Crazy politics and infighting among the petty and the grand imperialists aside, the statement by Condoleezza itself merits some attention:

o- QUESTION: Madame Secretary, did you speak with Mr. Barzani recently and do you think what the Kurdish government — do you think what they did is enough? Are you satisfied with their actions so far?

o- SECRETARY RICE: I spoke with Mr. Barzani about a week ago. Others have spoken with him repeatedly. And I made the very clear point that the KRG needs to separate itself from the PKK in a very, very clear and rhetorical way. And he assured me that they had no intention of harboring the PKK, no intention of supporting the PKK, no intention of trying to do anything but root out terrorism in northern Iraq.
www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2007/11/94504.htm

What a gem of political literature! She wants the US puppet regime in Kurdistan "to separate itself from the PKK in a very, very clear and rhetorical way". What do those words mean, really? It's like saying she wants them to lie, "in a genuine way".

The Honorable US Secretary of State, of course, meant to say "…a very clear and categorical way." Categorical. She meant to say "categorical" instead of "rhetorical" - if she knew the difference.

To state something "in a rhetorical way" is to flap the mouth and make wind with the tongue while pretending to say something profound. "Pretending" is the key concept here. Even in common speech - in english - people say "oh, that's just rhetoric, a lot of hot air". What sense does it make to demand of a local Government to be "rhetorical"?

It makes no sense, of course, because Condoleezza wanted to say "Categorical". Well, they sound the same, right? "Rhetorical, Categorical" same difference - who cares what they mean, anyway? Right?

Does it matter if the global rulers and public figures don't know what they're saying anymore? Well, in one sense it doesn't really matter, for essentially the message to all underlings is "you know what I mean, just do it."

When a viper speaks, does it matter if the words mingled with venom are correct?

Arrogance of those in power is a tremendous factor, but is it the only one involved in the devolution of the US Administration's "culture"? Can we just blame Condoleezza for not looking up the hellenic/greek language words she was using in her speech?

We might forgive her reluctance - it's ok to say "it's all greek to me" every once in a while - but then, hey, don't use the words if you don't want to be bothered with meaning! Instead of trying to use the hellenic word "categorical" and blurting out "rhetorical", she could have used the word "definite", or "certain", or even used that wonderful expression that everyone in America would appreciate: "totally". She could have said "And I made the very clear point that the KRG needs to separate itself from the PKK, like, totally".

But… no-oh-oo. She wanted to sound rhetorical. She loved sounding rhetorical. Her own self-awareness and shame about it right at that moment spilled out into her speech: she blurted out her own self-perception as "rhetorical" just as she was about to say "categorical".

But is arrogance of power and the shame of self-awareness enough to explain the degeneracy of the US Administration's "culture"?

Condoleezza is one of the best educated, well-read and most articulate among the petty minds and poisonous little hearts who hold the planet's fate in their hands. If she can't be counted on to choose her words carefully, who else among her cohorts and fellow criminals can we count on to make sense? George Bush? Donald Rumsfeld?

The "Dumbing down of America" is not just a joke, it's a real phenomenon of a shocking magnitude. Those who like to measure the parameters of reality by seeing how many entries they find on Google on a particular theme take notice: a search with the phrase "Dumbing down of America" returns more than eighty-two thousand entries (links to that at the end of this article).

The "Dumbing down of America" is a lot worse than we might think.

Two ways to measure the phenomenon have provided astounding results and are worth a brief presentation here. One is an annual study by the US National Geographic Society, in which researchers measure the levels of general knowledge that Americans have about the world. Another study conducted by the Princeton Review (an Academic Testing company) measured the educational level and vocabulary of the speeches given by US Presidential candidates and …woah!

Diane Ravitch, a right-wing scholar reports the following:

"The Princeton Review obtained transcripts of the Gore-Bush debates, the Clinton-Bush-Perot debate of 1992, the Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960, and the Lincoln-Douglas debate of 1858. It analyzed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational level needed for a reader to understand a document. This test is ordinarily used to evaluate textbooks and other educational materials.

The results? In the debates of 2000, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level; Al Gore spoke at a high seventh-grade level. In 1992, challenger Bill Clinton scored in the seventh grade, President George Bush in the sixth grade, and Ross Perot at a sixth-grade level.

Our contemporary politicians, who found it necessary to speak to us as sixth and seventh graders, compared unfavorably with Kennedy and Nixon, both of whom spoke in a vocabulary appropriate for tenth graders. And they, in turn, looked sophomoric when compared to Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, whose [vocabulary corresponded to] eleventh and twelfth grade."

Her qualifications as a right-wing scholar are impeccable: Diane Ravitch is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University, one of the most important and prominent institutions of the US ruling class.

Is it a wonder, a tragedy, a comedy, an unspeakable horror that these people run the world?

Wait - it gets worse! What about the people who have been directly under their educational system for two decades now? The new generation of Americans who grew up after the "soft" counter-revolution of the late nineteen seventies brought Reagan and the Bush dynasty into power - what is this generation's level of knowledge, comprehension, education? Does it match the US ruling class and its operatives in the White House?

Here are the findings of the US National Geographic Society's study. The age group surveyed are young Americans between their late teens and mid twenties - they're supposed to be the best educated, most familiar with new technologies, tools for researching and accessing information, in the world - right?

* Half of young Americans can't find New York on a map.
* Only 37% of young Americans can find Iraq on a map—though U.S. troops have been there since 2003.
* 48% of young Americans believe the majority population in India is Muslim. (It's Hindu—by a landslide.)
* 20% of young Americans think Sudan is in Asia. (It's the largest country in Africa.)
* Nine in ten couldn't find Afghanistan on a map of Asia.
* A third of the respondents could not find Louisiana, and 48 percent couldn't locate Mississippi on a map of the United States, even though Hurricane Katrina put these southeastern states in the spotlight in 2005.
* Many young Americans also lack basic map-reading skills. Told they could escape an approaching hurricane by evacuating to the northwest, only two-thirds could indicate which way northwest is on a map.
* Fewer than three in ten think it's absolutely necessary to know where countries in the news are located. Only 14 percent believe speaking another language fluently is a necessary skill.

* Three in ten respondents put the U.S. population between one and two billion (it's just under 300 million, according the U.S. Census Bureau).
* Seventy-four percent said English is the most commonly spoken native language in the world (it's Mandarin Chinese).
* Although 73 percent knew the U.S. is the world's largest consumer of oil, nearly as many (71 percent) did not know that the U.S. is also the world's largest exporter of goods and services, when measured in terms of monetary value; half think it's China.

* And what about India, which features prominently in the job-outsourcing debate? Forty-seven percent of young Americans were unable to locate India on a map of Asia.

Are you worried yet?

It should be apparent that Condoleezza's arrogant tangle with the hellenic/greek roots and origins of her language, and the blurting out in public of fragments from the subconscious conflicts within her overbloated ego are the least worrisome elements at this juncture. There's a much bigger disaster facing the world.

What we have is a nation of "ignoramuses" led by a pack of self-absorbed petty criminals, ignorant, uncultured and morally corrupt, bombastic, conceited little creepozoids who hold the planet in subjugation, bondage, exploitation and misery.

Is it a wonder that many decent Americans are often heard making statements like "I'm ashamed to be an American in this time"? In quiet desperation some just put a sticker on their car that says "A Village In Texas Is Missing Its Idiot", or "Don't Impeach; Impale", (I really like that one!)

There are many Americans with a sense of morals, with a sense of respect for culture and dignity. But neither the reformist nor the revolutionary wings of the movement for social change within the United States is getting very far these days. There was a profound and lasting truth in the words of the Ancients who had taught us that an educated and cultured population can never be enslaved. In fact, the people who taught that lesson in the academies of ancient Sparta and Athens were actually invaded and occupied militarily and financially by the Empires of Romans, Christians, Ottomans, Nazis, and now by the modern global Corporate Empire of the "US-led new world order" - and yet, the light of civilization from their culture has continuously spread out passing through the conquerors and it has sculpted, shaped, informed and educated the populations and the ruling classes of all those conquering Empires throughout the ages: two and half thousand years later, Condoleezza Rice struggles to say words in greek so she can sound "rhetorical". Oy.

The lesson was not lost on the ruling class that now runs the Global Empire: keep the people of your homeland ignorant, poor, uncultured, uneducated and you can keep them producing profits, keep them enlisting as mercenaries to slaughter the innocent abroad and torture the dissidents at home; keep the people blind and crude and you can manipulate them to no end.

Of course the rulers forget that when crude and tormented people wake up and rise up in unity, their anger becomes personally directed against the masters and applied in that same crudeness they were taught. The torments of Marco Antonio Bragadino, who was flayed alive, or those of Athanasios Diakos, who was impaled and roasted alive, will seem like a caress.

But in the meantime, the large numbers of people in the US, even while aware of their misery and ignorance, live mostly by the slogan,
"When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping."

Petros Evdokas
~~~~~~~~~~~

Related:

Diane Ravitch. "Dumbing Down the Public: Why It Matters." The New Republic (Feb. 5, 2001):
www.hoover.org/pubaffairs/we/current/ravitch_0101.html

About the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University:
www.hoover.org/about/

"Dumbing down of America" at Google:
tinyurl.com/2mtf4y
or
www.google.com/search

"As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Pearls of wisdom from Donald Rumsfeld:
politicalhumor.about.com/cs/quotethis/a/rumsfeldquotes.htm

The National Geographic Society's study
What We Found:
www9.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/findings.html

Young Americans Geographically Illiterate, Survey Suggests:
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_geography.html

As reported by the French Press Agency (AFP):
www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2006-05/06/content_583372.htm
also at:
www.lebanonwire.com/0605MLN/06050221MAF.asp

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Briefing En Route Ankara, Turkey
(Official pubication by the US State Departent) November 1, 2007
www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2007/11/94504.htm


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