Indoctrination

Pardon if I ramble a bit here... I have been terribly ill and this is my first shot at posting since my slight recovery.

Its funny how perceptions are formed. I've been thinking a lot about what kind of things are taught in the government schools, and how that, and the social enviornment we grow up in affects us. No no.. seriously... dont yawn yet... this should be more fun than it sounds... give it a chance.

Let's look at environment first. I grew up in Owensboro, KY. The place is, and has been, run by democrats as long as anyone can remember. I can't remember when anyone other than a democrat was elected to any position. There are plenty of little pockets like this throughout America. Was Democrat, Is Democrat, Will Be Democrat. No think. Pull D Lever. Now when I lived there, Owensboro had the one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. The town had more problems than you can shake a stick at, and all of them, were the Repulican's fault.

Now I was a just a kid, but even then I was starting to wonder. I mean... How can this all be the Republican's fault, when there ain't no Republicans running anything?

My whole life I had been told who and what Republicans were by Democrats. Mind you this was back in the 80's... Everyday I had someone making fun of 'trickle-down economics'. In the 5th grade, the teachers asked all of us to vote for either Mondale or Reagan. This is how they defined the men for us: Mondale is a liberal. That means he's open to new ideas and is will to try new things. Reagan is a conservative. That means he wants to keep things the way they are.

Click. That's the sound of 30 young minds snapping shut. Predictably the whole class voted for Mondale.

That definition of liberal and conservative was reinforced weekly in the government schools, and it is perpetuated today.

So you see how confused I was. Democrats favor change... but democrats had been in power for the last 50 years... and nothing had changed. Democrats where for the common man... but the common man was unemployed, and no one ever seemed to be able to help him. All because of those evil republicans!

My freshman year we moved to Nashville. My dad went from making 25 grand a year to 60, doing the same work. The unemployment rate in Nashville was something like 2%. Everyone had money, everyone had good jobs... This was the opposite of Owensboro.

That's when things started to click for me. Moving to West Virginia... I feel like I tripped and fell back into Owensboro. All these problems caused by these evil Republicans, who haven't had a majority in either house in the last 80 years. On one hand they beleive the Republicans are to dumb to run things, on the other hand, they'll tell you how Republicans are evil masterminds who can always find a way to foil the latest democrat plan that would have solved all of our problems.

Rest assured... somewhere in West Virginia... there will be teachers defining Bush and Kerry.