Which road, the high road, or the low road?

Bob Hebert, in today’s New York Times, wrote about how wholly unprepared and unconcerned we are that we are unprepared for the challenges confronting us, challenges that require higher math skills, higher educational skills than we currently possess. By and large, the US is a country of the blind trying to lead the blind in a world composed of countries with better than 20/20 vision. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/opinion/14herbert.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1223996581-S6/6nM+rnWmR+SSZNYNmOg) Hebert quotes from an article written last week by Sara Rimer, “The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels . . . and those who do excel are almost all immigrants, or sons and daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued.”

Hebert notes how we have largely (and rather blissfully) ignored the fact of our decaying infrastructure, even after witnessing the tragic, fatal consequences of our blissful ignorance in New Orleans and in Minneapolis, how we are more engaged “text messaging while jaywalking” than we are with issues that are dire and immediate. In Hebert’s words, “We’re like a family that won’t even think about fixing a sagging, leaky rook until it collapses on our heads.”

We have had a tax system that has privatized profit, socialized risk, that has favored the top earners to the point that the top 1 percent “hauled in more than 21 percent of all personal income in 2005,” that “levies the poor, the middle class and even the upper middle class to subsidize the rich.”

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So when I view the bigoted yahoos at the McCain-Palin rallies, frightened to death — not about anything that will negatively affect an already negative present that’s headed downward into even more negative depths — about the color, and possible religion, of a candidate, or the ability to skin a moose or a fish, or whatever you do with a moose you’ve shot, or a fish you’ve hooked . . .

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We’ve already had a yahoo who can clear brush, and look what that’s brought us. So, color, or religion? What’s any of that got to do with it? Isn't quality and intellect the standard we should be after, and the trivial nature of his or her hue or shade or religion . . . that just comes with the package.

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All those so worked up about the package wrapping . . . Geez, ya know, they are truly, really ignorant and stupid fools. Not a mite’s more sense than a mule, or an ass.

But then again . . . they’re from backwater burgs not much different than Ypsi-tucky, not the Bay Area. I’ve lived in both, and it’s the dumb-as-hell Ypsi-tuckians that scare the hell out of me. I don’t want a president Ypsi-tuckians can identify with. I want one who I can’t identify with. I want one who’s the best and the smartest we can get, one who has got the good-as-gold scholarship records to prove it. I sure don’t want .005 from the bottom of the barrel, and lucky by dint of parentage to have that. 

PS — For those worried about religion, the history of Christianity and Christians is nothing I’d brag to anyone about. It would take a couple thousand 9-11s before the Muslim faith even got in the ballgame of terrorist or genocidal numbers with Christians. Hell, it might take a couple thousand 9-11s just to catch up to the Crusades, and that leaves more than a thousand years of terrorizing to go.  

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