By: Coach Dan
The internet. What was once a marvel of modern civilization has quickly deteriorated into a hub for perverts, dope fiends, crooks, and cats. The Uneducated Elite, who in the past was resigned to sitting on their trailer steps and guzzling Bud Light by the quart while they deliver loathesome sermons to other half-mad, fully-drunk dingbats, now has as valid a voice in the world as a summa cum laude Harvard graduate. And it’s not going well for anyone.
As I sit here sipping on my Glenlivet and listening to Dylan, I wonder, where did we go wrong? I am reading comments on internet articles on how the Obamas are “monkeys”; people are STILL waiting for them to publicly release their birth certificates to prove that they aren’t, in fact, ISIS agents sent here to destroy the country in some elaborate, 10-year gig that is finally coming to fruition. Elsewhere, college-age kids don blackface for Halloween and laugh when Black Lives Matter tries to point out their ignorance. Hate crimes have actually RISEN in the US lately, and we are left to pick up the pieces, trying to figure out what went wrong, and how this country took such a drastic leap backwards after such a positive step forward in 2004.
And I keep coming back to the fact that so much of America is simply not educated. I mean, shit, it’s not ignorance if you don’t actually have the intelligence to understand the point in the first place.
“America is the greatest country in the world!” seems to be the mating call of the Uneducated Elite. But here’s the rub; only 36% of this country even OWNS a goddam passport. And of those that do, the greater majority of those people live in the outer aisles of the country. So looking at this scene realistically, the most racist and homophobic and hateful portion of the country has never been able to experience the way the world works anywhere else. And forgive me, but if you have never been anywhere else, how the fuck can you say that you are BETTER than them?
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain
Or maybe not?
