Country's ignorance is scary sometimes

The levels of ignorance, paranoia and polarization in the country by supposed reasonable people who should know better is alarming.

The reaction and planned protest of President Obama having the audacity to address the country's school students next week is really sad. Not surprising any longer, but still sad.

Conservative commentators and talk show hosts, who see black helicopters behind every white cloud, are fueling the paranoia. Here's some comments from conservative commentator Mark Davis:

"This is a mandatory cram-down....look at the levels of deception, look at the level of gamesmanship, look at the level of trickery."

"This is creepy."

"This administration is trying to get kids to love this president so when mom and dad harp about him at the dinner table, the kids can scold him."

"Schools respond to attendance, attendance means money, and if you make it clear that your child will not step FOOT at school...."

"I'm maybe suggesting that you turn your kids into absentees. Do your kids need to be at school for this crap?"

"I don't know if your kids need to be there that day."

Good Lord.

And it has created a bit of an uproar in pockets across the country, especially in the Dallas area where there have been calls for sickouts so students could avoild "left wing indoctrination" during Tuesday's speech. And the White House has tried to adjust, pledging Thursday to release the text of Obama's speech early so parents can review it and revising instructional materials offered to schools.

What's Obama going to say? Probably the same thing that George H.W. Bush said in a similar televised speech to students in 1991 that nobody got up in arms about -- stay in school, study hard, give back to others. The usual.

But to hear some airheads reacting, you would think Obama is going to tell kids to run back and tell their parents to call their Congressmen and say how great his health care plan is for the country.

Give me a break.

"What we've got right now on the right is, they didn't get back into office and they're into a take-no-prisoners strategy," Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University, told the Dallas Morning News.

Here's why Obama's in office, and this is coming from someone who voted for Bush twice. It's because of the failed policies of the previous president, who history will judge as one of the worst to occupy the office. It would help getting off the Denial River long enough to understand that.

One parent told the Morning News he didn't want his child to hear the president speak to them because "he's running this country into the ground." Does anyone recall what shape this country was in before Jan. 20? Run into the ground, really?

The health care issue has sparked intense debate, and it's mushroomed into an even more poisonous environment than ever before. But this uproar over Obama's speaking nationally to students is embarrassing. Even for Republicans, or which I have been one on occasion.