A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

When I read the things that I read about the coming U.S.elections in newspapers and media in general. I cannot but feel disgusted and annoyed at the kind of - quite often - unkind remarks and unfortunate criticism coming even from foreign sources,. with regard to the candidates, the U.S. system or its people, etc.

Some extend themselves to express their views and substantiate assertions which, significantly are addressed to the motivation degree, the quality and truthfulness of the sources of information of voters as well as his/her general basic
knowledge of location of ongoing current events - that will help enable
voters making a correct choice.

Be as it may, the final story will be written on Nov 4, and it will be written by the american people, by a large number of those men and women who live in America .the richest and most powerfull country in the world. It will be an event that will stand for ever in the minds and books of world events as unique in that for the first time a bllack man is the choice of many to become President of the United States.

It is not a common election - in effect it is an extraordinary event that will mark for ever the history of America. Why, for one, it will show the world the the country has taken a giant step forward in the reinforcement of one of the principles contained in the U.S. Declaration of Independence envisioned by their progress- minded founders.

It could mark a beginning of a new America, a real home of the brave state respected and admired by one and all.
It could mark the beginning of a new hope. It could be the happy epilog of a long campaing by the candidates.

The epilog will be written by the people of America and no one else. They, the voters, will have their wishes expressed in the ballot box. And this is also consistent with the Declaration of Independence :

WE THE PEOPLE OF THESE UNITED STATES.........
.
Come November 4, every american is MISTER AMERICA. A significant distinctiion and a significant responsibility as well.

Let´s pray that that moment is received calmly and with contentment in hearts and souls for assuming a civic duty with an open mind, with hope and peace for everyone in the future.

.................... A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

Let´s pray that he/she - has decided to vote based on his own beliefs and convictions, to the best of his/her ability
- that he/she has considered all the facts available, has studied those facts and has reached a personal decision without influence of pressure from others.

Let´s pray that at this time no one will forego the power of man´s mind to decide in a matter that really matters because it involves the personal well being as well as that of your dear ones for years to come.

It is said that only about 10% of man´s mind is used. Mans capacity to think, analize, explore,uncover, invent, discover are all there - in your mind. Love and health and suffering and joy also come from above.
And that is an awful lot of things man cannot live without and - usually takes for granted.

Let´s pray therefore that this immense power of your mind does not go to waste, a treasure that you are in possession of, at your command, to execute and present to you and those whom you love, a gift of gifts coming from the precious possession of freedom and democrary, and your mind.. that will render you a well discerned choice..

Let´s pray that you will allow your mind to make the correct decision..

That is a gift and honor that a Superior Power has bestowed upon man, to enrich life and family life of man around the world . the treasures of the mind -which go mostly untapped by man, are there at man´s disposal.

Let´s give our mind a chance ....a chance to work for man´s happiness, everywhere on our Earth!!!.
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EPILOG


Comments at some length are written by a foreign media from countries that throughout
history haven been close to America as friends and partners Below is an example
(taken from The Guardian. U.K.)

It should be emphasized that not everyone who is critical of America is an enemy of America.
Nor the injunction of "if you´re not for America, you are against America" be foolishly used.

A lot of times a firm NO is the best form of love expression to those you really cares about.

The view and opinion of intelligent people from the outside quite often provide a vision that cannot correctly be measured, or denied, by those inside.. These reports from folks who know something about world affairs should not be discarded or taken lightly. Their views reflect - unfortunately often times - situations that are known to be damaging as they provide a picture that distorts the image of the true America, where the negative is far outweighed by what
prevails as being fair, just and right The World needs a healthy and wise. America
- a place where a merger of the best minds and hearts from all over the world have converged to form a Union . black, white yellow and all of the rainbow colors .. that can proudly say, it could happen ONLY IN AMERICA !!!.
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THE TRIUMPH OF IGNORANCE

Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it.
Tell them something new and they will hate you for it.
The Triumph of Ignorance
Posted October 28, 2008
Why morons succeed in US politics.
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 28th October 2008
How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind’s closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist?(1)
Like most people on this side of the Atlantic I have spent my adult life mystified by American politics. The US has the world’s best universities and attracts the world’s finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.
There have been exceptions over the past century: Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived; but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan’s response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said “there you go again”(2). His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.
It wasn’t always like this. The founding fathers of the republic - men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton - were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin?
On one level this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves around the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15 year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD(3).
But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so dumb, and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby’s book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.
One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.
Jacoby shows that there was once a certain logic to its anti-rationalism. During the first few decades after the publication of The Origin of Species, for example, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and to treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin’s theory was mixed up in the US with the brutal philosophy - now known as Social Darwinism - of the British writer Herbert Spencer. Spencer’s doctrine, promoted in the popular press with the help of funding from Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people from being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation. Gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary(4).
Darwinism, in other words, became indistinguishable to the public from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics. Many Christians responded with revulsion. It is profoundly ironic that the doctrine rejected a century ago by such prominent fundamentalists as William Jennings Bryan is now central to the economic thinking of the Christian right. Modern fundamentalists reject the science of Darwinian evolution and accept the pseudoscience of Social Darwinism.
But there were other, more powerful, reasons for the intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists. The US is peculiar in devolving the control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters, and a great educational gulf opened up. “In the South”, Jacoby writes, “what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order.”(5)
The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest Protestant denomination in the US, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the South stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state’s public school biology teachers believed that humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time(6).
This tragedy has been assisted by the American fetishisation of self-education. Though he greatly regretted his lack of formal teaching, Abraham Lincoln’s career is repeatedly cited as evidence that good education, provided by the state, is unnecessary: all that is required to succeed is determination and rugged individualism. This might have served people well when genuine self-education movements, like the one built around the Little Blue Books in the first half of the 20th century, were in vogue. In the age of infotainment it is a recipe for confusion.
Besides fundamentalist religion, perhaps the most potent reason why intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism has been equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism a long time ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists. Almost every day men like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly rage against the “liberal elites” destroying America.
The spectre of pointy-headed alien subversives was crucial to the election of Reagan and Bush. A genuine intellectual elite - like the neocons (some of them former communists) surrounding Bush - has managed to pitch the political conflict as a battle between ordinary Americans and an over-educated pinko establishment. Any attempt to challenge the ideas of the rightwing elite has been successfully branded as elitism.
Obama has a good deal to offer America, but none of this will come to an end if he wins. Until the great failures of the US education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers there will be political opportunities for people, like Bush and Palin, who flaunt their ignorance.
www.monbiot.com

posted by victor @ Saturday, November 01, 2008