Stupid Americans

It’s been a long time since I have seriously considered leaving this country because I can’t stand to watch it go down the tubes. The last time, I think, was when Emperor Ray-gun was elected a second time and churches started offering performances of the Greek Orthodox hymn “O Lord, save thy people.” That was twenty-five years ago, and being 25 years older now, I’m far less resilient for such a major upheaval. On the other hand, now that I have a meager retirement income and don’t have to look for work in Canada, all I have to do is figure out if I can live below the poverty level there. More likely, they’ll use that as a reason for not letting me in in the first place.

I should hardly need to explain what has brought me to this depth of despair. Even the Reign of Terror under Emperor Dubya did not reduce me to such hopelessness because I thought things would get better when he was dethroned. Well, he’s been dethroned by the Great Brown Hope, and all Obama’s attempts to start doing things right are being blocked and thwarted by the lunatic far-right. When I first thought of writing a post on how stupid Americans are, I googled “stupid Americans,” and was so depressed and horrified by what I found that I almost gave up trying to deal with it (although, as you see, it didn’t stop me from trying anyway). I’m beginning to think a growing proportion of the populace is not just stupid, but psychotic as well. Bill Maher has been quoted as saying that the Democrats are moving to the right and the Republicans are moving to an insane asylum. The spectacle of armed maniacs screaming and ranting at public meetings is not something to give one the warmest confidence in where this country is heading. Behavior which in some places and at some times would have gotten its perpetrators put before a firing squad for treason and sedition, is now smiled upon and encouraged, not only by the molders of public opinion but by the molders of public policy.

The google on “stupid Americans” linked to such things as YouTube clips of a journalist interviewing supposedly representative people on the street who can’t name a country beginning with the letter U (like their own), or who think a triangle has one side, or who don’t know what religion Buddhist monks are; and to YouTube clips of Bill Maher’s now infamous (and, frankly, overly glib) rant on 27 July about stupid Americans, which (perhaps justly) won him a lot of flak. (Jay Leno, in his “Jay-walking” segments, used to make fun of the staggeringly moronic answers of people on the street to questions a bright fourth-grader could answer correctly, but I often wondered if people deliberately gave moronic answers so they could be shown on the Tonight Show.) In a 7 August rejoinder to his critics, Maher defended himself by quoting poll statistics showing that “a majority of Americans cannot explain what the Bill of Rights is; 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War; more than two-thirds of Americans don’t know what’s in Roe v. Wade”; etc. etc.

But there are also, mostly among the comments to these clips, a few who point out that, horrifying as this ignorance of simple facts is, it is not the only, or even the worst, manifestation of stupidity. What might be considered worse than this is the propensity of stupid Americans to believe preposterous nonsense, such as that dinosaurs and humans occupied the earth at the same time, or that the sun revolves around the earth. Worse yet is their total inability to critically recognize bullshit when they hear it, and their mind-numbing gullibility to the demonically vicious lies fed to them by the far-right demagogues, such as that Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya. In fact, the impetus for Maher’s diatribe was the spectacle of the so-called “town hall meetings” on health care being reduced to chaotic free-for-alls by the above-mentioned armed maniacs, many of them thugs paid by the corrupt rackets who profit from the status quo, who were yelling the lies they had been told by those racketeers and by the far-right demagogues, the most patently absurd, and therefore the most cited, being the idea that government death squads will euthanize grandma. There are some radicals who believe that democracy is not supposed to work like this. One of the revolutionary (the small r is deliberate) fathers said something to the effect that democracy could not work unless the citizenry were sufficiently educated to know what they were doing as citizens, and that certainly cannot be said of the majority of people these days; ergo, democracy cannot work, and is not working in this country at the present time and in its present form.

I have often referred to the “Divided States.” A google (I use that a lot, don’t I?) on “Divided States of America” shows that the idea is rather widespread, with a number of scenarios, ranging from the interesting to the bizarre, being put forth as to how our great nation might fragment into separate, autonomous sub-republics in the near or far future. One of the more reasonable divisions suggested for such a fracture is, not surprisingly, based on religion. Michelle Haimoff, commenting (11 Sept 08) in the Huffington Post, says: “It’s time for the two separate countries residing in the United States of America to part ways in peace. There exists an ideological schism so extreme that it no longer makes sense for us to stick together as a nation. Perhaps it’s time to abandon the union that the Civil War maintained. The schism has become increasingly pronounced with each presidential election and it was unmistakable at the recent Democratic and Republican conventions. The rift begins and ends with the political parties’ conception of God.” Grieve for poor Lincoln; there goes the Gettysburg Address down the drain. I may be accused of some regional (and religious) bias for suggesting that such a fracture, which would essentially let the Deep South (along with Texas) re-secede, would very handily separate the great majority of terminally stupid people from the rest of us, although other scenarios suggest isolating Utah and Idaho as an autonomous Mormon republic, or selling Alaska back to Russia (which has nothing to do with religion but makes perfect sense geographically, and would have the additional benefit of getting rid of the moose-shooting beauty queen). However, some scenarios lump Colorado in company I’d rather not keep, but let’s not go there.

So, will the appalling stupidity of the American people lead to the dissolution of the United States? Almost certainly not; but in my dourer moments, one of which is right now, I almost wish it would. Barring that, Canada is beginning to look more and more tempting. Too bad they won’t accept me.