 miles out from our beloved North Park and spanky-swanky Hillcrest neighborhoods, where I would never need play the role of organic intellectual.

No cul-de-sac utopia for me, thanks, I just needed enough land where my neighbors wouldn’t have to see things to pray about. A place for fruit trees, vegetable and herb gardens, a hottub to get naked in, a place to throw the kinds of parties that attract fruit flies like me. So we’re rural, with one acre, but still sort of in a neighborhood.

A liberal democrat not getting chased out of East County after seven years gets careless, fearless of pitchforks. I volunteered at a ”Vote for Change” bake sale in downtown La Mesa.

This is Big Truck country. Trucks with bumper stickers like “NØBama” and “Men for Palin.” Some of them drove down La Mesa Boulevard and hissed, booed, even flipped us off, but even more brave souls came and bought cookies.

Then an editor from a new online rag, East County Magazine, asked if I’d help write for them. A fledgling independent media outlet, with undeniable progressive leanings working in the heart of “McPain” territory.

I would become that organic intellectual. And I would do it for free.

So, for starters, I covered a protest at a new, some would say “covert,” Blackwater facility in southeast San Diego, Otay Mesa. Several police cars had arrived at the protest site and officers chatted with personnel at the facility. Gradually, many of the black & whites wandered off: It was a protest organized by people like the Peace Resource Center, for gods sakes.

To get “the other side” I called Brian Bonfiglio, the Vice President of Blackwater out here. He pulled into a parking lot just to talk to me and didn’t get where he was going for a good half hour.

If a voice could swagger, Bonfiglio’s did. This is a guy who heads the kind of corporation that, according to Representative Bob Filner (Blackwater’s in his district), “shoots first and asks questions later.” A corporation that George Bush couldn’t run his entire war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan without, according to author Jeremy Scahill. I kept my questions solely on the facility, and not about the Nisour Square shootings, which the Department of Justice is busy investigating.

Blackwater’s here to help train the Navy, but the protestors didn’t like that after “kicking them out of Potrero, where they wanted to open a mercenary training camp” they “snuck under the radar” and opened a new facility under front names in Otay.

I wrote all about that. I enjoyed Bonfiglio telling me, “I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s nothing in this process that would require me or my company to call the East County Democratic Club! Come on! That’s crazy.” I probably laughed. Bonfiglio was forthright and forthcoming, a good interview.

—Tho the protestors’ concerns are certainly no laughing matter. They’re worried about a powerful military training organization setting up shop along a border bristling with tension and racism, a mile from Otay-Mesa border crossing, a mile from the nearest ICE facility (Immigration and Customs Enforcement—that’s INS to you and me, just a rebranding), with military equipment manufacturing in Mexico and allegations they want to work with Border Patrol and drug enforcement activities in South America.

Bonfiglio said if I walked in there, I’d see ship simulators and Navy simulation stuff everywhere. (Don’t forget the firing ranges, Bri’.)

He said, “If you had real press credentials and you represented somebody, I’d be happy to show you around.”

“I don’t have official AP press credentials, because I’m working for a very small East County magazine, so, not yet.”

“You give me that name and we do a little bit of due diligence to fact check, to be honest. I don’t even care if you’re for or against a company like ours. I don’t care if you’re democrat or republican. None of that plays into this. But if you’re legitimately doing a story for a legitimate newspaper I’d be happy to show you around.”

“I’m legitimately interested in all sides,” I said, “let’s put it that way.”

So Brian Bonfiglio offers me a flak jacket. How far does the role of organic intellectual go? Is firing a gun a form of fact-checking to see if the enemy is not within?

I hope to post some more pics from the protest that were too inflamatory for pitchfork-wary East County Mag.

I turned you on.

Before we got started, there was just the blank screen, the inner sanctum. Everyone else sees only the outside shell, a flashing Toshiba logo stamped in fine metal. The flip side—after I unlatch and unfold you at the joints—is what only I will see, for hours on end.

I will dive in, deep into the inside while remaining, I must admit, in the shallows this side of the flat screen.

The flood of my thoughts will scandalize future grandchildren. They will have to clean up after me, like throwing out the old pill bottles an old person saves for some indistinct future use, memories I’ve held onto. Like cleaning the moldy muddy damage left after a global-warming-scale hurricane, this smear of life. Strip the hard drive, they will say.

Revelare! I open and reveal you.

A face stares back at me, from a darkly reflective glossy screen. Startled at first, we stare at one another, me and my indentured bank account projecting back to me as me. I set my forefingers above f and j and wait for Windows. What a blank, uncomposed expression, caught unawares in the Toshiba mirror. I might have composed myself, had I anticipated my face.

Toshiba, why did you have to install a mirror for a dead screen? Should I smoke while writing? Is your mirrorlike screen for the sophists who check their appearance in every passing window—why do you give us our face before you undulate the calming blues of Microsoft?

Right before I pen, you know, just a little literary story (that someone will try trace to experiences in my own life, as if it’s always about me and probably is, that some journal will accept in return for a free year’s subscription)—why must I first ponder this face, pale white flower, like the stars that shine against the drowning waters, already curling, browning around the edges, now fading, as I fall, fall, into the beckoning blues of Windows.

Mizu no kokoru. Mind like water. If I imagine my mind like the surface of clear, undisturbed water, I can reverse narcissism, according to the East, mind expanding out and encompassing everything, including nothingness. A clear, calm surface reflecting everything around it perfectly. No turmoil, peacefulness.

I should leave it at load and not go on Word, ripple what is quiet, ripple up a hurricane.

Mizu no kokoro. Mind like water. You win, Toshiba, against Western mythology. You give us what we want so we can drown, with the speed of centrino technology, in our own solipsistic waters. Starting out with our blank face.

The blues have arrived. My middle finger points, just a little ways, inevitably, up and a bit west—to i.