I don’t know about you, but this story sort of encapsulates everything you need to know about the young conservative ideologues working for the Bush administration, in particular, and for conservative organizations, in general. Namely that not only are these people liars, propagandists and brainwashed incompetents, but that they are also exceedingly ignorant about their own nation’s history:
Appearing on National Public Radio’s light-hearted quiz show “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” which aired over the weekend, Perino got into the spirit of things and told a story about herself that she had previously shared only in private: During a White House briefing, a reporter referred to the Cuban missile crisis — and she didn’t know what it was. “I was panicked a bit because I really don’t know about — nothing about the Cuban missile crisis,” said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”
So she consulted her best source: “I came home and I asked my husband,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Wasn’t that like the Bay of Pigs thing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Dana.’ ”
It seems they all believe American history jumped straight from World War II to Saint Ronald Reagan the Valiant with only some indeterminate period in between where dirty filthy hippies spit on our troops and Jane Fonda and John Kerry single handedly destroyed our chance to win the Vietnam War.
No wonder they all falsely believe that the Civil War wasn’t fought over the issue of slavery, or that our nation was purposely founded as a Christian Nation (“Christian” magically meaning the same Christianity espoused today by the Rapture ready crowd). Or that evolution is a controversial scientific theory. Or that Africans actually improved their lot in life when they were captured, transported to America packed like sardines in dirty, disease ridden ships and sold into slavery.
I don’t think there is a less informed group of individuals in this country than young conservatives. Or a more brainwashed, unable to think for themselves group of people, for that matter. Part of that has been the failure of our education system to teach critical thinking skills to our young people. Part of that rests on the inability of our school board approved textbooks to relate American history in an objective, impartial manner. And part is the responsibility of a group of well funded, deeply cynical and manipulative conservative activists and who have spent the last 50 years fighting to rewrite those same history books to perpetuate a triumphalist, nationalistic perspective regarding our country’s “unique heritage” of freedom and democracy, while also coercing the media into propagating conservative lies and myths about our past and our present.
Dana Perino is only a representative of an entire generation of “Know nothing” conservatives who believe only what the current GOP talking points and conservative pundits and pseudo intellectuals tell them to believe. People who are in essence, merely angry and hate filled automatons ready to follow any authoritarian leader so long as his conservative bona fides have been sufficiently accepted by the collective wisdom of their elders. Ignorant of history, ignorant of, and often deeply antagonistic toward, science, and certain only in their faith in Jesus Christ, Fox News the “infallibility of the free market” and the evil abilities of godless liberals.
They have had thirty years to insert themselves into prominent positions in our news media, and throughout all levels of our federal, state and local governments. They, and others like them who were not fortunate enough to receive the benefits of the right wing welfare system, but who are dutiful listeners, readers and viewers of the Rush Limbaughs, Michelle Malkins and Bill O’Reillys of the world, are ready made followers for next demagogue who can assert himself in a time of crisis. George Bush was just the prototype. The next right wing Fuhrer to whom they pledge their allegiance will be much, much worse.
