The stupid party
Submitted by James on Sun, 09/18/2011 - 9:43am
I have been cautioned on many occasions against calling a spade a spade, especially when it comes to criticisms involving ignorance and stupidity. The logic goes something like this: people don't like to admit their stupidity, perhaps because of their stupidity, and will thus dig in their heels and turn the criticism on it's head. "Smart people are stupid," they'll say. "Science is stupid. Professors are stupid." It's a common refrain among the great unwashed Republican Party today.
Ironically, many of the leaders of the Republican Party are not stupid, Rick Perry notwithstanding, while others enjoy the benefits of what some call "street smarts." That is, they know how to kneecap a fellow thug in a dark alley, or burn down a black person's house, or scam the government.
And some GOP leaders are, in fact, actually smart. Thom Tillis is no dummy, nor is Art Pope. No, they are not stupid, they are devious manipulators. They use the masses of stupid people in their party for pure political gain. They play the bigot card. They play the Jesus card. They play the fear card. Again and again and again, they use "stupid" to their personal advantage, even as they drive our country and our state over the cliff into a cultural and economic cesspool. It's sickening.
Wait! Did you just call the GOP the "smart" party?
Now they're going to be all insulted and mad and accusing us of being smart. Where will it end?
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It will not end
Democrats have their own faction of stupid, though I believe Democrats probably take less pride in their ignorance. Republicans wear stupidity on their sleeves like a badge of courage. Just look at Texas.
That said, the overall growth of stupidity in America is more than sickening, it is frightening. If we ever had the wisdom to learn from our collective mistakes, we have lost it in an all-out race to the bottom.
The sickest and most dangerous part of this phenomenon is the purposeful pandering to stupidity and ignorance by otherwise intelligent people. I don't expect anything more from Art Pope, whose family fortune depends on a growing underclass of poor, stupid people. I don't expect anything more from Phil Berger, who is a sad little also-ran in the big scheme of things. But Thom Tillis and Pat McCrory are different. They are smart and calculating, and have chosen to promote stupidity and ignorance as part of their personal political agendas. I honestly don't know how either of them can look in the mirror. I can only imagine that when they do so, they see delusional caricatures of their angry selves, testosterone-soaked jock straps, out to prove something to somebody somewhere as if anyone fifty years from now will give a shit that they even existed.
Indeed, fifty years from now, both of these blustering assholes will dead and buried. Their short time on the political stage will be considered to be a dark aberration, a brief detour on the road to a kinder, gentler world. I hope they both live long enough to be slapped in their smug faces by the hard hand of history.
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
Exploitation of the Stupid People Creates More
This will go one as long as we have such a great supply of stupid nutjobs in this country. What scares me, and what I have observed over the last decade, is that the exploitation of the masses of stupid people in this country actually CREATES more deluded stupid people and outright lunatics! This latest generation of nutjobs seems completely impervious to intelligence and reasoning. This is really scary - especially since most in this group are angry and own guns.
I think that Fox News and all the AM radio propaganda "talk radio" shows (which always filter out those callers with intelligence who can argue with reason and reality) are largely to blame for all this.
It also doesn't help that this country is so anti-intellectual in its idealogy (to use a nice term). We seem to revel in our uneducated stupidity.
Also, no one wants to admit it, but inbreeding is a huge problem, and the dumbest in the population tend to be the ones doing it and are breeding the most.