A couple of months ago, before I dropped my Intro to Formal Logic class, I received an assignment that dealt with deduction. The questions were not history questions, but to complete the assignment you needed to know basic history, such as:
Who is George Washington?
Who did America battle in the Revolutionary War?
Who won the Revolutionary War?
Now, I’m not here to come down on any one, that’s not my intention, but after class I went to the professor to ask him for help, even though I had every intention of dropping the class, when I was cut off by a student who needed help on her homework. She asked, “Who is George Washington….”
I was speechless. I’ll let the Revolutionary War questions pass, but George Washington? That’s an entire day of Kindergarten, learning about the cherry tree and possibly the most important president this country has ever had. The internal improvements that Washington made, the standards that he set, and this person had no idea who he was.
This isn’t the first time it’s happened on Kent State’s campus, one student in my comparative politics class asked the professor after watching a Tiananmen Square movie— seriously, not even going for a joke, had no idea— asked, “Didn’t something happen here (at Kent State) like that?”
Well these experiences got me thinking: Which candidate will dumb down their campaign in order to capture the voters who are completely clueless when it comes to history?
Then they all did. I was at a friends house watching basketball and he turned the TV to Monday Night Raw. Just before I asked him to change the channel, because only Jeff Russ still watches wrestling, they promoted a segment were the candidates would address the WWE fans. Like a bad car accident or any VH1 show, I had trouble taking my mind off this potentially catastrophic event in American Culture and politics. This is what they said:
My God, George Washington was worried about the U.S. being entangled in foreign affairs, and now we have three people who could possibly be the next leaders of the free world going on, I’m sorry, but a FAKE fighting show.
No wonder there’s people who don’t know AMERICA won the freakin’ AMERICAN REVOLUTION, Monday Night Raw has never fit that between a Macho Man Randy Savage-Hulk Hogan match and the Undertaker-Mankind flaming cage of death match.
Obviously, Monday Night Raw consistently has high ratings and it makes sense for candidates to go on and talk about their campaigns, but John McCain, do you have say “McCainiacs.” Hillary Clinton, do you have to refer to yourself as “HillRod.” Finally, Barack Obama, these people watching this show think that those “chair shots” to the head are real; do you think they know what special interest groups are?
It’s indeed a scary world out there, and after talking to reporter Juan Williams on Wednesday, when he said people’s attention spans are shorter and gorgeous, well-endowed women are the reason Fox NEWS has high ratings, it’s getting worse.
But Oh well, the country will soon implode, college students will think France won the AMERICAN REVOULOTION and Monday Night Raw will dictate public policy. And that’s the bottom line because America wants it so.
