StevieslawConspTheory101: I Believe, I Do

Psst.  Psst. You. Yes, you.  Now that the President has shown he was born in the USA, I bet you are looking for another conspiracy theory to latch onto.  I have one right here in the inside pocket of my raincoat.  Closer.  Yes, you.  Don’t you want to be the first person that I tell about it. It’s a doozy.

Americans are dumb and they are likely to get dumber. Yesterday, on the John Stewart Daily Show Forum, someone wrote in about the solution of an equation that was apparently floating around on Facebook.  The equation was: 6-2(1+2)=?  As of late last night, the correspondent wrote, roughly half of the 300000 people who tried to solve it got it wrong.  The nice thing about the story---which is true of any good story---is it doesn’t matter if it is “factually accurate” or not. The point is, it’s believable.

So, if that little example shows that many Americans have not been getting a quality education, imagine what our future will look like with the significant cuts Republican Governors have been proposing for all levels of public education?  Private school vouchers for the few, at the expense of public education? Terrific idea.  And so, so much kinder than distributing blankets infested with smallpox to the natives of poor neighborhoods across our farms and cities.

So, if you would like a little conspiracy theory, you might ask yourself who benefits from a poorly educated population.  Gee, that’s a tough one.  Anyone have a calculator?

The title of this piece is from the great Tom Paxton song, I Believe, I Do: