It’s the little things…

For want of a nail
the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe
the horse was lost.
For want of a horse
the rider was lost.
For want of a rider
the battle was lost.
For want of a battle
the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want
of a horseshoe nail.

It’s always the little things. But little things are often very, very large.

Take one of three very, very large things that are dragging the U.S. over the face of a precipice and down to ruin: illiteracy. No, I’m not just talking about the lack of what Mass Media Podpeople, Academia Nut Fruitcakes, edu/bureaucraps, and politicians *spit* that are the Conspiracy of Dunces intent on bringing the U.S. to ruin have redefined literacy to mean (a simple ability to laboriously decode words from print).

No, literacy is much, much more than simply being able to decode the printed page or sign ones name, as the dumbed down version our wonderful Conspiracy of Dunces would have it. It is at the very least the ability to decode those words, make sense of them and use their meaning to make rational decisions or come to an understanding of things beyond ones personal experience.

That’s simple functional literacy. And functional literacy is on the decline in the U.S. Witness all the idiots who in 2000 were too stupid to be able to follow directions in voting and caused such a brouhaha in the Florida vote count.

Worse, college graduates who are unable to understand simple directions for taking prescription meds or a newspaper editorial written to a theoretical eighth-grade level. College graduates.

But the simple, little thing of functional literacy is essential to a democratic representative republic, for when voters are too stupid to make sound choices, the government they get will be… what we have.

It’s a little thing. Simply being able to use (and understand) the printed word. Heck, we’re worse off than that! The spoken word, delivered most often to our ears by Mass Media Podpeople, is destructive of rational thought. Every time I hear a “newscaster” (an honest person would call them lying, subliterate agiprop readers) speak of a past time event in the present tense or use a singular verb with a plural object I hear also just another chip falling from reason.

But of course, that’s just a sideshow in the evidence of growing illiteracy.

“Then” is NOT “than”–and more and more people simply cannot grasp that simple, small thing that is a very great logical inconsistency.

“There’s many reasons… ” is a statement made by someone who cannot think. Or, perhaps, is simply too butt lazy to think. “There is… reasons”? What illiterate grammar teacher taught someone to speak/write that way? There are(there’re)… reasons… ” Oh, but I forgot for a moment. There are few, if any, grammar lessons taught any more. No time to teach such things when actually learning to write/speak/think rationally is crowded out by NCLB and all the other feel-good stupidity growing like slime mold in our nation’s prisons for kids.

But more, far more, than simply being able to read and understand what one reads and being able to string subject-verb together functionally in writing, literacy must involve… reading. Seems simple doesn’t it? But, make your own informal poll; ask around. How many of your contemporaries read even a single book… last week… last month… last year? Even more, did that book make them think? Did it expand their horizons or simply allow some escape? Was it only another piece of bubble gum for their mind, like common movie or TV or radio fare or did it cause them to ponder something–anything–significant or simply beyond their experience?

Don’t get me wrong, here; I am not against entertaining movies, TV shows or books. And I do not believe entertainment should be didactic. But it should at least sometimes have more substance than fluff.

Now, refine your survey a bit. How many of your aquaintances read a non-fiction book last week… last month… last year… in the last decade?

Most people–by a large majority in my experience–simply do not want to think, find reading of any kind–other than semi-literate “texting”–too laborious to spend their time on when they can instead choose to be mindless sponges soaking up whatever drivel the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind wants to dump in their marginal minds.

I call them the self-lobotomized.

Is it any wonder then that I have given up reading newspapers and such like, when I have to endure people who are paid to be literate substituting “there” for “their” or “their” for “they’re”? Heck, if the writers of such subliterate trash don’t see such obvious word abuse here and there in their own writing, why don’t their editors see where they’re wrong? *heh*

And apostrophes. Little things, right? But when someone writes nonsense, it can hardly encourage the reader to think rationally, can it? “The cats meow” conveys a very different meaning to “The cat’s meow”… unless the unfortunate and inexperienced reader (no doubt a college graduate) reading the words has no idea what that darned apostrophe (or its absence) means.

And there are scores of simple things, little things, that illiterate readers (and no, I reassert that is not an oxymoron) simply cannot understand. And that is what we are creating as our progeny, our future voters, leaders, citizens: dummies.

And the proof is in the pudding, as it were: Congress. How could we have the federal government we now have if it weren’t for the simple fact that so many voters are simply too stupid, uninformed and illiterate to vote intelligently?

(Oh, there are some other factors, but even they cannot prevent the election of such as Juan Mexicain, Barry Hussein Obama-Winfrey or The Hildebeast without at least being well-informed. And they have no chance of being well-informed by mindlessly letting the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind dictate their thoughts to them.)

No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.–Samuel Adams, November 4, 1775

Adams does touch on one of the other two “little things” important for citizens to exercise–each of them also matters of morality, as is literacy in a representative democratic republic… For a citizen to be uninformed and to vote in such a state is immoral. And simply listening to the lies of Mass Media Podpeople is to be willfully uninformed.

(Yes, being literate is more than that, too. I have known a few truly literate people in my life. I do not yet count myself in their number, but at least I will never step into a voting booth with mush between my ears to base my vote on.)

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