Fooling ourselves: Everything is going as (they) planned

Many conservatives were dismayed and yet unsurprised by a video made by media analyst Mark Dice's interview of San Diego beachgoers who didn't know why we celebrated Independence Day.

Late night TV hosts like Jay Leno had used many videos of college students woefully ignorant of facts every grade school child should know so it comes as no surprise that the dumbing-down of Americans is factual but not at all amusing because these low-infos can vote. A faux email recently made the rounds alleging a false attribution but it illustrates perfectly what I feel is America's greatest problem-ignorance.

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. "

In 2009, I wrote a column for the Irish American USA newspaper titled 'Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Columnist?" In the article I quoted from former FBI agent Dr. Cleon Skousen's book The Naked Communist and listed a few of the 45 goals he claimed were part of the Communist Manifesto. I did not include number 17--- Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

Is that where Common Core originated?

Although we were very poor, I was fortunate enough to get a good elementary education at a parochial school which led me to a superb education at Cathedral H.S. for Girls. The nuns who taught us believed that critical thought was developed through learning a difficult subject like Latin. I was less impressed by the professors at Hunter College who seemed more interested in espousing their political ideology than educating the students.

Consequently, I recognized at a very early age that I had very different values than others my age. The first indication of this came when my co-workers at the phone company came in raving about a scarf made by Vera It was very expensive as were all the fashion accessories now bearing designer names on the outside. Shouldn't these designers be paying me for being a walking billboard, I thought? When the fashionistas sold the gullibles the idea that torn jeans with gaping holes were de rigueur and worth $300 bucks, I knew the dumbing-down of America was in full force.

I became interested in politics before I was old enough to vote because of JFK. As soon as I was old enough, I registered as a Republican because I wanted to be different from the rest of my family although my first vote was for a Democrat, Hubert Humphrey. I also went to work on RFK's senatorial campaign. Had the media not withheld the negatives of JFK and RFK, I might not have been so supportive although my support was based on the concrete experience of the two men.

That's why I was dumbfounded when the Democrats successfully ran candidates that had poor records of achievements like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Their terms of governorships in Georgia and Arkansas had both states ranked near the economic bottom so why on earth would they even be considered suitable to run our country? Yet win they did and then it finally dawned on me. The entire country was dumbed-down and waiting to be Gruberized.

The most outrageous piece of legislature that was passed this century is the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare and it could only be passed because of a lazy and spoiled electorate and an impotent GOP. A Democrat Congress passed it without reading the bill because Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it was necessary to pass it first before we'd learn what was in it. What? Did she really say that? Yup!

The Democrats knew it would work because MIT professor Jonathan Gruber was their chief consultant and was caught on video saying: " if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in - you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass...."

So it's okay to blatantly lie to the American voter because we're too stupid to know we're being lied to as long as you're promising to give us stuff for free.

In 2008, most diehard conservatives weren't fooled by the oratorical prowess of Barack Hussein Obama. We were flummoxed , however, by how normally intelligent pundits like Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal failed to spot the con job kept hidden by sealed records and who joined the media fawning and adulation of the 'most brilliant candidate ever.' Why, he even campaigned in 57 states and that boo-boo wasn't even a senior moment like Rick Perry's in 2012. It was just Obama without his teleprompter so let's just move on.

While I dearly hope that some semblance of reality has awakened most Americans, it's disconcerting to read the poll numbers that show such strong support for Hillary Clinton and her rival Bernie Sanders. Neither one of these Democrat candidates has demonstrated an iota of positive achievement while serving in office other than being the right gender or being a socialist promising the moon to millennials.

Have we hit bottom yet because that is what it will take for America to wake up and smell the burning carcass of the American Dream? Do we still have a depraved electorate willing to accept another totally unacceptable individual as president merely because that person is a Democrat? We now have over 16 GOP candidates for 2016 and each one is better suited to be Commander in Chief than a Hillary Clinton who lied about what happened in Benghazi where an American Ambassador was murdered and she asked Congress, 'What difference does it make now?'

They all have far better ideas than socialist Bernie Sanders who wants the government to take care of us from cradle to grave as if that worked for the USSR. Once you run out of people who'll pay for people who don't want to work, the house of cards collapses.

...and best of all, all these Republican candidates know why we celebrate Independence Day.

Comment by clicking here.