Your Stupid is Showing

Photo by Zach D Roberts

We’re on a new page in the tide book! On to the Happy Labor Day and good luck moose hunting time of year. I keep thinking we’ll get past some of the crazy and get a reprieve. Not even close.

The Stupid is strong. I know, not a real shocking statement, but I think Stupid has joined CrossFit, can pop off one-arm pushups and is drinking butter in its coffee.

A few years ago, a conspiracy-minded man called in to the radio show. He was quite sure I wouldn’t hear him out because of me being a liberal and all. He had a theory he tried hard to sell. Here’s how it went: Barack Hussein Obama had a Manchurian candidate carry out the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School because he wanted to win his second election and obviously to take away all of our guns.

My producer, sitting on the other side of a glass window, was banging his head on the desk and rolling around like he’d been tazed. I waited for the man to be done with his rant and let dead air sit for a second.

“Are you still there, lady? I knew you’d hang up.”

“Um … I’m here and I listened. I have a few issues with your premise.”

“That figures. What’s wrong with it?”

“Well, for starters, Obama won his election in November, six weeks before the shooting at Sandy Hook.”

I waited. “Sir?”

“That’s just your opinion, lady.”

We went to a break. How is it the space time continuum is my opinion? The calendar is my opinion? Rather than admit there’s a glitch in wrong thought, blame the facts for being opinion.

Recently a man told me Alaska needs to bring back the death penalty. I flippantly asked what Jesus would do. He said he would support the death penalty because “an eye for an eye and all that.” Um. Did he think Jesus was hit by a donkey cart? That was capital punishment.

During the recent news events of Hurricane Harvey, social media had all sorts of wrong to say. A Trump supporter posted a picture of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Where was Michelle Obama three days after Katrina? Shopping!”

It was like Stupid had been juicing steroids.

“At least Trump is trying! Obama was golfing during Katrina!”

There’s a segment of our population that thinks Obama was president for all the years they weren’t paying attention. He didn’t become president until three years after Katrina. I know, I know, that’s just my opinion.

We have a vaccination for Stupid. It’s education. Too many people have fallen for the lie that knowing things — science, history, facts — is bad. Do you want to be some smarty-pants elitist or something? Maybe.

I’ve followed and admired the work of Frank Schaeffer for many years. He, with his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, were founders of the religious right movement in this country. I’m still not sure who co-opted whom first — the church or the GOP — but they became a symbiotic entity that has changed both of them so much it’s hard to recognize either for what they were. Frank battles against what he calls “certainty addiction.” It’s the state of being so attached to your beliefs that you can’t evaluate them with any reason. It’s the reason people vote against their own interests over and over.

Winter is coming. I don’t think I mean that in a “Game of Thrones” way. Good luck harvesting. Thank a union for the weekend. Read a book — think of it as vaccinating.

Comments

comments