America has no shortage of crises. Even during this period of unparalleled prosperity, we face daunting challenges. And perhaps the biggest one is stupidity. There are a lot of stupid people out there. Incredibly stupid. Now, let’s distinguish that from the unwise. Unwise people can be smart but lacking in wisdom. I’m talking about morons. Nitwits. Idiots. I mean, people who can't comprehend basic stuff. America has a stupidity crisis, and we must act. For too long, the dumb have dominated our society in the sense that everything is directed toward keeping them from fully expressing their dumbness in all its mouth-agape glory. These are the people responsible for hammers that come with warning labels telling you not to hit yourself in the head with a hammer. And they are bringing America down.
Stupidity is a sad fact of life that confronts us at every turn. We are slaves to the whims of people too dumb to remember to breathe, and so much of our society has been designed to cater to and ameliorate the consequences of their foolish choices. Everywhere you look, there is dumb. If you go to McDonald’s—which itself is dumb in an age where the once-yummy Big Mac is now the bland Medium Mac, apparently made with ground earthworms, while the famous French fries have gone from a crispy, tasty treat to a soggy, tasteless mess—the first thing you see is baffled people. They’re either baffled by the little computer screen you’re supposed to default to ordering from, or they’re baffled by the menu when they’re talking to the cashier. It’s McDonald’s. It’s not a hard choice. It’s not something you need to ponder. But they need to ponder. It’s like they’ve never been there before. That’s the thing about stupidity—every day, every experience, every moment is like the very first time they’ve encountered it. “What’s a McNugget?” they inquire, genuinely puzzled. "This hot mustard sauce… Is it hot and does it taste like mustard?"
And the worst part is that these people vote.
So, I got on an airplane the other day. That’s always enough to flush your faith in humanity down one of the things that Herr Oberstoysterfuhrer Graham Platner performs onanism upon. Yet again, we have the first-time phenomenon. It’s like a significant percentage of the passengers have never boarded a plane before. Much like how all happy families are alike, but each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way, every competent airline passenger is the same, but each knucklehead is different in his own way. There are the people lugging a steamer trunk down the aisle until they stop and try to stow it, only to be shocked to find it doesn’t fit in the overhead compartment—just like the last time they lugged the steamer trunk down the aisle, only to be shocked to find it didn’t fit in the overhead compartment. Then there’s the guy who has to be on his phone having a conversation as he works his way down the aisle. If they want to take it to the next level, they don’t hold it to their ear—they hold it in front of their face on FaceTime with the speaker on so everyone can hear and see the idiot he's talking to. Yes, because some guy who looks like he got dressed by having a hobo barf on him needs to have vital lines of communication to open while finding his seat. And let’s not forget the ladies who look like they swallowed a carry-on, waddling down the aisle and getting irritated because their ample flanks are brushing the sides of the seats.
Again, these people vote.
The stupidity of people on social media goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway, even though it’s like pointing out that the sun rises in the east. At least on social media, you can detect clues that someone’s a slack-jawed numbskull pretty quickly. The new all-purpose dummy detector is any reference to either Israel or the Jews. Oh, you know something smart’s coming when you see that. Now, on social media there’s not just the denial of dumbness but the active assertion by people with inactive cerebellums that they are geniuses. There are so many dumb people pretending to be smart on social media that it’s become a cliché. Start with the people who think they’ve got a clever analogy to share. They never have clever analogies. They are why we should require permits before people can use analogies. My new favorites are the people who analogize Trump’s dealings with Iran to Obama’s JCPOA. OK, because Trump may make a deal with the Iranians does not mean it’s the same thing as Barack Obama making a deal with the Iranians. It’s just not. Different things are different. One can be good, and the other can be bad. But you’ve got a lot of people looking at their phones, nodding their heads at a parallel that’s not at all parallel.
Oh, and then you have the people who think they are experts on everything. When COVID came along, they were epidemiologists. When tariffs came along, they were economists. Then the war with Iran begins, and they’re all experts on the Strait of Hormuz despite having been unable to locate it on a map before last Tuesday. That’s the worst kind of dumb person: the one confident in the soundness of his own stupidity.
Which brings us to the Democrats. The competition is pretty heavy, but perhaps the most egregious is AOC, the poster child for unearned self-confidence in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Have you noticed she’s not talking quite as much? Maybe it’s competition from other idiots, but it’s almost like they’re pushing her aside because every time she opens her mouth about black cowboys or, heaven forbid, economics—“Are these evil billionaires in the room with us now, Sandy?”—someone out there has the revelation that this media-manufactured mannequin doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together.
Oh, but let’s not leave the Republicans out of it. They can be a marvel of stupidity and a demonstration of what happens when lackwittedness is supercharged with arrogance. Take Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy. Please. They really thought their voters wouldn’t notice that they had no intention of doing what they had been elected to do. And when their voters essentially told them to go pound sand, they were not merely stunned but offended. And to prove those voters wrong about their disloyalty, they loudly and publicly resolved to be even more disloyal now that they don’t have to worry about facing the electorate anymore. They proudly stand for the principle of lying to the people who elected them because of principles, or something.
That's not good for their buddies still in office, but it's good for us. Hey, I’m all for dumb people doing dumb things that hurt themselves. We America-first types are lucky that so many of our enemies are so stupid. It would make it a lot harder if they were cunning. You can say what you want about Mitch McConnell, but that guy was no dummy, and we’re lucky he’s on the way to retirement because he can be a problem. But Thom Tillis? Every time you see him, you hear circus music in your head.
Yet there is hope. Not everyone’s dumb. Trump is smart, but dumb people think he’s dumb. That’s OK. It’s always good to be underestimated. And in society, you occasionally see flashes of appreciation for smart things. I watched the movie Project Hail Mary the other night. It’s about a guy in space, and he solves problems by being smart. People love that movie. That’s because most people love intelligence. They like to see people being smart. They love to see people solve problems. To keep it on the space tip, you remember Apollo? We reveled in how smart we were in solving the problems of space. And now, watching Elon Musk launch rockets and then catch them on the way back down, the smart among us smile while the dumb get mad because he’s been successful and they live at their mom’s place, have $13.22 in their wallet, and can’t find one of their shoes.
Society needs to stop catering to the dumb. We need a society that demands more, that organizes itself around letting the smartest people do their smart things while imposing consequences upon people who do dumb things. Let’s make it uncomfortable to be stupid. Then we’ll probably have fewer stupid people.
And now we just have to figure out a way to keep dumb people from voting.
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