Nader got 1% …

It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I’m wrong. The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right… Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are? – Frank Zappa

Forget Red vs. Blue — It’s the Educated vs. People Easily Fooled by Propaganda. Millions of Americans live in a non-reality-based belief system informed by childish clichés – they can barely differentiate between lies and truth.

We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and cliches. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.

There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig.
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/106551/forget_red_vs._blue_–_it’s_the_educated_vs._people_easily_fooled_by_propaganda/

I agree. Nader does tell the truth and I have tremendous respect for him. But that damn truth telling habit he’s got is precisely why he can’t survive the American political landscape. That doesn’t get me all wet or anything, by the way, but it’s a reality.

I mean, let’s face it. True progressive are rather finely fucked in a lot of ways.

I stumbled upon your post looking for ideas on what to do now. I just wanted to say thanks so much for writing this!