The War on Education
If you’re a Devout Christian hang on to your halos because today I’m going to talk about my religious upbringing which was filled with warnings that I’d go straight to Hell and burn in a Lake of Fire forever and ever and the sound track would be an out-of-tune Mitch Miller sing-along and Devils that looked like Ernest Borgnine’s less attractive brother would poke me in the butt with pitchforks with one hand while holding ice cold mojitos just out of my grasp with the other and all this was sure to happen unless I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and spent the rest of my Life bugging other people to do the same thing.
Also…
Reading comic books would lead to demonic possession because they were filled with people who could fly and shoot heat beams out of their eyes which could only happen if witchcraft were involved (a position which had the unintentional side effect of making witchcraft sound awesome) and if you read about Superman or Spiderman too often, pretty soon you’d be spitting pea soup on priests and your head would be doing 360s and you’d hover a foot-and-a-half above your bed and I never thought about it until just now this minute, but maybe that’s why my favorite Superhero was Batman.
No superpowers.
One of my favorite moments in the approximately 8 bajillion superhero movies Hollywood has churned out was when someone asked Batman what his super power was and Batman said: “I’m rich.”
So if Superman and Batman ever really got in a fight, Batman would just buy the Fortress of Solitude, tear it down and put up condos, because to my knowledge Superman never bought the land, got a building permit or signed a lease.
OK, I feel like we’ve strayed from today’s topic which is Education and the fact that I was also warned that too much of it would “give me ideas” and put my soul in jeopardy (apparently they were holding Black Masses at the local Community College) and until I got just a little bit older and started reading on my own I didn’t understand religion’s animosity toward formal education, but eventually I developed a theory.
And to demonstrate my theory, we’ll talk about Joshua and the Israelites.
Joshua was the leader of the Israelites (he took over after Moses, although some Conservative Israelites claim he stole the election with the help of rigged voting machines) and Joshua was trying to take Canaan by force (which all things considered seems pretty Un-Christian) and they’re having a Big Battle and things are going Joshua’s way, but the sun’s going down and Joshua wants to keep fighting while the fighting’s good and he doesn’t want the Slaughter Called on Account of Darkness so he prays to God (who apparently plays favorites, just ask a Christian) to stop the sun in the sky so Joshua has time to win the battle.
And while God apparently doesn’t mind letting little kids die of cancer or earthquakes bury people alive or volcanoes fuck up Pompeii property values no matter how much people pray, He stops the sun in the sky for Joshua, probably because He bet heavily on the Israelites using His FanDuel app because sports betting was a Big Deal even back then and if you don’t believe me, just ask Russell Crowe.
(You can read the boring version of the sun-stopping incident in the Book of Joshua, Chapter 10; verses 12-14.)
As a small child I didn’t question the Joshua story because grown-ass adults were assuring me it was true, but then I later attended school and semi-paid attention and discovered the sun doesn’t actually rotate around the Earth like they thought it did in 1370 B.C. when the Book of Joshua was theoretically written.
Copernicus shared his heliocentric theory in 1543 so to be fair, my mom and the local preacher only had 417 short years to catch on and by the way, the Catholic Church initially said the theory was heretical and his book “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” was banned along with Issues #3 through #27 of The Green Lantern.
Anyway…
If Copernicus was right (and he was) if the sun appeared to stop in the sky, in reality the Earth stopped spinning.
And the Earth spins at about 1,000 miles an hour, rotating from West to East (counterclockwise when looking down from above the North Pole) so if the Earth suddenly stopped spinning, Joshua and the Israelites (which would be a great name for a soul band and, yes, I stole that gag from Dave Barry) would go flying and wind up somewhere in China and surf would be up in Omaha, Nebraska.
Speaking of sudden stops…
Before they had seat belts and were still building car dashboards out of metal adorned with rocket-shaped radio knobs and your mother had to hit the brakes because she was focusing on lying her ass off about Joshua and didn’t notice the light had changed (a Beatles reference), she’d shoot out her right arm and try to keep you from impaling yourself on the radio or launching through the windshield which was the best automobile safety system available in the early 1950s.
And still safer than a Cybertruck.
OK, so the lesson here is education makes you question other people’s bullshit or I’m definitely going to hell—take your pick.
Which At Long Last Brings Us to Donald Trump and Education
Numerous studies have shown that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Democratic and generally speaking Republicans are also pissed off at colleges and universities for being breeding grounds of Liberal Ideas like:
Whites aren’t intrinsically superior to Blacks…
Men aren’t intrinsically superior to Women…
And maybe the best way to balance the budget isn’t giving rich assholes yet another tax break.
Attend a college or university, spend time reading and learning and being around people you might not associate with otherwise and maybe you’ll decide it’s not OK to sexually harass women or use the N-word when explaining why your All-Caucasian high school basketball team got its ass handed to it last Friday night, all of which is highly inconvenient for the people who want to keep right on doing those things.
If people are full of shit (con men, religious authorities and politicians make the list) but still want you to believe what they say, education is their enemy.
All of which led to the cartoon you just looked at.
Now here’s an article about how college graduates voted in the last presidential election:
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/07/college-degree-voters-split-harris-trump
The cartoon you just looked at was inspired by me and my reaction to a Newsweek article headlined:
“How Conor McGregor Could Become President of Ireland”
Just like the character in the cartoon, I got about three syllables into the thought: “That’s ridic…” before remembering we elected a con man and reality game show host president, the Secretary of Education is a wrestling promoter’s wife, the Secretary of Defense is a FOX TV personality, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is a vaccine conspiracy theorist, the guy Trump picked to oversee Medicare and Medicaid is a TV celebrity doctor who has been accused of neglecting to pay over $400,000 in – waaaiiit for it – Medicare taxes and the guy making government more efficient totally fucked up Twitter.
So where do we get off (and yes, I just drug you into it) thinking it’s ridiculous that a boxer/MMA fighter/Whiskey Salesman who was successfully sued for rape can’t be President of Ireland?
Today’s Lesson
The more educated you are the less likely you’ll be to buy into other people’s bullshit (including mine, the Catholic Church never banned Green Lantern comic books…it was Dr. Strange) and you don’t need to know jack shit about a subject to be part of the Trump Cabinet (probably a “knob”) and if I’m wrong about all that Joshua and the Israelites stuff, when I arrive at Heaven’s Gate I’ll by greeted by Ricky Ricardo who will tell me:
“Lee, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.”
Thanks for all the much needed belly laughs