So I left off with Grapes of Wrath, went into a Teaching Company thing on ancient Greece, then got into Bushwhacked by Molly Ivins and that other guy. Finished that and tried another Teaching Company lecture on Mythology, but that wasn't working because the lecturer just didn't hold my attention. Next on my list was Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire, but there's something wrong with the way it's been converted to mp3 and my Nomad plays it reeeeeaaaaaaalllllll sssssslllllllllloooooooooowwwwwwwwwww. :)

Next is Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky. This guy is simply too intelligent for me. It's hard to keep up. He knows some shit though, quite evidently a lot more than most. Which brings me to the main theme of today's 'rant'.

My wife and I are sitting on the patio talking about a paramedic she works with that's trying to get into medical school. She likes working with her because she's really intelligent and has some common sense. She's been trying for med school for 3 years now, and as my wife is telling me about it I got to thinking about how hard it is in general to get into school. If there are so many qualified applicants for all these programs that people are getting turned away, why do we not have more schools? My wife and I talked about it, coming to the conclusion that you really learn nothing of value in high school.... well, compared to what one would need to know to be successful in furthering one's education beyond high school that is.

Those tests are hard! GRE, LSAT, and we were talking about the one for med school but it slips my mind at the moment. They are daunting, and only people with diligence and initiative are able to even think about tackling them. Most of the general public simply go through life relying on high school and life's experiences to get them by. So I started thinking about the type of person that won't pursue higher education, and the type that does.

I think that to make a sound choice when voting a person should be well schooled on what's happening in the world, what the issues are, and a candidates stand. Of course we could take a person's word on what they say, but most people would agree that would be foolish if one were serious about things. Suffice it to say a little knowledge about a person other than what they say is necessary to make an informed decision. What else do we have to go on? A person's past, experience, how they have dealt with certain issues... these would all be good indicators.

Digging up all this information would take time and energy, the same kind of energy it would take to inform oneself generally of things beyond one learns in high school. Thinking about all this, along with the Bush bashing in Buswhacked, and Republican/media bashing in Hegemony or Survival, gets me thinking about the correlation between information and the percentage of eligible voters that actually vote.

Democrats complain that if more people voted, they would get more votes. I would say that the reason the majority of eligible people that don't vote is because they are ill informed. Whether they do it to themselves or not, they are ill informed because if they were more informed, they would have more of an inclination to vote. (This of course is just my opinion)

Following this reasoning, which must be difficult at best because I can barely follow it myself, Democrats don't get the votes because ill informed people don't vote. Do Republicans believe this? Maybe...

Consider that Republicans like to push religion. They do, Bush is all over that one. Could it be they are deeply moral? Are you kidding?! If half the stuff is true in the book Bushwhacked, Bush is a devious bastard. Of course, Democrats are devious too, as I said in an earlier rant, you have to be devious to be a politician. So, if it's not morals they push religion for, what else is there?

Religious people inherently take things on faith. As a general rule, someone looking to be religious isn't going to be looking to educate themselves in anything other than their specific doctrine. It takes up all their time, so they have no time to inform themselves in other things. Wouldn't this be what a politician would want? So, the more religious people are, the more they would tend not to vote. Or, if they did vote, would be more willing to take a politician at his word. 'God and Country!' This mantra is heard all the time, or something similar. This is what Bush wants, people behind him screaming, with religious zeal, "Kill the Terrorists!!" In a different age it was, "Kill the Commies!"

This is, of course, full of holes, and I have no statistics or facts to back up any of my assertions. I need a good politician to find the stats that support the line of reasoning. hehehe