There’s an old adage that “the poor will always be with us.” Evidently so will the stupid. Benjamin Franklin said, “We’re all born ignorant, to remain stupid takes worse.” The clip you’re about to hear is remarkable. And by no means is this the first chapter, nor probably the last. In January I posted a piece, “Drop Everything and See How Stick, Stone, Stupid MAGAs are. The piece got a lot of views, I’m pleased to say, not just because views swell the coffers, but because people seriously need to see this. These are our fellow Americans. When you view this, and the piece from January, it will become clear to you why the GOP has given up and why they choose to lie to their constituents because they have no respect for them. These are people walking around in broad daylight, on their own recognizance, who are this far out of touch with reality.
I love the part where the guy intones, “the information is out there,” and when asked “Where?” merely repeats, “It’s out there,” in an X-Files-esque tone. I loved the X-Files as a work of entertainment but I’m wondering if it didn’t inadvertently set the stage for a belief in conspiracy theory.
And the woman “trained in dementia” who can “see things other people don’t see” but she can’t see dementia in her Mango Messiah, simply blows me away.
Maybe this is scripted. Maybe these are paid actors. Frankly? I would love to believe that. My terror is that they are real because they seem to be everywhere. This particular footage was shot last month at the New Hampshire primary. All you need to do is get where there’s political activity, a primary election, a caucus, a school board meeting, any of these things, and these people are there in some fashion.
This is a condition made possible by 1) an overdependence on television for a view of the world; 2) the dumbing down of America due to the failure of the educational system. Between the two of those things, it was predicted that we would be Amusing Ourselves to Death in this century, in a book by that name by Neil Postman, published in 1985. It was considered quite dystopian in the eighties, as was “1984” when it was published, but damned if we haven’t lived to see both of them come to pass.
I can also recommend two other books of essays on television, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat, written by Harlan Ellison back in the 70’s. They spell out brilliantly how television has become our babysitter, our teacher, our lover, our mentor, and our version of Orwell’s telescreen.
70 years of television saturation and enculturation paved the way for this moment, when a being like Donald Trump, a reality TV game show host, is now running again for president of the United States, to usher in an authoritarian regime headed by none other than Vladimir Putin and executed by the remnants of what used to be the Republican party. That is the long and the short of it.
And the people that you’ve heard here in this five-minute clip will believe anything Trump tells them, any thing. If he says the moon is a big cheese ball and we’re all going to go up there with bags of crackers and eat it, these people will be putting on their gold sneakers and lining up for the rocket launch.
Trump feeds some need of theirs which is primal, which is to believe that somebody who is clearly inept is somehow gifted with the ability to fix very complicated issues of long standing with great ease. That is what Trump told them. And he had people around him like his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who tackled the centuries old issue of the Middle East, and claimed that he would be successful where others had failed because “I read 25 books on the subject.” Great. You learned some facts, some history, a lot of opinion but it doesn’t mean you learned how to fix anything.
And of course, within nine months of Kushner’s Abraham Accords, rockets were flying again and you know where things got to and where they are now.
But still, they listen to the twisted nonsense on right-wing media and they’re ready to vote to end democracy. And when and if that happens and America is lost, these people will be the first to be completely shocked.
I hope that I don’t live to see that come true.
…….and the people bowed and prayed……to the neon God they’d made…….
Don’t you just wish you could somehow bash the truth of the wealthy guy on the right into the brain of the slob on the left? Just to let a little light into the fool’s skull. On the surface that is meme is funny. When you think about it and realize just how spot on it is, it kind of makes you want to cry.
If I weren’t hampered by this inherited pesky streak of morality, I’d make a FN fortune off of these mental pygmies…..,
…..they just seem to revel in and be so proud of their ignorance and should ALL be named Mark.
And let’s not forget the preachers who tell these evil morons that ‘God’ has appointed Trump, Johnson, and the rest of these nazis into power to bring about the hellscape of the book of Revelation. That’s one reason they’re fine with the genocide the ‘children of Abraham’ are committing in Israel. As Dylan noted in a song, “You don’t ask questions with God on your side.” He also noted in the same tune you don’t count the dead either. Clearly some of these folks are old enough to know better but education and truth has passed them by. This is a war people. What makes any rational person think if trump’s dictatorship includes concentration camps, locking up protesters, executions of undesirables, using the military to arrest citizens, and mass murder, that ANY OF THESE PHUCKERS WOULD GIVE A RAT’S ASS? Just ask the Russians, the North Vietnamese, the citizens in ANY dictatorship how that goes. We have one weapon and one chance called the vote. The Civil War, it could be argued, turned on one battle…the battle of Gettysburg where 28,000 confederate soliders and 21,000 union soliders died in a few days. Those heros wearing blue bought us time and the right to not have to die to stop evil. SO LET’S USE IT AND ENCOURAGE EVERY CITIZEN TO STEP UP TO THE BATTLE SO OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN WONT HAVE TO PICK UP A GUN IN THE FUTURE TO LIVE FREE FROM FASCISM! If we don’t, we better be prepared for the unimaginable but real consequences.
I’ve noticed that the major networks (not just the right-wing ones) STILL edit their footage of Trump to avoid showing the noticeable signs of his dementia. They still want us to believe he’s a viable candidate, I presume.
As for the lopsided coverage of interviews with MAGA voters, one Trump supporter actually told me that “proves” the MSM’s bias. “How so?” I asked. “They’re trying to make Trump voters look bad!” You can’t make this up.
To paraphrase a conversation from Alice In Wonderland:
Hatter to Alice: How is a raven like a writing desk?
Alice: I don’t know…how is a raven like a writing desk?
Hatter: I haven’t the slightest idea.
You’ve now been introduced to the logic of the Maga cult.