Recently, as a result of a posting that he didn't like, someone I once knew declared that I was stupid. However, just because you don't agree with me, doesn't qualify me as "stupid." In order for a statement to be classified as stupid, the statement should either be factually incorrect, show a level of inconsistency with generally accepted science and other norms or just be a load of hogwash! The very definition of stupid is having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense.
Okay, I will finally admit that I have no patience for intellectual dishonesty in the form of stupid remarks. We are living in the dumbest era in history. Some of the stories that are in the news prove that stupidity is overtaking the world.
To wit:
Recently, in a Congressional hearing, Representative Louie Gohmert (R,TX) stated, “You want very much to work on issues of climate change…Is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the earth’s orbit around the sun? Obviously, that would have profound effects on our climate.” Is he really that dumb or is he trying to create cover that climate change is being caused by cosmic stuff that we humans have no hope of changing and thus we shouldn’t try to do anything like reduce the use of fossil fuels or anything logical? I vote for stupid!
Then there is that brilliant congresswoman from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Some of her statements include:
“Federally funded school from age 3 to 20 doesn’t sound like education, it sounds like indoctrination,” she tweeted. “All at your expense. By force in the form of taxes.” Hmm, is she so stupid, she doesn’t realize that taxes already pay for schools? Public education…wow what a radical idea!
Her other comments range from comparing mask wearing to Naziism and the Holocaust to claiming that the school shootings in Parkland were staged and a big fake and stating that “Jewish Space Lasers” were the cause of the wildfires in California. This woman is not just stupid, she is bat-shit crazy stupid!
Of course, there are many stupid people in this country. All you have to do is look at the number of people that follow “Q” and the QAnon way of thinking. This is the latest from those followers after a cicada landed on President Biden’s neck as he was boarding Air Force 1: Rather than just seeing it as an example of the issues caused by the return of the large, loud insects after living underground for the past 17 years, some QAnon supporters claimed the reappearance of the Brood X cicadas is somehow a secret nod that justifies their radical movement. We The Media, a collection of QAnon advocates with more than 225,000 subscribers on its Telegram account, believes Biden swatting at the cicadas is actually "comms," a secret message that can be decoded by QAnon supporters. "JOE BIDEN BITTEN BY A CICADA - COMMS? Just so happens that Cicada nymphs emerge after a 17-year childhood underground!!!" We The Media wrote. The "underground" comment is a reference to a longheld belief from QAnon that there exists a network of secret underground tunnels where children are being trafficked and abused by the satanic pedophiles they claim they will one day expose. If it was just 225,000 stupid people, it wouldn’t be so bad. BUT, they only represent a small fraction of the people that believe in QAnon conspiracy theories.
This week, a new level of stupid became apparent when certain individuals declared that the Covid-19 vaccine was causing their bodies to become magnetized. These are the same people that claimed that not only was the administration of the vaccine Bill Gates’ way to put a tracking device in your body, but that the swab test for Covid was another way to implant a chip in your unsuspecting being! Stupidity abounds!!!
And then there is the Former Guy: Without a doubt, the King of stupid remarks...
"I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words."
"It's really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!"
"They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
"[John McCain is]... not a war hero. He's a war hero - he's a war hero 'cause he was captured. I Like people that weren't captured, OK, I hate to tell you."
“I’m the least racist person you have ever interviewed.”
“So they’re investigating something that never happened.”
“Despite the constant negative press covfefe”
“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,”
At remarks celebrating Black History Month, he ad-libs that “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.” The remark, and its present tense phrasing regarding a figure who died in 1895, has never been explained.
He “considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy.”
While arguing for more stringent Voter ID laws, he said, “if you go out and buy groceries, you need a picture on a card—you need ID.”
In describing Hurricane Florence “one of the wettest we’ve ever seen, from the standpoint of water.”
He described the planet Mars, on Twitter, as something “of which the Moon is a part,”
He celebrated the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by praising how George Washington’s Continental Army “took over airports” during the Revolutionary War.
He said he has heard that the noise generated by windmills causes cancer.
He introduced Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt by asserting that Bernhardt is “a man who loves the interior.”
"I will be reinstated as President by August."
While this is only a very small sampling of the idiotic remarks made by the former guy, it at the very least exposes him as either a very disturbed individual or one that is just plain stupid. Or some of both!
Now, I am not saying that the former guy is the cause of the dumbing down of America, but he certainly reaffirms that idea. When the story of this era is told many years from now, students and history enthusiasts will learn about his lies, corruption, self-enrichment, and abuse. What they may not grasp—and what even now is hard to comprehend—is just how stupid it was to live through. The former guy told the nation to inject bleach during a pandemic; his team altered the projected path of a hurricane on an official document, with a Sharpie, to help him save face after an erroneous tweet. There were the dishwashers that had to be run 10 times and the toilets that had to be flushed 5 times The blank pages that the White House pretended were important documents. A long, long time ago, he declared himself a “very stable genius.” By now, that phrase feels almost normal. But seriously: What?
There has always been and will continue to be stupid people making stupid remarks. All of this stupidity is great fodder for the Late Night Comedy shows, but that doesn’t mean we should be accepting of stupidity in our leaders, other public figures and our neighbors. It is actually incredibly sad.
And The Journey continues….
