Monumental Stupidity

We have a consensus among the general population,
 that we would like to see those who were not born
 with fully functioning mental faculties achieve as much as they can in life.
 Aside from Eugenics fans ,
 programs that help the developmentally disabled 
are generally supported by most folks. 

It has become obvious however, that the Republican Party 
has taken this concept way too far. 
The GOP seeks out the dullest dullards 
and most blithering of idiots among them….. 
and selects them to occupy the highest political offices.

I suggest this is not conducive to a functional society.

Sadly, the average GOP voter can not spell “society,” 

let alone comprehend what might be bad for it. 

Why Do Republicans Gleefully Embrace Idiots as Candidates?

The question naturally begs a larger question: 
How can a nation, with the world’s highest national GDP, 
and extremely complex systems regulating everything from credit default swaps
 to nuclear missile safety, possibly allow onto its national stage
 men and women of such obvious inferior intellect?

One might say that there has been a long, pathetic history of anti-intellectual paranoia in American politics. This was documented  by author Richard Hofstadter in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963).  You might say that It is like Cerberus, very difficult to defeat. You  chop off a head here or there and another one bites your ass.
No matter how advanced the U.S. becomes in technology, biomedicine, and weaponry, it only attracts a confederacy of dunces of ever decreasing skills and mental capacity as Presidential candidates. This has never been more apparent than this election cycle.

The first impression we might observe is that in Kindergarten, Americans are told that any citizen can grow up to be an astronaut, a millionaire basketball star, or President. Obviously this does not mean that simply any idiot can be an astronaut. It takes a wide range of skills, training, and experience to be considered for a space mission. Nor can any buffoon who buys  sneakers play basketball well.

In America the idea is promoted that no training or knowledge is required to perform a job that is not only more complicated and demanding than piloting spacecraft or being an athlete, but one which regulates these occupations and all sorts of other complex and nuanced occupations around the globe (including undercover agents in foreign lands).

You will do as you are told!

 It baffles me that you can attract a huge amount of support in this country precisely because you lack qualifications to be president. Such reasoning is, in effect, the raison d’etre of all so-called “outside-the-Beltway” campaigns of recent vintage. However, to fully grasp why inexperience, incompetence and outright stupidity has such an emotional hold on Republicans in particular, you have to understand a core principle of conservative orthodoxy: intelligence equates with moral relativism. Which is why, after twice-electing a genuine, but fatally corrupt, thinking person in Richard Nixon, the Republican Party moved away from its historically pragmatic approach in search of imbecilic ideologues. Naturally, this paved the way for conservative extremists, who, while short on brainpower— or perhaps BECAUSE they were short on brainpower, were long on rhetoric and deception. Republican voters have stuck to “party principles” like maggots to rotting meat. When I asked one conservative I know a few years ago how they could possibly support such an obvious dullard as George W. Bush,  they answered “Because I don’t trust the smart ones.”
  

"I am not a smart one!"

     Ronald Reagan became the first of many unambiguous dimwits to animate the corpse of the conservative  monster. Yes, with this post-Nixon strategy, the dwindling GOP intellectual fringe (historically held up by William Buckley, and arguably dieing when he died)  has had to stomach gasp-inducing ignorance of foreign policy basics (e.g., Sarah Palin not knowing that there is a North and South Korea, or her hysterical notion that Sputnik bankrupted the Soviet Union). But, at least they knew their standard-bearer was not going wishy-washy on them (i.e., thinking hard ).

This scheme worked so well with Reagan, it naturally attracted other knuckleheads. First came George Bush Sr.’s running mate, William Danforth Quayle, who promptly displayed his latent stupidity in public at every opportunity. He and his supporters took bold  stances against common sense, Murphy Brown (not even a real person), and spelling.  

The country as a whole was not sufficiently stupid enough yet to actually tolerate a presidential campaign from the likes of Quayle. But after two terms of an intelligent commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton, the country was sufficiently demoralized (not by the notion that a president had sex outside his marriage, after all that has been fairly common throughout the history of the office even though in past administrations this kind of personal crap was not considered newsworthy, but rather because for his entire 8 years some kind of witch hunt was always in progress thanks largely to serial adulterers Newt Gingrich and his page buggering colleagues discussing oral sex on every news outlet and Sesame Street.

America was now sufficiently brain damaged enough to manipulate into complete and utter idiocy.

Enter  Stage Right - George W. Bush, who, like Reagan, enjoyed two terms in office, despite beliefs in brazen poppycock such as Intelligent Design and in the whopper of all disastrous absurdities, that Saddam Hussein was not only Marshalling weapons of mass destruction to directly attack the U.S. (no, he was bluffing to deter his real enemy, neighboring Iran), but that he was also behind 9/11 (never let a good crisis go to waste, eh Mr. Cheney?). Only a true rube could ever believe such specious nonsense. And G.W. Bush – who exemplified the adage, “Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity” — fit the bill. The Republican Party loved him for it, bending over backwards to sanitize and “Hannitize” his many blunders, while selling his disinformation to a gullible American public, further brain damaged from the attacks of 9/11.

At last count, the Iraq Detour has cost this nation trillions of dollars (with more trillions to come, as this country rightfully must keep its commitment to care for wounded and mentally shell-shocked Iraq War veterans and their loved ones). It also cost the lives of 125,000 Iraqi civilians, and many times more than that who’ve been wounded or displaced by the Iraqi misadventure. All because of a lie and Americans’ willingness to either believe that lie or not forthrightly contest it. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the empirical cost of stupidity.

Ron Zombie

 After the costly policy blunders of Bush, Jr. — for which this country is still paying dearly in lower credit ratings and draconian cuts in funding for parks, libraries, basic services, education, health, and more.  Our current president has had to spend his entire term cleaning up this Republican mess. However, for reasons racial, political, and anti-intellectual (President Obama is too cosmopolitan, uses words that are too big, he is too nuanced, too calm, too Europe-friendly, etc), Republicans have aggressively sought to cut Obama’s tenure short placing brinksmanship far ahead of economic recovery or the best interests of the country. Fortunately, this time around they lack a bona fide, morally unequivocal, conservative with enough general election appeal to take Obama on.
In this election, the 2012 "candidates" are not qualified to be scout leaders, or dog catchers. let alone be placed in charge of a nation with nuclear arms.
Each hopeful successor to the Republican Dumbass Throne (the most coveted RDT) has proven so cartoonishly dopey as to offend even the intelligence of diehard Iowa Republican primary voters, easily the most unbending conservatives in the U.S.
 

Monumental Stupidity

Celebrating stupidity IS an American exceptionalism, 

 I sure wish we’d do the hell away with it. 

There should be no pride in being deaf to reason, 

and insisting that day is night is not a reason to hold your head up proudly.

Republican voters ought to be truly appalled by what they’ve done, 

and what they’re still trying to do.

I’m sure they would be,

 if they weren’t all morons.