Cultivating hate and distrust toward the educated for financial gain

I’ve written a lot over the years about the growing trend toward anti-intellectualism in the United States, and it’s sources. As I think I’ve said before, I think, to a great extent, it’s deliberate. Generally speaking, the more educated a person is, the more likely he or she is to vote against the Republican party, and, for that matter, question the corporate status quo. And, with that in mind, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that thought leaders on the right, like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, spend so much time railing against so-called members of the “intellectual elite”. And, to a great extent, I think it’s why we have captains of industry, like the Koch brothers, pouring tens of millions of dollars into the Tea Party movement, which, as we’ve all seen, is essentially institutionalized anti-intellectualism. It works in their favor to have a willfully ignorant and vocal base that they can call upon to put pro-corporate politicians into office and reliably vote against their own best interests. While we’ve been seeing this for a while now, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything so blatantly over the top as this recent clip from Glenn Beck’s program on FOX News, in which he equates American universities with the re-education camps of Communist dictators.

Maybe, once all the mosques are burned down, the Tea Partiers can turn their attention toward our universities.

Speaking of those secretive, libertarian Koch brothers, and how they’re using the Tea Party to do their bidding, our friends at Think Progress had an interesting piece about them a couple of days ago. Here’s a clip:

As Think Progress and others have reported, Koch Industries and its billionaire owners, Charles and David Koch, have played a leading role in the apparently successful effort by polluters to stymie Senate passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

Not content to simply stop progress, however, the Koch brothers and various Koch-funded organizations have also been actively trying to roll back existing clean air and clean energy laws — both at the state and national levels. David Koch, who lives in New York City and whose company is based in Kansas, is secretly bankrolling the Proposition 23 effort to roll back California’s landmark clean energy law. Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity helped make opposition to “cap-and-trade” a Tea Party talking point and then launched its so-called “Regulation Reality” tour to attack Supreme Court-mandated Clean Air Act regulations being finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Today, a new Koch-backed national effort to protect the energy industry, dubbed “Rally for Jobs,” begins with rallies in Texas and will continue next week with events in New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, and Ohio. While the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil’s Washington lobbying arm, is the “presenting sponsor” of the Rally for Jobs tour, several Koch-backed groups are also involved…

Koch Industries, for those of you who don’t know, is the second largest privately held company in the country, with annual revenues estimated at one hundred billion dollars per year. Koch Industries, while owning familiar companies like Georgia-Pacific lumber and Brawny paper towels, makes most of its money in oil, operating refineries in Alaska and Texas, and owning thousands of miles of pipeline. (So, you know they must love those angry, red-faced crowds screaming, “Drill, Baby, Drill.”)

Oh, and you might be interested to know that the Tea Party, which they fund, in addition to fighting against worker safety laws and clean air standards, is also vehemently opposed to net neutrality. Of course, that makes absolutely no sense, as you would expect people in middle America would want their small companies to be able to compete with large, international conglomerates on the internet, but, then again, they aren’t the ones pulling the strings, are they?

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23 Comments

  1. Knox
    Posted September 2, 2010 at 10:54 pm | Permalink

    How in the fuck would Glenn Beck know what goes on on a college campus?

  2. Peter larson
    Posted September 2, 2010 at 11:10 pm | Permalink

    Of course, Comcast’s’ right to freely suppress the voices of individuals must be protected.

  3. dragon
    Posted September 2, 2010 at 11:34 pm | Permalink

    Doesn’t matter how you find the pot o’ gold,
    All that matters is that you beat the leprechauns.

  4. Billy LaLonde
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 12:01 am | Permalink

    I can see why people decide to go off the grid. What a disgusting world we live in right now. I’m ashamed for people. If life was a movie, I’d root against us…the villians.

  5. EFJ
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 6:26 am | Permalink

    Everyone wants to feel superior to someone. It’s in our nature. Glenn Beck allows the dumbest of the dumb to feel good about themselves, to actually wear their ignorance as a badge of honor. It’s a sick, fucked-up bizarro world.

  6. a few year's off
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 7:56 am | Permalink

    “war is peace
    freedom is slavery
    ignorance is strength”

    Thanks for posting this. It doesn’t seem that large a leap to go from Glenn’s comments to facism.

    No doubt some will respond that the university system has stifled political discourse, and that they deserve this treatment. But for me, equating our colleges and universities to communist reeducation camps is fear mongering, hateful and dangerous.

    “How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”

  7. Edward
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 8:50 am | Permalink

    This is kind of ironic, given that Beck operates a ‘university’ online, which is clearly all about re-education, as opposed to critical thought.

    http://www.glennbeck.com/becku/

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20009560-503544.html

  8. ERB
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 9:14 am | Permalink

    Al Franken on Net Neutrality and why it’s the biggest issue since freedom of religion.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjYpz5TQSlE

    Please watch it, and get involved.

  9. Tim
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 9:39 am | Permalink

    The more educated you are, the more you realize that the world is complex, and the less likely you are to buy into a system where one side is “good” and the other is “evil”, which is what the Teapublican Party relies upon.

  10. Brackinald Achery
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 12:35 pm | Permalink

    “…the less likely you are to buy into a system where one side is “good” and the other is “evil”, which is what the Teapublican Party relies upon.”

    I’m pretty sure this is not technically irony, but you get where I’m going.

  11. Kim
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 12:52 pm | Permalink

    No one said tea partiers were evil, just stupid.

  12. Brackinald Achery
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 2:35 pm | Permalink

    pro-corporate politicians into office and reliably vote against their own best interests.

    Ha! Once again, look to thyselves, partisan plankeyes. Sometimes for laughs I like to reread the threads where everybody’s getting all teary-eyed about pro-corporation, everybody’s-got-to-purchase-the-insurence-companies’-products Obama getting elected. Rubes. You’re just as “stupid” as the tea-partiers you look down on.

    @ afewyearsoff: IngSoc stood for English Socialism, not facism. It was made up of teachers, union organisers, sociologists, journalists, scientists, bureaucrats, etc. Not that facism’s any better, but get your Orwell right. Sounds more like your fantasy world than Beck’s fantasy world.

  13. Posted September 3, 2010 at 3:49 pm | Permalink

    Let’s look at the word “indoctrination”.

    “in” in front for the syllable “doc” followed by “tri” and “nation” is little more than Obama-speak for getting everyone us “in” to his “nation” al health care plan. It’s all there for everyone to see in the report from the New World Order, one world government that David Rockefeller’s “Tri” lateral Commission was about after WW2.

    It’s all there! Can’t you see it?

  14. Dirtgrain
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 4:37 pm | Permalink

    Tea Party literalist!

  15. Dumass
    Posted September 3, 2010 at 11:21 pm | Permalink

    “Generally speaking, the more educated a person is, the more likely he or she is to vote against the Republican party, and, for that matter, question the corporate status quo. ”

    How “intellectual” do you have to be to realize both parties are the “corporate status quo”?

    Seriously. If towing either party line is intellectualism…

  16. Wicked Kewl
    Posted September 4, 2010 at 1:30 am | Permalink

    Tim, every political party is just what you describe.

  17. jeff davis
    Posted September 4, 2010 at 7:37 pm | Permalink

    ever since i announced my candidatecy as a write-in for mayor a few people have started to treat me differently, people that i’ve known for a long time. this has sent me into a deep depression. and i’m sick of it. i beleive this city has many problems but none that it cant overcome. i donate alot of my time to this community and will continue to do so. but i am withdrawing from the race, i’m done.

  18. Twins of Evil
    Posted September 4, 2010 at 10:18 pm | Permalink

    Wait, Jeff. I haven’t had a chance to treat you differently yet.

  19. Brackinald Achery
    Posted September 5, 2010 at 7:31 am | Permalink

    Weak. Now I know wrestling is fake. If I quit stuff every time people were jerks to me and I got depressed about it, I would have killed myself when I was 8.

  20. Robert
    Posted September 5, 2010 at 7:41 am | Permalink

    Now were getting somewhere, BA. What happened when you were 8?

  21. Peter Larson
    Posted September 5, 2010 at 9:48 am | Permalink

    Jeff, dude, just run. People hate it when people do things and will attack you at every turn. That’s just life.

    Fuck it, dude, run.

  22. Brackinald Achery
    Posted September 5, 2010 at 1:57 pm | Permalink

    I was trying to decode secret messages from an I Love Lucy episode, and the studio audience kept laughing at me.

  23. Silky
    Posted October 21, 2010 at 10:47 am | Permalink

    Taibi was on Olberman’s show last night talking about the Kockh brothers. You have to watch it.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/39769641#39769641

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