But John McCain has recently unveiled a sadly deceptive “attack ad” on the Obama record on education that makes it seem as if the McCain campaign is campaigning to keep our children ignorant in order to better protect sexual predators! In the McCain world of “social conservatism” it appears that the campaign slogan is now an Orwellian Ignorance is Strength.
This is a chilling reminder that the United States today has become uncomfortably more dystopian in a 1984 way, and that McCain and his sidekick Palin want to bring us more of the same.
McCain’s attack ad centers on a comprehensive sex education bill (referred to as Barack Obama's only accomplishment on education) that Barack Obama voted for in committee. This bill would have provided age-appropriate sex education to children in kindergarten - enough to allow them to know when a sexual predator has touched them inappropriately.
McCain's education attack ad is found on his campaign website here:
In the ad, we're told that this means "children are learning about sex before learning to read."
But we know that the “sex education” for kindergarten in the bill was designed to protect kids from pedophiles. The bill that McCain cynically attacks was supported by a coalition of education and public health organizations, including the Illinois Parent Teacher Association, the Illinois State Medical Society, the Illinois Public Health Association and the Illinois Education Association, according to the New York Times:
John McCain should know that the bill would only have given kindergarteners enough information to help them protect themselves against being touched in the wrong places. If he approved the ad, which he did, he is presumed to know that. Ignorance is no excuse here.
Either he is lying, or he believes that a policy of keeping children ignorant to help protect pedophiles is a good thing!
Senator McCain appeared on The View on ABC yesterday, where I saw him stand by this ad, calling it “true” when challenged by Joy Behar. Is this what we want in a President? We already know that McCain and Palin don't support sex education in the schools, supporting "abstinence only" education that leads to teen pregnancy - and also opposing abortion - a double whammy against young women in America that McCain also confirmed during his View interview.
It only confirms the Orwellian slogan Ignorance is Strength will be the centerpiece of a McCain administration. We may as well unveil this as a new slogan for McCain:
It isn't just sex education and women's reproductive rights and health where McCain and Palin share the bedrock belief that Ignorance is Strength - the theme seems to permeate their campaign. The worst thing is that while Sarah Palin might be a "true believer" in Creationist nonsense, McCain seems to be quite willing to cynically use the ignorance of the bloc of American voters who really believe the world was created in six 24-hour days some 6,000 years ago, just to get elected. After all, even though it took some cheating (Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004) to put George W. Bush "over the top," reliance on this bloc of voters got Bush awfully close to actually winning rather than the bloodless coup d'etat we got. (Oops, I shouldn't be putting it quite that way, but that's essentially what really happened, if one looks carefully.)
McCain’s continuing support for this ad seems to prove that the Hero *IS* a Zero.
Now that we see that Ignorance is Strength fits the McCain Campaign, let’s take a look at the other two slogans from 1984, while we’re at it:
This seems to have been the Bush Doctrine in a nutshell – preemptively attack other countries for no legitimate reason, so we can fight “over there” instead of “at home.” McCain supports the illegitimate invasion and occupation of Iraq. He assumes that the war was right – in his ignorance, he doesn’t seem to understand that Iraq was not behind the events of 9/11 – it doesn’t matter that “the surge is working” when there should never have been a war in the first place. His running mate Sarah Palin is under the same delusion – is this what we need in the White House? We’ve been suffering from this idiocy since 2003, and it’s time for a real change - Obama/Biden, rather than the illusion of "change" that McCain/Palin would bring.
McCain/Palin: Country First - Slavery is Freedom
McCain and Palin’s “social conservatism” is ultimately all about the patriarchal thing: making women into babymaking slaves who have no reproductive choice even if they’ve been raped.
Their anti-human rights position for lesbian, gay, bi and transgender people continues the national shame where some Americans have more rights than others – and transgender people have fewer rights than anyone else.
Whoopi Goldberg reacted on The View to McCain’s ignorant or cynical promise to appoint the kind of strict constructionist judges who would interpret the Constitution the “way the Founding Fathers intended” – does McCain think we should return to slavery? Incredibly, John McCain smiled goofily and didn’t even bother to deny it. (While I don’t envision a return of African Americans to hereditary involuntary servitude, I do see the nightmare of a Supreme court with a couple more social conservatives joining with Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito in rolling back civil rights to match the obstructive court interpretations from the 1870’s to 1890’s and even up to 1953. I have already seen what happens when those four are joined by Kennedy. Add one or two more like them, and we will be seeing judicial regression for the next thirty years.)
Shame on you, John McCain, shame on you! Whether you're an outright liar counting on the ignorance of the people, or you're ignorant yourself, you don't belong in the Oval Office.
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