Our Irresponsible Infatuation with Ignorance

The media is portraying the American public in a very bad light. It seems as if we value ignorant bliss and fumbling loyalty over intellect and cooperation. The biggest problem with this coverage is that in some ways it may actually be true.
I tried to avoid writing about Gov. Palin again, because the Republicans have successfully wielded her in a way to evade talking about the things that really matter in this election. (Economic security, energy policies, education reform, judicial responsibilities, etc.) However, I have to respond to this article in the Washington Post.
The headline For Working Moms, ‘Flawed’ Palin Is the Perfect Choice, at first this could be seen as a positive. Yeah, we aren’t expecting absolute perfection any more. Delve into the article and you see it paints a much sadder story. It seems now the country craves inexperience and exploitation.
The article revolves around interviews with women at a McCain rally. One woman says Palin “justifies what we do every day.” A good question to ask her is why she didn’t feel justified before. What in this culture makes mothers, working or not, feel like they aren’t justified in their decisions and actions? Perhaps the answer partially lies within government policies that pit family against work. Family leave is minimal and there is no compensation of any kind for parents that chose to stay home with their children. Even small countries like Estonia have better policies when it comes to parents, including modest financial assistance and job security for new mothers.
Another quote by this working mother was “There’re more American parents with unwed pregnant teenaged children than American parents with Harvard grads.” Is this a good thing? Or is this something that we should get to the bottom of by talking about adequate sex education and better financing for higher education? McCain’s doesn’t offer anything except less sex education and a simpler loan application.
Education level has been used against some of the presidential candidates. Obama with his degrees from Columbia and Harvard is portrayed as too smart to govern regular folk. While, McCain with his low class-rank at the Naval Academy would be better and Bush went to Yale, but that was alright because he was a C student not an honors student like Obama. Education isn’t everything, but it certainly shouldn’t be considered a weakness.
Throughout the article the author offers scary explanations for these women’s statements. “…the national conviction that anyone can succeed is morphing into a belief that experience and knowledge may almost be disqualifying credentials.” Some in this society actually want stupidity; really they do not care what we look like to other countries. They invite fights and even wars. As long as we look like we have the biggest balls, then all is right in America.

This is a frightening time in our country. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that our leaders should be intelligent and knowledgeable. Let’s hope the voices of people that still value smart leadership start to shout louder and drown out the noise from those whom are offended by big words.