Ignorance is a National Resource
A case can be made that ignorance is a national resource. That sounds like an absurd proposition on the face of it, doesn’t it? But all you have to do is update that old adage from the fifties: “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”
Change it to “What’s good for United Health Care is good for the country.” Then, consider whose interests are best served by ignorance such as the following, documented in a new national survey done by the Indiana University Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research (CHPPR) and the Indiana University Center for Bioethics. (See news release).
With regard to the following particular survey question, Republicans are the most ignorant, believing by a majority of 53% that “the government will require the elderly to make decisions about how and when they will die.” (Is this a Fox News effect?).
Chomsky and Herman could well have used this example in their book, “Manufacturing Consent,” which describes how — in a system like ours, based on the consent of the governed — corporations are able to manipulate the media in order to “manufacture” consent compatible with their profit-based interests.
5 thoughts on “Ignorance is a National Resource”
Hey Don! Why is the image of that GOP logo truncated?
That’s because it’s a thumbnail image, cropped to WordPress’ standard 150×150 pixel wide size. You can edit that in your media settings at http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/options-media.php.
I can tell a wordpress blog from a mile away and I think you’ve got a pretty good looking one here. I don’t know when you launched the new site, but I like it. I’ve updated your feed in my reader so your content still shows up on my Nevada County page.
Hey thanks Zuri. I respect your opinion, and I appreciate your supportive comments (I’ve got to figure out how to allow comments straight out without moderation … it seems I have that option for each post, right?).
About this re-engineered site, yep it’s WordPress, and it took me a couple of months to get up to speed (it felt like it took me forever). I finally hired a WordPress consultant to give me a few well-placed tips and nudges, until I could comfortably handle it on my own. Now that I’m happy with how it looks, my creative juices are really flowing.
By the way, yes it’s a blog, but it’s also more (“It’s a floor cleaner AND a dessert topping!”). I’m using WordPress as more of a “content management system,” and my vision for my site is that of a magazine or journal, only one part of which is a blog. I’ll keep dumping my thoughts out to the blog, probably almost daily.
But I also intend to write longer, more thoughtful articles (for the “article department”) and essays, etc. In fact, I hope to solicit articles from others. We’ll see how that works out. For that purpose, though, I really wanted a professional looking site, and I believe I’ve got that now. Stay tuned.
Hm, I looked it up. It seems I get to moderate the first posting of a new poster. That seems OK.