Here is my official first old person rant of the year, I think. This has nothing to do with politics or religion or anything other than I'm tired of hearing and reading things from stupid people. Every day I read or hear someone say something that makes me go, huh? We have at least two generations of idiots in the world and the next batch of future diabetic morons are being undereducated right now.
What the hell am I talking about you say?
I am sick of people who do not have a general grasp of geography, English, history, civics, and other basic things we learned in school growing up. What are we teaching these kids or is school simply a daycare center for working parents? Let me be clear first. I think teachers have been under paid and under appreciated for a hundred years at least. Many school systems tell them what they can and can't teach their kids so this is not really an issue with them although there are plenty of stupid teachers just as there are plenty of stupid office managers. That's the unfortunate thing in life today.
There is nothing that makes me crazier than someone not knowing their basic geography. Just today I read a news story about flooding in Iowa where the writer referred to Iowa as the "upper Midwest." Friends, there could not be a more perfect example of "the Midwest" than Iowa. Minnesota and the Dakotas are examples of the upper Midwest. In the same token, Ohio is not the Midwest either, it is more Mideast in location. Here is an easy way to remember where the Midwest is located. It is in the Central time zone, it is East of the Rockies, and it is north of the Mason-Dixon line. Go get a map and learn something.
Another thing that makes me nuts is people complaining that something is un-Constitutional. Most of the time they are complaining about something that isn't even in the Constitution. Friends, it can't be un-Constitutional if it isn't in there. It may be unfair, or it may be unnecessary, but it can only be un-Constitutional if it is in the damn Constitution. Remember when we used to learn what was in it? I do, and many of us can still recite the Preamble if we've had enough vodka and we think about it long enough. Go look it up and learn it before you start screaming about it to me.
While you are learning what is in the Constitution take a freaking Civics class and learn how our government actually functions. I was today years old when I learned that only nine states require one year of civics in school, thirty require only one half a year, and eleven don't require it at all. This is very smart to keep your population in the dark about how the government operates to make it easier to toss that troublesome Constitution out and install a dictator to lead the minions. People, it is not an overreach to ask that our fellow country people have a basic grasp on how things work here before we send them out to vote for more idiots to run our cities, states, and federal government. I am shocked daily at how many people are clueless about how this country runs.
I'm going to group this next troubling development under Humanities. Now, I know that there are 100% of the population under the age of 60 that has no idea what the hell humanities is and what you learn from it. For you poor dopes, humanities is the study of, among others, history, philosophy, English, the arts, and foreign language. It helps you develop critical thinking and gives you a foundation to understand the human experience. I can smell your brain burning as you are mashing this around and simmering in there is the thought, "hey, isn't that about life?" Congratulations, you win a prize.
I see so much bad grammar, spelling, and sentence structure that I wonder, didn't anyone teach them about spell check? Now I will be the first to admit that I have plenty of lapses on this myself but in fairness I'm old, today's youth have no excuses. Today's Gen Xers Gen Z, and whatever the hell the next group is called have zero knowledge of history, the importance of the arts, or philosophy. They are more interested in staring at their iPhones and texting their friends about what Taylor Swift's set was for the future King of England then they are about how her music is effecting a generation.
The bottom line here is that we need to do a better job of giving our citizens the tools they need to function in the world around them. Clearly they have never heard the George Santayana quote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".
Grab a book and read something.
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