BECAUSE YOU’RE STUPID

Because you’re stupid is a phrase I often feel compelled to use when talking to myself. It’s an overused yet often extraordinarily apt line burned into my brain by the Nihilists in the show Fact Wino by the San Francisco Mime Troup half a lifetime ago. I don’t remember all the lyrics and probably didn’t hear them correctly when I saw the performance. I only remember the punk version of a Greek chorus, fists raised, jumping up and down while shouting, “You voted for Nixon twice. Why? Because you’re stupid.” I may often be stupid, but not never enough to vote for Nixon, not even once.

I have done a quantity, a large quantity, of stupid things in my long life. One was to call a sensitive (overly?) person stupid. A sergeant I was somewhat friendly with in Vietnam confided in me that his wife was angry because in a letter to her he was indiscreet about his indiscretions on R and R in Japan and he didn’t understand her reaction. I blurted out the magic S word, and he coldly informed me that he hated it when anyone called him stupid and stopped speaking to me.  We were in the middle of a(n  undeclared) war, getting ready for what might be a dangerous mission, and his main concern was that I called him stupid. That was more than half a lifetime ago, and I still have some slight regret about hurting him, even though he was a lifer sergeant and the facts were on my side. Discretion is the better part of accuracy, as I came to realize, and I have since bitten my tongue so often that most of my taste buds are gone rather than call anyone stupid. Other than myself, of course.

Perhaps through the years, I’ve grown weaker and less resolute, but recently I find that I no longer have the fortitude to resist calling spades spades and stupid people stupid.  With the caveat that I would never call someone born with low intellectual ability stupid—say, those in or near the 13.6% of the left side of the bell curve for intelligence, assuming there is such a thing (I’m not talking about the problematic Bell Curve that describes IQ test results and stupid people swear by). Everyone else is fair game for the Stupid title, especially those on or near the far right, politically and statistically.

A friend, a German with a Doctorate, insists that many more than the 13.6% are born with far less mental acuity than what passes for average on the dubious Bell Curve for IQs. Over a glass or two of cognac, I often disagree with him and advance my thoroughly unresearched theory that that the vast majority of the damn human race is born with the same number of neurons and synapses, while a great percentage of the DHR folds stupidity into their cerebral cortexes postnatally. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, fear/hatred of the other– let’s call them the Four Horsemen of the Stupocolypse—make us stupid. Often by choice, as if they were trying on a warm snuggly coat to protect themselves from the winter of cold reason, much of the DHR dons stupidity. Perhaps a suit of armor would be a better metaphor because it shields them from the slings and arrows of facts. In the rare case when a fact-laden dart manages to get through, they resort to the antidote of alternative facts.

A famous line from the (Bill) Clinton campaign was, “It’s the economy, stupid,” to remind Bill and his staff that people voted according to their economic interests. Which is not true. Not anymore. A brief look at labor history in late 19^th and early 20^th century America would indicate that while many blue-collar working men and women valued education, which they were often denied, they became increasingly aware of their best interests, economically as well as socially, as well as aware that the upper class had other interests. And some—certainly not all–began to organize and vote according to their interests. They made important gains, but it was always a struggle. After the economic crash (the Hoover Hard Times) the vast majority of hardhat, blue-collar working men and women voted again and again for FDR. Certainly not a monolithic force, but certainly a force to be reckoned with. 

Beginning, at least, in the 1960’s, many hardhats—read white working men—bashed hippies and anti-war activists, lynched Blacks, and voted for Nixon twice because they were true patriots and supported that stupid war in a country they couldn’t find on a map if their lite beer depended on it, but mostly because the Democrats imposed Civil Rights on them, mostly because the culture was changing and they were frightened. Mostly because they were stupid. The Four Horsemen chipped off large blocs of the non-monolith. Those large blocs voted against their best interests economically because they put their faith in the Four Horsemen of the Stupocolypse, which goes a long way, a very long way, in explaining why the rich got richer, the poor poorer, and the middle class stagnated.

The putative culture wars have replaced the economy in determining the behavior of a large segment of the population, whether blue collar or white collar, which makes them stupid. Right wing pols may make plaintive noises about about the economy, but they loudly scream about the main concerns of their base: the gains make by Blacks, Browns, Asians, Immigrants, and Queers (particularly Trans people and Drag Queens). And let’s not forget the Jews. 

Which is why their base consistently votes for the candidates who do them the most harm economically. Because they’re stupid, because they’ve been made stupid by overdeveloping the bigotry lobes of their brains and causing the rational thought lobes to atrophy from disuse. They don’t even know what their favored candidates stand for economically, other than tax cuts for billionaires. In 2020, the Repubs didn’t have an official platform. They didn’t even have one plank about what they would do for the economy, but they made it clear that bigotry was the only plank they wanted people to walk. Today, without the least regret about hurting the feelings of sensitive souls, I can say that if you’re a working class schmuck and you voted for Trump twice, it’s because you’re stupid.

This is not to say that every vote for DJT was an act of stupidity. Let me run a few exceptions to my hard and fast rule by you. Billionaires who got their dreamed of tax breaks and multi-millionaires with dreams of becoming billionaires understood that a vote for Trump was a vote for their economic fantasies. Their votes were not acts of stupidity, merely of greed. Republican Pols weren’t stupid because they campaigned and voted for their best interest which entailed taking power and perhaps one day joining the billionaire class or at least being amply rewarded by the billionaire class. They weren’t stupid, merely ambitious. Many others campaigned or at least said nice things about Trump out of fear, which was more cowardly than stupid. This one-two punch of fear and stupidity became evident when on the day after the Jan 6 insurrection many Repub Pols angrily claimed it was a Trump abetted riot, but some days later, after the smoke had cleared, they backed off and claimed that it was a peaceful demonstration, that it was a normal day with normal tourists, that what most Americans saw on their TV screens didn’t happen and if it did it was antifa or the deep state, as some deep thinkers stupidly claimed and stupid people believed, or, for stupid reasons, said they did. Those brave Repub Pols knew all too well that to say otherwise would harm their political futures as well as bring the wrath of Trump on their bowed heads. Stupid cowards!

While voting for Trump and defending Trump might actually be in the best interest of billionaires and Repub Pols, it most certainly is not in the best interest of the country or the world, certainly not in the best interest of the DHR (think global warming). But Joe the plumber or Harriett the hard hat, what have they gained by flexing their straight white male/female supremacy lobes? Stagnant wages. (I won’t mention the extra quarter of a million who died during the COVID pandemic because this diary is concerned about the economy and I never ever stray from the topic at hand.)  

I suppose I should say a few kind words about all the good white suburbanites—I wish I could—who ban books and react with horror if you say gay or they spot a Black man who is not an Amazon delivery person in their neighborhood, otherwise I could be accused of snobbery for picking on the working class. If you, dear white suburbanite, voted for Trump twice (or even if you only voted for him in 2020 after his first term), it’s because you’re stupid. If you voted for Trump because you’re a hereditary member of the Republican party, it’s because you’re stupid. If you voted for Trump because everyone in your country club or church voted for Trump, it’s because you’re stupid.

Deservedly or not, Einstein, who likely did some stupid things but was far from being stupid, gets credit for the pithy remark that doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is insanity. If you voted for DJT in 2016 and, expecting him to be different, voted for him again in 2020, it’s because you’re not only stupid, but insane.

This is not to say that doing something stupid once means that stupidity is your defining characteristic. Repeating it might.  Looking at the gross numbers of votes for Trump in 2020, many of them repeat offenders, it becomes clear that there is a pandemic of stupidity in America.

Against my bleeding heart, egalitarian belief that we’re all created equal, at least equally, I’m beginning to lean toward my elite intellectual German friend’s view.

Speaking of stupidity in America, Marjorie Taylor Green recently lambasted Biden in a speech to some Repub organization for accomplishing things that greatly helped the working and middle classes, i.e., the Infrastructure Program, comparing his program to FDR’s Great Society and LBJ’s War on Poverty, and she wants to impeach him for those accomplishments. That’s because she’s truly stupid. Never mind that Trump promised to pass an infrastructure program but couldn’t, not even when he controlled both houses of Congress.

Unless you’re completely—well, not stupid but ignorant—unless you’ve been asleep, unconscious or in a daze these past 50 years or so, it will have dawned on you that I’m basically accusing rank and file Republicans and fellow travelers of being stupid. Let me say it as plainly as I can: The R’s are the enemy of reason. They encourage, abet, and wallow in stupidity.

Republicans such as MTG have an economic platform but they don’t want it publicized. Only behind closed doors do they talk about getting rid of taxes on the rich (income, investment, and estate), choking the life out of Social Security, ending regulations that restrict the fossil fuel industry, doing away with renewable energy. They resort to Stupocratic slogans and ideas: climate change is a hoax, stop the woke, banning books, banning history that might make someone uncomfortable, teaching the upside of slavery, but never the downside.  As I said, they aren’t stupid, but they are greedy and power hungry.

I recently made it through segment of the PBS news about the partisan divide in America. In this particular segment, a roundtable of Jim and Mary Republicans who lamented the divide, made appropriately disparaging remarks about partisanship in America, but did not regret voting for Trump twice. When asked their sources for news and current events, they named Fox and one added Rush Limbaugh. I suspect that QAnon was on the tip of a few tongues but they were not so stupid as to admit it. Another question was whether democrats could be good Christians. The moderator and participants were White with the exception of a token Black, and all were Christian. They represented, supposedly, a cross-section of Arizona Republicans. Which made me wonder if Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Native Americans, to name the major alternatives, were not permitted in their exclusive club. They unanimously agreed that, as a whole, Democrats could not be good Christians because of their support for abortion and transgenders. After all, god made every embryo and he made every boy a boy and every girl a girl and only heretics transgressed against his will. They were sorry that there was a partisan divide in American, for which, I’m sure, they blamed Democrats. They said they didn’t talk politics with family and friends who were Democrats because they were afraid of being attacked. No one bothered with facts, such as the fact that a majority of death threats came from white and right nuts against progressive Democrats. No one bothered to ask if they accepted the results of the 2020 election and agreed that Trump lost. No one bothered to ask any difficult questions, such as: Was the assault on Capitol on Jan 6 an insurrection? Or even an assault? Did Trump have any culpability at all?

To my admittedly partisan eyes it all appeared to be a round table discussion of like-minded bigots seeking confirmation of and solidarity in their bigotry.

My ex-army sergeant friend whom I regrettably called stupid, was not, in my opinion a stupid person. I thought of him as a person of average or even above average intelligence, despite the fact that he was a lifer. Doing something stupid did not make him stupid. We lost touch when I DEROSed out of that beautiful by troubled country, and I know nothing about his life after that time. However, I can confidently state that if he went on R and R again and told his wife some of the salacious details and again didn’t understand her angry reaction, it’s because he’s stupid.

Doing something stupid, such as voting for Trump in 2016 doesn’t make you stupid, doing it again in 2020 and looking forward to doing it a third time in 2024, means, as the Nihilists sang, BECAUSE YOU’RE STUPID.