The Dumbing Down Of Americans | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Alicia Colon explains in her missive that there is a reason that Americans are not as intuitive as they need to be to compete in this global economy, with an equal need to further the Republic, which was originally published in The Irish Examiner.

    In my freshman year at Cathedral High School for Girls, Sister Fredericka told us that studying Latin would teach us to think. I didn't quite get it at the time even after four years studying the dead language. However, these past decades spent observing the dumbing down of Americans make me wish that Latin had become a required subject in public schools. The process of deep thinking is no longer being applied to many areas of our lives, politics being just one.

    Sportscasters like Bob Costas could have benefited from my teacher because he sure wasn't thinking deeply when he went on an anti-gun rant following the suicide/murder of an NFL player.
What was even worse was that he tried to temper his rant by quoting and agreeing with sportswriter Jason Whitlock's statement, "If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today." Mr. Whitlock, another non-thinker went on to make another asinine statement calling the NRA another KKK.

    Well, let's think about these two statements. Fact: Belcher didn't need a gun to kill his girlfriend and if she had had a gun to protect herself and her child, maybe she and Belcher would be alive if he was confronted by someone who refused to be a victim and was armed. Happens all the time, Bob.

    As for Whitlock's inane KKK remark, does he think that all NRA members are white? Does he have any idea how many members are ex-military who also happen to be black? Would the black owners of businesses during the LA, Watts and Harlem race riots have been able to protect and stay in business without a gun?

    Mr. Costas is now backtracking on his rant (probably because he knows most team owners are conservative and 3 out of 4 NFL players own guns) by saying that he is not against the ownership of guns or the Second Amendment but that is exactly how his words have been perceived so he obviously did not think before he spoke. Since he is always guarded at the NFL broadcasts by armed security, his rant was just plain stupid but par for the course when it comes to the mainstream media.

    Then Costas went on the O'Reilly Factor and continued to show his ignorance about the gun control issue. He expressed gratitude that no one else in that Aurora Colorado theatre was armed or there would have been additional carnage. If Costas had done any research on how guns save lives, he would have known that in April this year in that same town of Aurora, a gunman shot and killed a woman in a crowded church and was stopped by a licensed gun owner before he could kill again.

    Superficial thinking has made many Americans vulnerable to demagogues, thieves and just plain liars. Unfortunately, the media and our government are full of the latter. What's behind this intellectual indolence? Is it drugs, our poor educational system, the instant gratification addiction induced by the technological advances in our culture or is it all the above?

    It is unpopular to blame marijuana for anything in today's heavy user culture. Hollywood celebrities are always coy about their drug usage but make no secret of wanting pot legalized.

    There are now 18 states legalizing medical marijuana plus D.C. but what are the odds that the users will not be smoking weed for medicinal purposes? In fact some states are legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. D.A.R.E., the most famous anti-drug program will no longer be talking to children about the dangers of marijuana.

    If we thought that young Americans couldn't get much dumber, just wait. When it comes to non-thinkers, Hollywood must be the mother ship because so many of its residents fall for junk science and alarmist fairy tales like the world will end on December 21st according to a Mayan calendar which incidentally was recently replaced with another not so-gloomy version.

    Many years ago I watched the Johnny Carson show when he had author Truman Capote as a guest. On that occasion he made the comment that actors were dumb. When challenged by Carson, he reiterated his comment and said that the better they were, the dumber.

    Environmental whackos have managed to wreak their influence over the Golden State so that it is no longer golden and stinks to high heaven. A once lovely cove in La Jolla, California is now fenced off from the public because of complex environmental rules stemming from the cove's designation as a state-protected "Area of Special Biological Significance." Consequently, the feces of cormorants and seagulls just keeps piling up, generating a stench that can carry as far as a mile. Why can't it be cleaned up? Officials say it could take two years to get various state agencies to okay cleaning procedures.

    Even though Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' has been largely debunked, the global warming advocates continue to wield political power so that hapless Americans are being forced to save a planet that can pretty well take care of itself.

    We recycle or get fined for not doing it; we buy expensive electric cars that require charging stations that don't exist or which tend to blow up; we can no longer buy incandescent bulbs and have to spend much more on mercury filled CFLs made in China; we pay for expensive useless wind turbines that kill birds but we must not develop on the sacred nesting place of obscure animals we never heard of before. Basically our government mandates these nonsensical environmental regulations as if we're the only polluters in the world while China and India spew their contaminants unfettered by such rules.

    The clearest indicator that this country no longer has grey cells that work is how the voting masses have been manipulated into believing everything the treasonous mainstream media tells them. The very idea that bills can be passed in Congress that will cost us trillions that we don't have and haven't even been read is beyond credibility. They have now reelected a president that has saddled generations to come with trillions of debt and yet will not cut spending. Hollywood celebrities fawned at his feet during the campaign ignoring the fact that he wanted to tax them into bankruptcy. President Barack Obama is just so cool, like Sally Fields, they all thought, "He likes me, he really likes me."

    The first lady spends taxpayer money for her million dollar multiple vacations while the economy sinks lower and lower but yet she's been polled as the best Flotus ever and intellectually-challenged actor Samuel Jackson says she should be president next.

    Voters in Massachusetts aren't that far behind the actors. They voted out a moderate senator to elect Elizabeth Warren, a woman who faked being an American Indian for affirmative action benefits and practiced law without a license for years. But this state also kept voting for Ted Kennedy, a serial adulterer who abandoned a campaign intern, Mary Jo Kopechne, to drown in Chappaquiddick while he walked around trying to figure out an excuse for his cowardice.

    Now Jews don't support Israel, Catholic University deans and professors support Obama despite his attacks on the church; feminists no longer want equality they want a government sugar daddy to pay for everything.

    Education is the only way to stop this dumbing down of Americans. Too bad there are no more Sister Frederickas around.

    Publisher's note: Alicia Colon resides in New York City and can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com and at www.aliciacolon.com. Alicia would dearly love to hear from you.