People Are Stoopid
And depending on the subject, that often includes me…
Semi-recently the Pro-Palestinian encampment on the UCLA campus was attacked and just like the protesters, a significant number of the attackers weren’t students and had no connection to the university; they just saw a chance to start trouble and took it.
And as the cartoon indicates, even more recently, some of the people who tried to hide their identities during that attack were identified on social media and one of the attackers mother bragged on the internet about her son’s involvement, but then tried to take it all back when people showed up asking questions.
I’m guessing law enforcement officials are finding their jobs slightly easier these days because people are so damn dumb they commit crimes and then post pictures and videos of the crimes they commit and if we had Facebook back in 1963 we’d probably know for sure who shot JFK from the grassy knoll because they would have taken a “thumbs-up” group selfie to commemorate the occasion.
So that’s what led to the cartoon at the top of this post and today we’re going to talk about recent events and the stupidity behind them, but first…
A Confession of My Own Stupidity
I’ve told this story before, but: the limits of my intelligence became apparent when I tried to listen to the recorded version of Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time.
I had decided I might not be smart enough to read Hawking’s book, but I was certainly smart enough to listen to someone else read it. Unfortunately, the flaw in my logic became apparent during the book’s introduction, when the narrator said:
“As we all know, time is curved.”
Wait…what the fuck?
I rewound the tape and listened to it again and sure enough I’d heard it right:
“As we all know, time is curved.”
Time is curved?
And we all know that?
I tried to reason my way through it – “Well, clocks are round…but I don’t think that’s what Stephen’s referring to” – and decided if that was the starting point, I had absolutely no chance of understanding the rest of the book and when I die and they go through all the random things I’ve got stored under the steps in my basement, my heirs will discover the book-on-tape version of A Brief History of Time and wonder why I stopped listening to it during the introduction.
OK, then.
I tell that story to make it clear that I’m well aware there’s a huge difference between being “occasionally clever and witty” and “inventing-the-atomic-bomb intelligent” and I also know which side of that Grand Canyon I live on.
Having said that…
Recent events indicate there are people way stupider than me and probably you, which reminds me this is a good time to say that if you already knew that time was curved, you probably ought to stop reading this right now this minute because it’s going to be far beneath your level of intelligence, so instead of continuing to read my mundane essay, why don’t you and all the other Mensa Poindexters get together and calculate the square root of “fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
(As you may have already noticed; stupidity and anger are Siamese Twins which is probably an out-of-date and possibly racist metaphor and if it got your nose out of joint, maybe you should go join those Problem-Solving Mensa Poindexters in the other room.)
OK, are they gone?
To however many audience members remain, I’d like to once again point out that if the average IQ is 100 and we have over 333 million people living in the United States, millions and millions of American are going through life and making decisions with 2-digit IQs and apparently there are enough of them to occasionally elect Donald Trump president.
And now that I’ve insulted the people both smarter and dumber than me (which reminds me of the standup comedian’s observation that everybody else on the freeway is either going too fast or too slow, but we’re going just the right speed) let’s move on to today’s rant concerning all the stupid behavior that’s made news lately.
But First One More Observation
As bumper stickers will tell you “half the people are below average” which is actually incorrect because if you drew a horizontal line to diagram people’s intelligence, the vast majority of them would be bunched in the middle (after all, that’s what average means) and way out on the smart end would be a few people like Stephen Hawking and Gary Dahl who came up with the Pet Rock and at $3.95 sold 1.5 million of them to the people way out on the other end who also own Metallica’s Greatest Hits and think the people behind Jackass are comedy geniuses.
Most of us are clustered in the middle and you can tell which side of the dumb/smart divide you live on by your reaction to whatever new combination of the six ingredients that make up Taco Bell’s menu is currently being offered by their restaurants.
And I gotta admit those Cantina Chicken Burritos look pretty tempting.
And Now That I Have That Off My Digestive System
The Hill is a newspaper and website that covers Congress (they say they’re non-partisan) and according to them a bunch of Republicans went up to New York last Thursday to appear at Donald Trump’s trial — because you just can’t publicly kiss his ass too often — which meant a committee meeting had to be rescheduled for that night.
Apparently, the Republicans started drinking on the train as they came back to D.C. and the drinking continued that night, which turned out to be a problem because while trying to discuss some issue I’ve recently discovered I don’t care about, the Tipsy Republicans veered off into talking about Trump’s trial.
Which frustrated Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) so she questioned whether the Republicans “know what we’re here for.”
A question that prompted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (FU-Georgia) to respond: “I don’t think you know what you’re here for. I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
(BTW: Greene was not on the New York trip so maybe she wasn’t drinking which would mean she’s also a titanic asshole when sober.)
Anyway…
Jasmine Crockett is Black and believed MTG’s comment to be racist, so she fired back and that started a shitstorm of exchanged insults and it got so bad Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Narnia) said it was “embarrassing.”
And Lauren should know what qualifies as embarrassing because she also went to New York to support Donald Trump, but – according to The Business Insider – has been skipping her own son’s court appearances back in Colorado (he’s facing multiple felony charges) and Lauren was also once thrown out of a Denver theater for vaping and groping a male companion during a performance of Beetlejuice.
(Apparently Beetlejuice has some sexually arousing scenes that I overlooked when I watched the movie.)
Boebert’s son is just 19 years-old, but according to Lauren has been “provided multiple opportunities to get his life back on track” and should be held accountable for “poor decisions just like any other citizen” neither of which seems to apply to the 77-year-old Donald Trump.
Here’s the article if you want to read about it:
To be fair – which at this point of my career seems totally out of character – after the “eyelash” insult Crockett fired back at Greene and managed to work in a comment about “somebody’s bleach blond bad built butch body” to which the chairman of the committee, Rep. James Comer (B-Clueless) demonstrated his continued mastery of Robert’s Rules of Order by responding:
“Uh…uh…a what now?”
I’d add “You just can’t make this stuff up” except right now I’m thinking “When someone else does it for you, why would you even try?” and my friend, the Late Great Political Cartoonist Jeff MacNelly used to say our jobs were easy because we had the best comedy writers in the world working for us and they all lived in Washington, D.C.
Stoopid and Stoopider-er
And thank God for those D.C.-based comedy writers because without their help I might have wound up being the funny night-manager at the Taco Bell I went to just last night. (I can highly recommend the Cantina Chicken Burrito.)
After reading about some of the recent stupidity-inspired news events (after explaining that the most important thing Madame Curie ever did was marry Pierre, Harrison Butker’s jersey sold out) I decided to Google “dumb things people believe” and came up with the following:
A significant number of people don’t think the Holocaust ever happened.
In a 2017 poll 37 percent of poll respondents could not name a single right protected by the Bill of Rights.
33 percent could not name a single branch of government.
Only 37 percent could name all three branches (and if you’re thinking “Groucho,” “Harpo” and “Chico” you’re way off and may want to buy a Pet Rock).
One-in-four Americans think the sun orbits the Earth.
10 percent of survey respondents think the earth is flat.
34 percent of Americans reject evolution.
20 percent of us deny climate change is happening.
51 percent of Republicans think Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
Also…
Apparently, some Americans think sexual position dictates the gender of the baby: have sex standing up if you want a boy, sex in missionary position if you want a girl and anal sex if you want a kid who grows up to be an asshole and starts a self-serving blog.
During the Iraq war, six-in-10 young Americans couldn’t find Iraq on a map, 75 percent of young adults couldn’t identify Iran or Israel and only about half of them could locate New York.
As I’ve said before, I question the accuracy of polls and the stuff you come across on the internet, so here’s a link to the article I just quoted and the polls they quoted so you can decide for yourself:
https://patch.com/us/across-america/how-dumb-america-10-things-people-actually-believe
And just in case that article didn’t convince you that we’re treading water in a Shark-Infested Sea of Stupidity, here’s another one from the aptly named Yahoo News that quotes some of the dumbest things people have said on Twitter (which I’m going to assume doesn’t include changing the name to X) but does include:
Scotland’s not a country.
Mount Everest has American Presidents carved into the side.
The Earth is only 2,021 years old (the year the comment was posted).
If you want to leave the country you should consider moving to Alaska.
Pregnancies last twice as long if you have twins.
“There’s no ‘i’ in happyness.”
Hitting your head can give a Caucasian.
Synonym rolls make a delicious breakfast.
Women should be required to take DNA tests to prove they’re a child’s mother.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/60-absolute-dumbest-things-people-214502795.html
In Conclusion
When I first told that “time is curved” anecdote to one of my sons, he said, “Well, dad, it’s fairly obvious” and tried to explain the shape of time to me and after that highly-educational explanation I suggested he move his shit under those basement steps and keep Stephen Hawking company.
I’m all in favor of evolution and people getting smarter and bigger and stronger, but turns out I want all that to happen in some generation way down the road, not the one immediately following mine because I don’t need the same son whose diapers I changed, trying to explain why time is curved, it’s fairly obvious and I’m kind of a dumbbell for not getting it.
But that same smarty-pants son once observed that you can reverse engineer current events and ask “For this to make sense, what has to be true?”
Which is a handy observation, because if you’re like me (as usual, insert self-deprecating joke here) you wonder how people can still believe Donald Trump got cheated out of the presidency after members of his own administration and every court that has ever looked at it said he didn’t.
But if you believe the sun goes around the earth and evolution doesn’t exist and post a tweet about how much you love America and the Red, White and Blue, but then include the flag of Liberia, believing Joe Biden stole the election isn’t even close to the dumbest thing you believe.
Turns out, people are stoopid and when it comes to the shape of time that might include me, but even though I have lots more to say in my defense, I’m going to wrap this up because Taco Bell is about to open and I’m kinda hungry for another one of those Cantina Chicken Burritos.
I'm printing this on a t-shirt: “For this to make sense, what has to be true?”
I can wear that when I'm not wearing my, "I cut myself on Occam's Razor" t-shirt.
The thing that bothers me most is the notion that I have worked for people who couldn't climb up the left side of the intelligence bell curve with an ice axe, ropes, pitons and an Acme Rocket.
Great columnn. As someone said who really is witty, as opposed to me..."This is the reault of gym coaches teaching civics."