They Hate Learning

This is your future. Win it.

In all the actions of the GOP, I think one trend is becoming clear.  They hate learning.

Let's take some positions of the Republican Party.

They deny evolution.  You know, the basic theory behind pretty much all modern biology.

They deny global warming.  Because carbon in the atmosphere is a GOOD thing.

They deny macroeconomics.  Let's bring back the gold standard!

They deny math.  If you cut taxes, you won't increase the deficit.

They deny reading.  If only Obama produced his birth certificate.

I think this is the context in which to understand the GOP's war on teachers.  Because that's really what's happening in Wisconsin and Ohio.  I don't belong to a union, because I work in a private school.  But I would LIKE to have a union.  I would enjoy having someone else argue on behalf my wages and benefits.  I know that many teachers in my school walk around fearing that they will be fired.  It's not an entirely healthy atmosphere.

But back to public school teachers and the idea of collective bargaining.  The idea that middle class people should be allowed to band together and use the strength of numbers to push back against the powerful is not an idea that conservatives like.  Nor is it all that popular in America as a whole sadly.  I think that the unpopularity of unions is a baffling development.

But the decline of unions directly coincides with the decline in real wages and the stagnation of wealth in the working and middle classes.  If you are alone in securing the benefits of the market, you can be pretty sure the market will pass you by for someone better looking richer.

Attacking teachers is a useful shorthand for the GOP's economic agenda - disempowering the middle class -  and its cultural agenda - the assault on learning, indeed on objective facts as a whole.

I fear the Stupid.  I fear it's winning.