The Problem with Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is where the American Revolution was brewed and battled. To this day, Pennsylvanians carry a mean streak of independent, rebellious attitudes that lead people (and keep them) in ignorance. When you constantly label differing views as 'anti-American,' as some less-enlightened leaders continue to spew, it seems the people most easily influenced by corporate media, the most stubborn, and least likely to engage in healthy discussion gravitate towards embracing fear-based--non-thought based--beliefs and notions.

Aside from the fact that there's no big mountains, this is the reason I moved away from Pennsylvania. It's greatest strength is also its biggest weakness: an irrational sense of righteousness.

When Republican talking points have been based on manipulating fear, you encite mob-like results where even well-meaning, good-natured people are perverted by the Republican propaganda and the corporate media coverage that allowed such vitriol to run un-checked for years. The only place these deluded notions have been consistently combated are in education institutions.

So, of course, that's why individuals like Karl Rove spin the public into resenting the 'elitist' and 'liberal' advocates of education, while maintaining the need for constant state of defense against terrorism.

This yeilds a partial populice with a paranoid, defensive, exclusionist, and dangerously disillusioned state of being.