All that goes through my head is Bad Religion's "The Answer". And yes, I know the song is referring to religious zealotry, but it just happens any time I hear anything about "the answer to everything is...".

My apologies, then. It was not meant as a direct attack against you/your post, but I came across it at the moment I was in full seethe, and I just unleashed.

I don't want to disagree with you, but I feel I have to...

It's not stupidity, we are simply led to believe it is, and most Americans accept that deception without question.

It's actually very finely-crafted manipulation, across the aisle, across the branches, and across the board.

Elected officials are supposed to listen to their constituents, but over time this has devolved into "listen to the constituents who provide the most money for the election campaign". And who are those constituents? SIG's and PAC's (most of which are formed and funded by large corporations/multi-nationals), and those controlling the upper percentage of the country's wealth, all who have a specific agenda about what they want to see happen/continue to happen in/to this country and its people.

They are all selling one thing... they simply sell fear. Fear with your morning/evening news, fear in your newspaper, fear in your commercials. Keep the populace in fear and we can sell/tell/convince them of anything we want. And every person that buys into the fear becomes another sheep in the flock.

When is the last time you heard a speech, from any politician, that didn't say, "This [inset any negative-leaning subject you care to] is threatening the people of [input your city/county/state/America here], and only I have the plan on how to fix it."? And yet you never hear what that plan is or how the politician plans to implement it. It just sort of fades away, being looked at in a committee, etc.

Those of us that think critically enough (/.'ers tend to fall into this group) about what we hear/read/see, and actually dissect the verbiage/message/context get an accurate picture of what's being fed to the entire country piecemeal.

Until we, as a nation, expose the fear-mongers and the politician financed by them, for what they really are, we deserve everything that happens to us.

Maybe I'm simply preaching to the choir here, but I had to get this off my chest.

This (INRE to shorhand).

Dating myself here, but when I went through high school typing (and shorthand) were offered elective classes. I took them both, and was the only male in the shorthand class.

It served me exceedingly well in college (for the amount of time I attended), and has continued to serve me since. There have been several periods during my career where for short spurts of time, I had to absorb (and note) even more information than I did in college lectures and I never had any trouble keeping up with the flow rate of information.

And the act of later transcribing from shorthand to longhand gave me an even more resilient, time-resistant understanding (not just recall) of the information.

That is something I definitely don't need a pill for.

For some reason, I immediately put that to B-52 music, with Kate blaring out the words.