On Not Being Stupid....

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The tragedy of our current political situation is that we ourselves are the cause of it.  Our own ambivalence toward our freedom and the right/obligation to vote is the most nefarious cause of the disintegration of our democratic system.  If we don’t take voting seriously----this time---it may be impossible to mitigate the inevitable loss of freedoms and the dawn of autocracy, even dictatorship.

There is an editorial I read this past weekend that summarizes the challenge and possible outcome if we sit back and leave the task of citizenship to others.  Please take the time to read it:

https://tinyurl.com/y7jhcu6g

The most confounding part of this whole situation is that there is a ‘mass’ of people-- fellow citizens-- who have lost the ability to reason.

It’s one thing to have a spirited discussion and debate with someone who rationally comes to conclusions based on facts.  It’s another to try to have a debate with someone who is unwilling to accept the facts as they actually are and therefore adopts positions that have no basis in reality.

How do you reason with someone in a discussion about immigration when they are prepared to accept the practice of locking up children and separating them from their parents?  Who are we arguing a point with?---someone who does not believe in our democratic values apparently.  Or how do you have a conversation with someone about the outcomes in Puerto Rico after the government’s failure to respond to a natural disaster.  If a government study supports the fact that almost 3000 people died for lack of response over a one year period, how do you convince an opponent that 3000 people actually died when they accept the premise that they didn’t actually die, as the President has claimed.

When 99% of the world’s scientists provide data that our climate is changing and our society’s unrelenting use of fossil fuels is the cause, and yet there are Governors and legislators that simply won’t accept the science, how do you argue with that?  In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott has prohibited the use of the term ‘climate change’ in any official study or report that releases data and proposes policy on changes in the environment.  No one in his administration can utter the words at work?  What kind of nonsense is that?  If the printouts of data showing increasing levels of CO2 and increasing averages of worldwide high temperatures and increasing levels of the sea over the past 50 years being greater than any other time in history, how do your opponents stare you in the face and say, “No, it always gets hot in the summer!” or “It’s just the Democrats trying to make Trump look bad”.

When your fellow citizen is just hunky-dory with a President that constantly lies; is a sexual predator; openly supports a foreign government that succeeded (and is still trying) to influence the outcome of our elections; repeatedly denies any effort by his own intelligence services to warn him and our countrymen of this increasing threat; creates a cabinet of men who are piece by piece deconstructing safeguards to our health, opposing safeguards on clean air and water, reversing all pollution regulations, removing the neediest from health care coverage, threatening to deconstruct Social Security and Medicare,…. how do you make them understand that this is in opposition to every American Ideal we have fought for for the past 240 years! 

How do you argue with someone who can’t see the value of continued development of sources of renewable energy, and would rather scream their approval at a rally where the President says, “I love coal!”

How do you engage with someone who supports a man who would ‘lock up’ his political opponents and is ready to holler that in a rally?

My point in all this is that a significant portion of people in this country are just damn stupid!  They can’t seem to understand reality, truth, facts, or

consequences.  There unfortunately is no solution to that problem.  The only defense the rest of us have is in our sheer numbers, which outnumber the stupid ones.  That is why the above editorial strikes such a resonant chord for me.

My friends, voting in November is the most important thing you will do this year.  If we are to stop this seemingly incoherent wave of stupidity and destruction to what our founders tried so valiantly to bequeath to us, we must take citizenship and our responsibility to vote seriously.  We must be active, we must not flag, we must stand strong against the forces of ignorance, selfishness, and just plain stupidity!

Vote like your life depended on it.  It actually does.

It is time to get rid of the people in our government that are anti-citizen, which is most of the Republicans currently in Congress, and start to replace them with thinkers and doers who want to offer our citizens, all our citizens, a better life and belief in truth and the rule of law.  At the end of the day, those are the only things that set us apart from every other country on the face of the planet.