Fifty years ago John Fischer,
editor of Harper's, wrote that
America's greatest problem in years to come would be, in one word,
"stupidity." How easily
that word flowed out of his typewriter into his weekly column. Sure, folks, when we get into the
complicated, high-tech, society of the coming decades there aren't going to be
enough smart people to keep it going.
"Yep," his readers said, or were expected to say,
"there'll be too many stupid people." Those are the kinds of words your mind fell into in those
days. His title, "The
Stupidity Problem," greased the way.
Now the right word for that habit,
I am sure, is "insensitivity," and I think our efforts to deserve its
opposite, "sensitivity," are all to the good. But there are times when the old, blunt
word cries out for you to use it.
Right now I'm having a hard time
resisting that cry. Before me is
an observation after the Connecticut classroom slayings by Congressman Louie
Gohmert (R - Texas) that "mass killings happen where citizens tend to be
unarmed." Oh, if only the
teacher in that classroom had had gun.
There's only one thing you can say
about that. It's so goddam stupid
that if you say anything else you're a language moron.
Some statements these days, and
from this camp, are so stupid that naming them is not enough. You want to address the speakers
directly. Like those militia types
that quote Ron Paul on the need for protection against an out-of-control government. "You expect people to shoot it out
with the government? Using
Bushmasters? Don't you know that the
Army can bring a tank in there and shoot their asses off?" Gun people are so dumb they don't even
understand firepower.
But I don't want anybody to think
"stupidity" is applicable only at one end of the political spectrum. Here's the socialist President of
France, Francois Hollande, giving as his reason for abolishing homework in the
schools that "homework gives children whose parents are able to help them
with it — more educated and affluent parents, presumably — an advantage over
children whose parents are not" (New
Yorker, 12-17-12).
The President, according to Louis
Menand, "wants to give everyone an equal chance." By making the smart ones dumber.
I can't use Fischer's word for
that without thinking of the future Fischer tried to foresee. He missed the compensatory comfort: we'll
be incapable of keeping a complicated, high-tech society going but we'll all be
equally incapable.
This scares me a little bit, because it is so true. I have felt like this applies to 50% of the population, maybe 75% of our politicians.
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