The Two Modes of Stupidity

In an earlier post I boldly proclaimed that Republicans were stupid. “But LM,” I hear you saying, “Isn’t that just ill-informed, opinionated, divisive, knee-jerk jerkiness?” Why no, gentle reader, it is an objective fact. But since part of my thesis here is that people are extremely adept at ignoring the blindingly obvious, let me elaborate.

Like every good philosophical argument, my observation concerning Republican stupidity rests upon a series of propositions which if held to be true will in turn prove the validity of my larger claim. These propositions are:

1. Republicans voted for Dubya.

2. Republicans voted for Dubya twice.

3. Nobody forced them to do so.

Q.E.D.

Does this mean that Republicans are evil people?

Not necessarily, although stupidity does shade ever more definitively into evil the more rigidly people cling to it. For the most part, however, the stupidity of Republicans may well be what allows them to function as rather happy and contented human beings. Most of them are probably quite sociable and nice to their neighbors as long as it isn’t election season. In their own mind they inhabit a world of radical simplifications, clear demarcations between black and white, decisive actions and clear-cut moral consequences. The fact that the world doesn’t behave like that, and that, furthermore, they do not behave that way themselves. . .that is what necessitates the stupidity. Or else their heads would explode.

Are Republicans more stupid than Democrats?

Oh my goodness me, no! They are just stupid in different ways. Democrats are stupid in a relatively harmless, village idiot kind of way. They don’t really understand why the world around them behaves as it does, or why people are mean to them, or why their actions seem to have unintended consequences. People bully them and they smile placidly; they carry on trying to make the world behave the way it should in their happy, clueless way and are never discouraged when the world turns around and bites their nipples.

Republicans are an altogether different keg of Miller Lite. They are capable of thinking differently and they work very hard not to do so. They dedicate themselves to their stupidity. They cultivate it. Moreover, they work hard to ensure that others around them do not shrink from the responsibilities of their stupidity. They have to, after all. Being a tightly wound bunch of folks and by now thoroughly intermarried and co-dependent, the threat of one person backsliding, the merest hint of a “But wait a minute. . .” is enough to cause an epidemic of pyrocephalus.

Stupid is as stupid does

We are talking about two different modes of stupidity. Democratic stupidity is based on obliviousness. This is the kind of stupidity where a person simply doesn’t hear the broadcast telling them to evacuate in the path of an approaching hurricane because they were spending all their time on the computer surfing porn, or watching a box set Law and Order DVD marathon for three days. This kind of stupidity exists almost in a parallel universe. For Democrats, it is a universe where a majority in the House will automatically make the president bow to your will without you having to actually take a stand on anything. It’s the world where Dukakis, Mondale, and Kerry are all candidates for whom people would vote voluntarily even if they weren’t opposed by sleazebags. It’s a happy world.

Republican stupidity, on the other hand, is based on denial. This is the kind of stupidity where someone tells you: “There is a major league hurricane coming and if you don’t evacuate you will die” and you respond that God will protect you, or that you are a survivalist and you have 2400 cans of tuna and three thousand rounds of 9mm and you’ll be just fine. . .and then three days later you are begging, pleading for someone to come and rescue you. This is not a happy world. It’s a world fraught with tension, because it involves a constant, vigilant, dismissal of the evidence of your intellect and senses. For Republicans it is a world where ardent support for a pork barrel project converts in effortless retrospective into opposition. . .and people actually believe you. It is a world where those who insist most stridently upon the importance of morality, values and personal responsibility end up adopting a wide stance, resigning to “spend more time with their families,” or engaging, Gonzales-like, in endless rounds of the “I don’t remember” game.

Catholics understand that there is a difference between sins of omission and sins of commission. Stupidity is a little like that. Democrats are omitted. Republicans are (or should be) committed.