Intelligence is a felony in modern-day America
There’s a hillbilly comic out there who made bank with the catchphrase, “You can’t fix stupid.”
There is some wisdom to that, unfortunately.
A recent Monmouth University Polling Institute survey found that only four in 10 Republicans believe that the president spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July about investigating Democratic Party hopeful Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
That means a whopping 60 percent think the conversation never took place.
Now, if this latest scandal was just some hysterical hyperbole, some unsubstantiated opinion insinuating an anonymous charge, I could understand.
However, the poll was taken after the president acknowledged doing so.
He then went on to urge China to investigate the Bidens.
Nope, you can’t fix stupid.
The tragedy unfolds to an even broader scale when you consider how many people think it is entirely fair to seek the assistance of a foreign government to participate in activities that would influence an American election, especially if strong-arm methods such as threatening to withhold goods, services, or money from that foreign government is involved.
Haven’t we been shamed enough?
Look, the truth is that none of us gets much enjoyment out of churning out volumes on a presidential scandal.
There’s no pleasure in following Donald Trump and the Republican leadership down this prickly rabbit hole.
But we are living a chapter of ugly American history at the moment, a history that will inflict many wounds and leave many scars long after the ink dries in our history books.
That history should be in sharper, clearer focus, but the current trend in the news business is for most newspapers and online news sites to take what they call a “local only” position. What that translates to is that they have an abundance of inexperienced reporters who wouldn’t know how to track down a big story even if Carl Bernstein was leading them by the hand.
Oh, they’re pretty good at chasing ambulances, copying verbatim transcripts from some high-paid flak, or writing puff pieces that highlight local advertisers.
They don’t have a clue about what they are doing in the news business, but they work cheap and fill space.
The serious part of the newspaper or news site has been kicked to the curb in many newspapers and news sites because it more often than not is a reflection of larger-scale events, which some former bean counter or one-time ad hustler who was promoted out of his or her comfort zone to lead a news operation thinks is too controversial.
It’s bad judgment, to say the least, because right now, people of every age, color, and belief are neck deep in political discussion. No matter how hard you try, you simply cannot avoid it.
We’ve also got another extreme: We have the daily histrionics on the satellite news networks, where one network excoriates the left while another eviscerates the right.
This doesn’t do much other than inflame one side and infuse a false sense of superiority in the other. Very few of those satellite news folks are cutting it square.
Perhaps it explains why 60 percent of Republicans believe, despite compelling captured video evidence and an acknowledgment, that the president never made that request.
That’s why intelligence has become a felony in modern-day America.
It’s why we find ourselves in the current mess we are in.
It’s why we are so hateful and vitriolic.
It’s why we elected a “stable genius” as our president.
And it’s why, no matter how tired some of us get of pointing things like this out, we must continue: because somebody has to keep them honest regardless of their place in the food chain. It’s that watchdog thing some of us signed up for way back when.
Of course, way back then, people did their homework. They didn’t rely on vicious and repugnant social media memes and disinformation from partisan websites that have no relationship with the truth.
Way back then, they studied history, they examined and questioned their politics, and they also understood that there was a line in the sand that should never be crossed if the good of the nation came into question.
It’s why Richard Nixon had the good sense to listen to Sen. Barry Goldwater when he told him it was in the best interest of the nation for him to resign in the shade of the Watergate investigation.
There is no Barry Goldwater today, no iconic senator willing to put party alliances aside and commit to doing the right thing. That nobility, that statesmanship, escaped us long ago, unfortunately — unless, of course, their political fortunes are threatened by the taint. In other words, I find it almost impossible to paint a scenario where Sen. Mitch McConnell would put the good of the country before his party. I just can’t see it happening.
So they keep force-feeding the public with distortions, spin, out-and-out lies.
And the public is too dumb to challenge it all because it makes for clever memes, wicked insults, and — quite frankly — childish wordplay.
Scholarly types have traced all of this manipulation to the advent of social media and our departure from print — newspapers, magazines, books — because if it can’t be summed up in a sound bite, if it takes more than a meme to get your point across, if it requires some intellectual thought or discussion, it is ignored.
Research?
That’s something scientists do in a lab.
Depth?
Using a shovel is too much work.
Comprehension?
Only long enough to go from one fleeting insult to the next.
The dumbing down of America has been going on for some time.
It stems from a term screenwriters used back in the 1930s: Back then, if the plot was a bit twisted, if the language was even slightly lofty, the screenwriters were instructed to “dumb it down” so it would appeal to those with lesser intellect.
Since then, we have seen our politicians wrap themselves in that same mantle.
I mean, if you think there is any intellectualism in calling people “Crooked Hillary,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Little Marco,” “Lyin’ Ted,” or any of the other diminutives we’ve seen flung out by the playground bully, you prove the hillbilly comic right: You can’t fix stupid.
Peace.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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Ed, first off, hope all is well, and you are back on track. Ok, I think attacking fools and clowns is a two way street (or three?). But my retort, reply, response, etc… is musical. Please take the time to listen to a song by the progressive rock group King Crimson, called Elephant talk. Let’s move on, pretty please. More important things, and RE: coins have 3 sides? Yep. And one side, the foolish one, of course, is a circular construct. Anyway, ignore the incongruency of text, the song is 100% likely on YouTube. God bless, just feel this is anti fool-dum at its best. And of course that is my kind of folks. Sincerely Fulcanelli. Love yuh! Let’s improve the topic, by now everybody has wax build up in their ears and PREACHING to your own choir is just cheerleading.