Sunday, February 19, 2012

America's Dumbass Problem

"There's no fixing stupid."

One of the features which stands out so clearly and which has huge consequences for the U.S. is our dumbass problem. Whether it's Shawn Hannity's idiotic and gross misrepresentations of President Obama's economic record or the cracker woman who asked Santorum how an "avowed Muslim" could be allowed as President or the old man who famously said that the government should "keep it's hands off his social security," or the idiots who continue to insist, despite fact and logic that the President was not born in the U.S.. What is clear, is that having to deal with this sort of garbage is damaging the nation.

Dealing with the intellectually incompetent lowers the level of the debate as it impedes and often prevents dealing with important issues effectively. One example of this is the case of healthcare in the U.S.. The fact is, we do not have as so many insist we do, the "best healthcare in the world." We spend the most but, have 45 million people with no healthcare coverage and are in fact 36th in life expectancy. It is a mystery to me that anyone could then claim our healthcare is the best. Yet, it is a tenet of the dumbasses that it is. The result, the U.S. wastes billions on a poor and cruel solution which consistently damages our ability to compete economically.

I have had many people ascribe the melt down of Wall Street to Obama and insist it is a fact, even as I point out he was not even the Democratic nominee when these events took place. The fact is, the economy demonstrably began to deteriorate about 6 months into Dubya's first term and clearly started to turn around about 6 months into the Obama presidency. Yet, when I point this out, charts provided to the dumbasses, it is as if logic and reason don't exist... well maybe they don't for them.

I am open to what to do about this. It is often pointed out that a large portion of the population lacks any real critical reasoning abilities. Perhaps, in the future, we will see a world of more Einsteins and fewer morons via genetic engineering. Until then, we will have to bear the unbearable as those who cannot think rule those who can.

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