{"id":1883,"date":"2010-10-20T02:31:22","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T06:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=1883"},"modified":"2010-10-20T02:31:22","modified_gmt":"2010-10-20T06:31:22","slug":"this-is-not-satire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2010\/10\/this-is-not-satire\/","title":{"rendered":"This is not satire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s the frightening thing<strong>:<\/strong> it really isn&#8217;t satire, since it&#8217;s far too accurate. We&#8217;ve had a long run of stupendously ignorant politicians recently, and it&#8217;s really shameful.<\/p>\n<p><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"592\" height=\"352\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"data\" value=\"http:\/\/www.babelgum.com\/embed\/6003213\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"never\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.babelgum.com\/embed\/6003213\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"592\" height=\"352\" src=\"http:\/\/www.babelgum.com\/embed\/6003213\" allowscriptaccess=\"never\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" data=\"http:\/\/www.babelgum.com\/embed\/6003213\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t do much about politics, because I really don&#8217;t have the patience for it. This is one of my vices<strong>;<\/strong> while I spend no small amount of time promoting critical thinking and the idea of not fooling yourself, I really can&#8217;t stand actually finding out how phenomenally stupid many people are, so I avoid the subject. But here&#8217;s a thought<strong>:<\/strong> maybe we can institute a simple law, where no one can hold public office until they can pass a standard high school GED test. Is that too much of a bare minimum competence standard? Hell, it should be much higher, but right now let&#8217;s set the bar realistically. I&#8217;d hate to see too many politicians out of work, because McDonalds only needs so many drive-through attendants&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><font size=\"-1\">Thanks to the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2010\/10\/19\/platform-of-willful-ignorance\/\" target=\"blank\">Bad Astronomer<\/a> for this video.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s the frightening thing: it really isn&#8217;t satire, since it&#8217;s far too accurate. We&#8217;ve had a long run of stupendously ignorant politicians recently, and it&#8217;s really shameful. I don&#8217;t do much about politics, because I really don&#8217;t have the patience for it. This is one of my vices; while I spend no small amount of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-random","category-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}