Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Not Very Intelligent Design

I'll admit, George Bush's presence on our planet kind of disproves the theory of evolution. After all, if nature selects the smartest and most capable life to survive, and that life then propagates itself, how was George Bush even born? Shouldn't his simpleton ass have been natural selected out millennia ago?

In other words, the fact that Barbara and George HW Bush survived long enough to have not just George but his entire jackass family kind of makes Darwin look like a schmuck. I mean, come on, Rob Zombie wishes the family in Devil's Rejects was as primordial and maniacal as this squad.

This guy is the President of the United States, a nation that once was respected around the globe for its scientific and technological advances, and he's arguing we should teach kids Creationism in schools.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

Again, proving his deep and nuanced understanding of the importance of education in America, George Bush spoke using poor diction. He only said two fucking sentences, and one of them is clearly not grammatically correct.

"[IF] you're asking me whether [REMOVE 'OR NOT'] people ought to be exposed to different ideas, THEN MY] answer is yes" would be more correct. Although I'd still prefer the he went with the much more clear and concise "People ought to be exposed to different ideas."

And those are just phoenetic corrections. Of course, the substance of his comments are stupid as well.

George makes the unbelievably inane mistake of thinking that any opinion has a right to be taught in schools. I mean, we're teaching some opinions of some people, right? Like Descartes opinion that he thought, therefore he was...we're teaching that, right? And Euclid thought up a system of geometry that we teach, but it's not the only way of doing geometry, right?

Of course, anyone who passed through the fourth grade understands that the substance of a public school education is not the opinions of a wide variety of people, but a collection of established knowledge understood to be accurate by experts in that field of knowledge.

So, in history class, you don't learn every historians theory about the reasoning behind every major event. You learn that in 1492, Columbus got a bunch of ships together and sailed to an already-settled continent, where he proceeded to rape women, pillage whole cities and torture and murder innocents for sport.

Okay, so you don't learn the whole truth in public school history class either, but you know what I mean...You learn stuff that's at least loosely based on facts.

By Bush's line of reasoning, children should be informed of every available opinion in school. We'd have to teach kids about Holocaust deniers, about eugenic science, about Roswell and Area 51 and other conspiracy theories and about Scientology. We'd have to teach them about ESP and psychic phenomenon, about ghosts and ghost-hunters, about the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, Bigfoot the Chupacabbara and the Prophet Elijah.

These are not mainstream beliefs, but they are famous and notable opinions. They also all have the benefit of being entirely inaccurate.

But accuracy doesn't matter in Bush's America. What we think is what we think, and if we have to shape reality to fit our thought process, then that's what we'll do. So if Bush's grammar is poor, well, we'll just have to change the rules of grammar to suit him.

You're asking me whether or not the President is remarkably stupid, the answer is yes.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quibble not lest ye be quibbled yeerself...

While I wholeheartedly agree that G-Dub is one of the least articulate political figures in our lifetimes, I have to remind you that, if you are going to critique someone's use of language, you must hold yourself to strict standards. Your analysis and correction of the President's statements- as embarassing as always- were fine. Unfortunately, you claimed that these were "phoenetic corrections." Phonetics refer to the individual sounds that make up words, not their usage and arrangement. I think you meant "grammatic," unless you ascribe to the belief pushed by some of his apologists in the media that he intentionally uses low-brow English to appear more down-to-earth, in which case we would be discussing semantics.

Also, the word "phoenetic" is actually spelled "phonetic," from the Greek "phone," meaning voice or sound. Perhaps you meant "Phoenitic corrections?" Unfortunately, the Phoenician civilization died out about 2000 years ago, so there's no point crying about it now.

However, if Bush were to get phonetic correction, at least we wouldn't have to listen to that lame-ass, assumed Texas accent anymore.

Lons said...

Alas, it is simply my friend Tim who provided us all with the English lesson and not QT himself. If it were Quentin, the comment would probably have a lot more commas, exclamation points and "alrights?" thrown in...

Lons said...

And obviously I WAS referring to the Phoenicians.