Is Unfettered Stupidity in America the Result of Apathetic Intelligence?

I come from a family where honesty, fairness with neighbors and good old fashioned common horse sense were highly prized characteristics of grown adults. In the family history there exists a story that my grandfather was once elected judge on a write in ballot. I spent a lot of my youth with that man and I can believe the story.

In my immediate family caring for less fortunate members of the community was practiced with dedication. When Cider Bill committed suicide in front of his family as they arrived home from church my father was the shoulder the oldest son leaned on. Dad gave that kid a job for a while afterwards. It wasn’t that dad wanted to take advantage of the boy’s ability, it was that he wanted the chance to talk with the kid while they were working. I can cite numbers of acts of kindness that I witnessed as a young person which certainly shaped my life as an adult.

While I understand that not everyone had such unusual role models in their youth I still have to wonder how good, upstanding church going people can stand by to allow an obviously dishonest man, con them into worshiping him in his cult.

It isn’t that I think that one must attend church to be honest or upstanding. I think those characteristics come from profound practicality. I mean, don’t you have to wonder how in the world people get caught up in such nonsense as QAnon? If that isn’t understandable as in how sane people believe that JFK is going to return to Dallas sometime in the near future or that Democrats are part of a global cabal to traffic kids for sex from a pizza parlor in Washington, then how can anyone justify believing that the election was stolen? Doesn’t anyone take civics classes any more?

Some of the poppy cock these folks cite as gospel just does not and really can not make any kind of sense at all. This gets to be all the more unbelievable when you consider that members of the bar touted such stupidity as the voting machine companies were controlled by foreign actors. Really? Or that those voting machines, which are not connected to the internet, switched votes. The pillow guy has been claiming to have proof of that particular farce for quite a while. I don't think he’s produced any proof so far, has he? But he has sold lots of pillows to suckers.

You see, that’s the part that really has me baffled. How can people with good common sense be conned into donating to the betterment of some guy or some girl claiming to be “anti-deep state”, whatever that is, and there’s no proof of that thing either. I can understand that when the girls are good looking that they can sometimes con their way into lots of things, but if that good looking girl is a government official I can not understand how people of common sense can possibly vote for her simply because she’s outspoken. Doesn’t ‘outspoken’ have to coincide with reality?

I must have missed the memo that announced that in order to qualify for a government office one has to be anti-government. But it does seem that the more lawless one is, the more likely one is to be elected to make laws. What could possibly go wrong with that concept? I mean there could be no harm from hiding and or destroying presidential papers, right? There could be no harm in supporting anarchy as opposed to democracy, right? Let’s just check for a moment, can we?

How did the US achieve economic security as the world’s most economically productive country? By practicing democracy or by practicing anarchy? Hasn’t the US gained international acclaim for it’s fairness and honesty? Then how does it make sense to myopically ignore what got us to where we are now? Has the population as a whole actually forgotten our own history as the most successful experiment in societal strength of all time?

It’s just really hard for me to believe that everyone in the Republican base is named Karen. I see those people interviewed on CNN and while they are entertaining I can not believe they’re representative of the American populace. For me the political rallies that are going on today are disturbingly similar to tent meetings of the traveling evangelists of the fifties and sixties. Those preachers were pretty entertaining too. They preached off-the-wall ideas which were loosely connected to reality the same as today’s political hacks. The evangelists talked about Jesus coming back at any moment and the QAnons’ talk about JFK coming back. The hacks talk about The Donald coming back.

In today’s political climate there exists the same discrimination between believers and non-believers which permeated and permeates religious zealotry then and now. The only difference is that zealotry now permeates the political landscape in the same way it once permeated only the religious landscape. It might be well to consider that zealousness concerning belief does not ever result in the zealot contributing greatly to society. For a historical reference consider the Crusades. Vast sums of money were spent on battles with supposed enemies because that enemy was opposed to how they believed the Crusaders believed and the Crusaders were opposed to how they perceived the enemy to believe. The actual humanity of both sides were ignored to no avail. No one gained anything of social substance in all the long years of the Crusades.

It is, therefore, highly unlikely that anyone is going to gain anything of social substance in these unbelievably stupid election crusades either. Honesty, fairness with neighbors and good old fashioned horse sense are still valuable attributes for grown adults. If I were to apply those attributes to today’s religiously political climate I’d have to keep in mind the measurements for stupidity. Stupid people are the most dangerous people on earth and everyone underestimates the number of stupid people who exist. We define stupid people as people who cause losses to other folks and themselves. Whereas bandits cause loss to others but gain to themselves and helpless people cause benefit to other people but a loss to themselves. But intelligent people cause gain to other people and themselves at the same time. The famous win-win crowd. In this matrix one must assume that stupidity has no other characteristics. That stupidity crosses all boundaries. And that intelligent people can be defined only as those who cause gain for themselves and for others as well.

The social calculation is that as long as intelligent, helpless and bandit people limit the effect of stupid people on the society, the society flourishes. When stupid people are unfettered the society must fall. In the climate of today’s political zealotry, stupid people are manifesting an unhealthy influence on the society. I do so hope that our free press has the ability to point out the gross stupidity we are allowing to control our thoughts and attitudes. It cannot possibly make sense to glorify a known bandit as a national leader. Only stupid people would follow such a person.