America Receiving Its Just Desserts

What are the criteria by which Americans evaluate candidates for public office?  I suppose that depends on what part of the country we’re talking about.

A West Virginia Republican lawmaker is facing bipartisan backlash after comparing LGBTQ people to the Ku Klux Klan and saying he would “see if (his kids) can swim” if they came out as gay. Elected in November, Del. Eric Porterfield came under fire when he called the gay community a “terrorist group”, and said “The LGBTQ is a modern-day version of the Ku Klux Klan, without wearing hoods, with their antics of hate.”

“OK, that’s West Virginia,” some may say, as an excuse for such ignorance.

So let’s take Arizona, and consider the qualifications of conservative Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, who scolded a young person who publicly questioned his position as a climate change denier, “Unfortunately you haven’t been taught about photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is where plants take carbon dioxide to produce oxygen. That’s a problem in today’s world. We haven’t taught kids exactly what’s going on in America and in science.”  (In fact, of course, we’re releasing more CO2 than our plants, oceans, etc, can absorb.)

We most certainly do have a problem in today’s world, in fact, we have many.  Gosar is correct in that our educational system, particularly as it applies to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) is failing.  But an even bigger problem is that we have no problem electing ignorant boobs to run our government.

In so may ways, America, we’re getting precisely what we deserve.