Why Am I Not Surprised

This is about shit I hear and read about that further confirms how stupid people in this country are.

Today I have to decide between Giuliani continuing to spout racist vitriol about Obama; John McCain blaming a snowstorm for signing that letter to Iran; Utah bringing back the firing squad; and Tony Perkins, the poster boy for hate, racism and narrow mindedness, being invited by Republicans to testify as an expert before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on protecting religious freedom abroad.

But I have to go with Rep. Justin Harris (R-West Fork) the Arkansas lawmaker who gave away (yes just gave away) his two adopted girls, a 4 year old and a 6 year old he had adopted 2 years before, to a man who turned out to be a child molester. He and his wife gave the little girls away because they thought the girls were possessed by demons. The then 4 year old was kept in isolation and monitored by video camera because the Harrises believed she was possessed by demons and could communicate telepathically with them. Because they cared so much, they went to all the trouble of summoning exorcism specialists from Alabama - where else would one go to find an exorcist, Harvard? - to have the demons cast out of the girls. It gets better, or worse,  depending on how you look at it. This bozo Harris runs the Growing God's Kingdom preschool facility, which is where he found the child molester to give the girls to. Harris sits on the Arkansas Child and Youth Committee in the State House which handles child welfare issues. Not surprisingly, Harris campaigned as a champion of "family values". As a true Tea Party nutcase (that's redundant, isn't it?) he has opposed any and all legislation that helps the poor and the needy except for himself. He collected state subsidies for his adopted children even after he gave them away.

Is this country getting dumber or is there just so much apathy that not enough people are paying attention? I think it has to do with all the "news" sources that people listen to or watch. Those stations are experts at sound bites and believable sounding rhetoric that emboldens people into thinking they are informed. Any of us that have paid attention the past several years have known that Fox News has never encumbered themselves with facts. And if the recent exposure of O'Reilly's fantasy world hasn't clued the sheep in about Fox's bullshit, there is no hope. I've watched O'Reilly and Hannity and they do sound convincing. If they are someone's only source for what's going on, I can see how uninformed people can believe them. Maybe the real problem is people just don't seem to have much curiosity anymore. Whether it's because they are too busy or too lazy or just don't care, who knows?

Not long before he died, Kurt Vonnegut lamented that society had lost the art of "becoming". That probably nails it. It's too much trouble to go to the effort of learning something new; of experiencing a new way of doing things; of feeling what it is like to walk in another person's shoes. It's much easier to let technology hand it to us.

Ah, hell. I guess I'm just a dinosaur. I'm modern because I'm writing it now, but I am an anachronism.