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If you watch too much TV or spend too long of a weekend around ignorant religious people, of which most of them are in the Midwest, your intelligence ego is going to take a serious beating. Mine did this last weekend. I spent Mother’s Day at my uncle and aunt’s little ranch in southeastern Kansas. My uncle is a very successful horse trainer and quarter horse reigning champion and I respect and admire him on many levels, except his political views. We were discussing gas prices of course and my cousin Todd mentioned that we are one of the few countries in the world who don’t drill off our shores and we should open up drilling in Alaska as well. My uncle then started dropping “environmentalists” poo-poo statements, venting his frustration with high gas prices on this group that they see as the culprit. I told him that we need to find renewable energies that don’t make us dependent on oil and my uncle replied that petroleum is always going to be a part of providing energy for this country. When I protested that it doesn’t has to be this way if we had leadership towards building alternative energy sources over the next 10-50 years as other countries are doing, he then dropped that old Christian standby, looking at me straight in the eyes, “but John how long are we going to be here anyway.” I was stunned, perhaps I shouldn’t have been but I always overestimate people’s rationality I guess. “You mean because Jesus is coming” I asked. He nodded. My insulted intelligence filled with rage and I rushed to find an appropriate response with a few other family members listening. ”If past generations had thought the same thing about their problems, where would that have left us” I said not making much of a point and already thinking of 5 better responses. Things moved on quickly after that and there was even one guy there, my aunt’s brother, who started railing on oil companies and how they suppress alternative energy technologies.
It’s not this one specific issue who has me feeling insulted it’s the feeling that even thinking about alternative energies or other things which are simply sane and rational to me are considered progressive in this country. It’s a constant feeling of being intellectually underwhelmed and I am sick of it.
So in my dreams here would be the phrases that I would hear from my friends and family:
“You idiot, you want to go to UMKC, go to MIT you dumb bastard”.
“Turn off that fucking stupid TV or I am going to shoot a hole through it. Have you read a book in a while you fucking moron.”
“What, you want to go to church with Jimmy’s family? No way, those people are religious wackos and don’t even believe in evolution. You are not allowed to attend a place that makes a mockery out of science. Sorry, but not in my house. “
“Son, you want to go watch the lastest in the Alfred Hitchcock movie series? There is a discussion afterwards.”
“I am so sick of these fucking anti-environmentalists. They are holding back the rest of us. I just got done installing a windmill and I saw my neighbor at the general store and he called me a ‘greenie’. What a fucking idiot. ”
“Todd, go reading a fucking book will you.”
“Anybody want to go with me to see this University of Chicago professor talk about religion. What, you want to stay home to watch baseball? Whatever, you dumb fuck, anybody else want to go?”
“My doctor is such a smart man. Did you know he went to Stanford. I admire him so much. Son you could be just like him, have you ever thought about Stanford?”
“Did you watch the latest robotics competition on ESPN last night. It was awesome, the winning team had this kickass engineer who totally dominated.”
“We need free higher education in this country with drastically higher standards. If we are going to compete with the rest of this world we need to go way beyond No Child Left Behind. We are a country being left behind.”
