When they said

I needed to get a “Liberal Arts” degree, I was hoping it wouldn’t be quite this “liberal”.

With my first year of college course under my belt so far, I’ve worked my way through multiple science and quasi-science classes being bombarded by propaganda from the Global Warming Death Cult, and the Fabians, and the Malthusians, and even some very touchy-feely English profs.

However, this quarter is taking the cake.

A quad-layer double fudge cake.

First on the pile is the book assigned for the course: “Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing”. You can hit that link and go to the Amazon page to read the reviews. I’ll wait.

You done and back? Good. Trust me when I say that those reviewers were being very kind. The subject matter can be “challenging”, but I see that as a good thing. Boundaries need to be pushed if people are going to learn anything.

The biggest problem a thinking person should have with the book is that it focuses on “Critical Thinking” and not analytical thinking.

As you probably already know, anyone who calls themselves a “Critical Thinker” can be guaranteed to be a simple-minded bullshit artist. They have been taught that phrase by a fellow bullshit artist who also taught them that they do not have to be critical about their own views as long as they are close to his/her views. He/she also warned them about being overly analytical towards these approved views. They therefore stay stuck for years and even decades in a morass of ignorance, never looking past their own noses for answers because they believe they already have them.

Stunning revelation to follow: I am, essentially, illiterate. I don’t have dyslexia. I have something moderately worse that doesn’t even have an medical title but has to do with fonts and letter angles and the like. To compensate I have a very large portion of the English vocabulary memorized on mental flash cards in a form I can comprehend and I match these to each word and phrase that I glance over. It’s almost exactly the same as how you read, but not really, and it takes a hell of a lot longer. Also, I don’t always get it right, but that is because I’m human.

If you’ve ever met me in person and saw me having to read something, and then asked me something about it and I got the impression I didn’t understand it, it was because I didn’t want to look stupid by taking too long and just stopped reading when I saw others stop, figuring I’d finish it later.

So now you’re probably wondering why I started torturing myself seven years or so ago with this blogging thing? Hell if I know. I guess the daily headaches became addicting. I have to think about every sentence I type before, during and after I type it to make sure that what I’m trying to say, one: makes sense, and two: fits in with the sentence before and after it means I have to analyze everything I read and write.

You’ll notice in my seven-plus  years of blog posts that my paragraphs are commonly shorter and my sentences longer than most and that my spelling is atrocious (even with spell check). That is me trying to keep up the momentum so that I don’t get pissed off in the middle of a post and hit the dump button.

What I’m trying to put down here is that because I have chosen to write out my views for the better part of a decade, and have to focus on getting exactly what I want to put down correct as I ever-so-slowly type it out, and have to think through each sentence and each paragraph and re-read everything multiple times, I have become (possibly) overly critical of my own ideas and views, (again, possibly) at the expense of consistency. I can guarantee I am not in the same place I was ideologically when I started. Hell, I’m pretty syre I am not even in the same place I was last year. But I’d rather be regularly right than consistently wrong.

I am the epitome of using my weaknesses to make myself stronger.

The writers in “Rereading America” do not have that problem. They are so absolutely right all the time that they can easily think up an issue, find all the evidence they need to prove themselves right and then write up a quick 20 or 30 pages show you how right they are. No thinking or analyzing is necessary for them.

I have, over the last two weeks, read about gender identities, the inherent problems with the nuclear American family structure and (don’t laugh) the anti-Black media coverage during Hurricane Katrina, and then write an average of 2500 words on each topic, and then another 1000 words commenting on my classmates 2500 words, over the last two weeks.

That is where I’ve been.

But there is a silver lining to these clouds: The Final Assignment

After I read these self-fulfilling articles I am required to write in certain forms that will supposedly help me write a thesis style paper by the last week of the quarter. I am “allowed” to choose my own topic as long as it isn’t on this list:

Religion, abortion, gun control, the death penalty, legalization of drugs, assisted suicide, pornography, evolution, cloning, smoking, eating disorders, teen pregnancy, sex education, and global warming.

The professor believes these topics have been done to death and often cause vehement arguments, and this class is about writing, not debating. (Notice that familiar trope?)

These are topics that the professor believes that can use a “fresh angle”:

Censorship, Media Violence (including films, music, videogames, etc.), Homelessness and Poverty, Standardized Testing, Genetically Modified Foods, Immigration Policies and Immigrant Rights, September 11th, War on Terrorism and the Patriot Act, U.S.-Iraq War, Diversity in Higher Education and Affirmative Action, Alternative Medicine, Mass Transit in Seattle, Psychiatric Drugs (Ritalin, Prozac, etc.), and Social Networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Yeah, nothing controversial in there!

Being the ass that I am, I have chosen a nice warm topic that should prove to be fun to research: Legalizing Prostitution.

I’ll be interviewing members of the local constabulary, state legislators and, yes, prostitutes.

Since I announced my preferred topic last week I have received emails from a couple of (male) classmates, encouraging me to “share my research” when I’m done. I have also gotten one from the professor stating that he does not fully approve but that he will let me continue for now. Oh, and that I am not allowed to take a side in the argument.

All that did is push me forward. Stay tuned.