How teaching creationism in schools will benefit the American aristocracy

Now that we're seeing years upon years of raising false alarms about the stability of Social Security is finally paying off for the right wing, helping gather enought support to privatize Social Security, a plan that's only forseeable benefit is to the rich who will be able to watch their stock values soar out of control before they cash in and and do god knows what to those same stocks, but that's the point of my post. My point is that we on the left need to be in the habit of looking at how manufactured crisises might have long-term benefits for the wealthy. Especially those crisises that directly involve the non-wealthy members of fundamentalist churches who are being used by the wealthy to further their agenda.

The current fuss over the teaching of evolution in the schools comes to mind because of this thorough article from Salon on the subject today. Over and over and over again, working class Christians are being told by the right wing media that the best way they can strike back at those elitists is by slapping at elitist scientists by teaching Genesis, or some version of it, to schoolchildren. It's sort of a nanny-nanny-boo-boo moment, like well you have your degrees and stuff but we have control of the public schools kind of thing. And other parents are in a panic because if their kids are being filled with misinformation about science in the public schools, it hurts their kids' chances of getting into college and becoming scientists themselves.

With all this manufactured panic over what's going on in the schools (with not just evolution, but sex ed and history, too), it's becoming tempting for parents all over the place to just pull their kids out and put them into private schools. Which they can't afford. But the think tanks magically have a solution to that, too! Vouchers. Take the money from the public schools and give it to private schools.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a long-range plan afoot to use these artificial crisises to turn working and middle class people on each other so that they run the public education system into the ground. Public education, of course, is the backbone of class mobility in this country. If you want to close the ranks of the true elite in this country, you'll get rid of public education.

Think I'm paranoid? Look at what they're doing with Social Security and tell me they don't plan for the long run.