The New Republic has the latest incident from Santorumpalooza, the never ending saga of one Republican’s quest to return the US to some pre-Enlightenment state, Santorum: College Is For Losers:
In the unlikely event that two of my earlier posts (“Santorum: Who Needs Public Education?” and “Horace Mann, Antichrist?”) left you wondering whether Santorum was positioning himself as a militantly anti-education president, today Santorum cleared up all remaining ambiguity by saying President Obama was “a snob” for trying to make it easier for Americans go to college:
There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to task that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor and trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.
Going to college, apparently, is a body-snatching exercise that will turn you into a liberal pod person. If you aren’t careful, it will also turn you into a Negro. The audience in Troy, Mich., I’m sorry to report, loved every minute of it. Talking Points Memo has the video.
When I contemplate this quote from the one-time Senator from Pennsylvania (where I once lived, although not when he was in office), several thoughts immediately start body-checking each other in the competition to reach my mouth and/or typing fingers before my self-restraint kicks in.
I think the most site-pertinent observation I can make is that this kind of “dumber than a sack of door knobs”/”race to the intellectual bottom” pandering is precisely what we don’t need right now. And by “we” I mean not just Americans, but all of humanity, given the importance of the US in our global efforts to deal with climate change, among other sustainability issues.
It’s abundantly clear to me that the four leading candidates for the Republican nomination for President have reached the point of being willing to say and do anything that results in a net gain in the polls or even a slight vote advantage in the primaries. Convince one of them that there’s a huge, untapped contingent of voters who are in favor of infanticide, enough to offset the voters who would flee from anyone voicing support for that heinous crime, and you’d see some serious shit in their ads.
But I digress.
Forgive the threadbare imagery, but humanity really is at a crossroads. One path is lit by maturity and compassion, and informed by the best science available. It leads to a lot of tough decisions, no doubt some of which we’ll screw up, possibly multiple times, with the eventual payoff being a transition to a cleaner, healthier environment, one in which many more people are employed in green jobs, and one that avoids a great deal of human pain and suffering. The other path is one of ignorance, fear, myopia, greed, indifference to the plight of our fellow human beings, isolationism, and above all else, denial. It is the ultimate example of taking the easy alternative, even though we know it leads to water and food shortages, resource wars, and likely millions to billions of human deaths — “hell and high water”, as Joe Romm and so many others have pointed out.
I would be the last to say that President Obama has given environmentalists everything we wanted; while he’s disappointed many of us on more than a few details, his record and vision remain light years ahead of the hideous, selfish, and cowardly views expressed by Santorum and his competitors. That American voters in 2012 will be forced to choose between two such starkly divergent paths is almost beyond comprehension.
And let me say a word or three to the millions of sane Republicans in the US: You have my sympathy. This is not sarcasm or an attempt to take a passive-aggressive cheap shot, but heartfelt sincerity. You must be in agony looking at the candidates for your party’s nomination, whether you’re suffering in silence or publicly proclaiming, “I. WILL. NEVER. VOTE. SANTORUM.” You and everyone along the political spectrum deserve better than the train wreck you’ve been forced into by the extremists among the Republican base and politicians willing to do anything to pander to them for votes.
Very well said Lou.
I remember in the book Climate Wars, the author wrote that this was a test for humanity. As you’ve stated we need to overcome the worst aspects of our tendencies as a species and we need to do that to pass this test – at this point it seems we’re doubling down on those worst aspects… ;-)
You’re right about the Republicans – while they might have had choices in previous elections that appeared to be sane individuals – it seems almost like another age ago. The whole self reinforcing alternate view of reality that is the national GOP / Murdoch Media Outlets (Fox News in particular), Limbaugh etc. talking to their dedicated base is tilting itself right off into the wilderness – soon they won’t be able to hold on to moderate voters which will make the crazies even more important within the party and reinforcing.
Hard to see how they come out of that self reinforcing loop.
A note that seems relevant to this discussion of Republicans.
I remember when reading of the Koch funded and directed political organizations (Heritage, Kato and others) that one of them publicly told Sen. Snowe (ME) if she voted a certain way on a bill she would be targeted in the next primary (last year or the year before?). She voted on something that was mostly a Democratic bill and was publicly told she’d be challenged by one of these organizations.
Fast forward to today. She was being challenged in the GOP primary for her seat by a tea party radical (espousing all that Koch directed BS).
Today, this moderate Republican (I know…) announced that she was not going to seek Re-election this fall. This was the only time she’d ever faced a primary challenge for her seat. Judging by her comments, its obvious she just didn’t want to go through the nastiness of being attacked by the radical elements of her own party.
This is a perfect example of how moderates in the GOP who had voted for climate change legislation or green energy legislation are being weeded out from the party and others who might consider voting that way live in deathly fear of even talking about these issues. Truly a godfather like state within the GOP (basically being hijacked by its radical, well funded Koch guided interests).
Sad to see this happening in our political system (and hard to see how it’ll get stopped based on the money and organizations the Koch have).
I think the only reasonable way to read the Snowe situation is exactly as you did. Big Fossil isn’t about to say, “Well, golly, the evidence against us is piling up so high that even the average voter is figuring it out, so we’ll just fold our tents and go find something else to do.” They will continue to fight, using ever nastier tactics, right up until they perceive it to be more expensive to fight than to surrender. Given the market dynamics, the sheer throw weight of money they can spend on such efforts, and the egos involved, we won’t reach that mental tipping point in the foreseeable future.
Once more, I come back to the voters. If enough voters showed up on election day and voted against the interests of the Koch Brothers, et al., then I absolutely guarantee that they would be out of the political influence business in just a few election cycles. Sure, they would try to launder their contributions through various means, mostly legal (but perhaps less so as their desperation grew), but in the Age of the Internet it would be impossible for them to keep such secrets for long. But what am I saying??? People aren’t going to put that much effort into something as trivial as preventing a climate catastrophe when reality TV, computer games, NASCAR, etc. all beckon. Silly me!
I wouldn’t vote for Santorum for dog catcher, but he’s right about college. There are way too many people with a humanities degree driving a cab, and stuck with a high five figure student loan. If we repealed the disparate impact rule, most employers cuoud use testing to evaluate the aptitude of their applicants, vastly reducing the need for our education bureaucracy.