On Collective Stupidity

There seems to be social pressure not to call people "stupid." Let me try to lay out circumstances in which the label applies. Some individual voters made decisions to vote for a senile, amoral, criminal, climate-denying fool. I see such persons every day, and some are surprisingly well-educated, but on certain issues they seem to have lost all ability to evaluate facts and anticipate outcomes. Some have been swayed by a half-century of hate propaganda portraying liberals as Communists. Some have a single-issue on which they vote, not caring about the consequences on any other issue -- this single issue might be abortion, or it might be the belief that the president has direct control over inflation and gas prices, or it may be a single-minded obsession with one's investment portfolio. For yet others, the single issue is fear of the "other," whether it is pet-eating Haitians or the horror of not knowing the biological sex of the person in the next seat.

Each individual vote is the best that one can do, given their limited knowledge, their prejudices, and their fears. I know people with PhDs who voted for Jill Stein, and nothing could persuade them that their vote was thrown away -- they revel in the purity of their choice.
Where "stupid" comes in is in the aggregate. The result of all these individual actions is collective stupidity. The looming climate disaster was barely mentioned in the campaigns. It is collective stupidity to elect climate-denying, corrupt fools at this moment in history, just as it is corporate stupidity to focus on quarter-to-quarter profits when the burning of fossil fuels threatens to literally end the ability of humans to live at all.

For a big chunk of my life, I was a libertarian. Which, I finally realized, was a devotion to a silly utopian ideal in which productive geniuses would lead the way with enlightened self-interest. Burning up the planet you live on is not enlightened self-interest. Neither is selling products that kill people. There is no time now for the playing out of strong-man, fascist fantasies, or any other utopian scheme that is based on hatred of those who hold one set of ideals against those who hold another. (Fighting over pie while you are in the oven). Hands at each others' throats, they fail to see that the hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, heat waves, droughts, and superstorms are indifferent to politics.

 
Only the greatest collaborative scientific and engineering effort will save the human species from the climate catastrophe. Everything else is a distraction. And yes, the word "stupid" applies, especially since we cannot wait ten or twenty years for the politics to swing round from fascist to liberal.

Bottom line: even "educated" people do stupid things, and when they do them en masse, we are collectively stupid.

Fear of Falling (Revised)

by Brett Rutherford

The man who would be king
avoids high parapets,
hill-tops and cliffs,
lest one swift wind,
or an assisting hand
should tip him over,

a parachute, twice-checked,
is always in reach
of his small hands
when his private jet zooms
from place to place.

In a cold sweat, he dreams
of falling from the stratosphere,
down,     down,     down,
not into some calm sea,
but into the very spot
     where a sink-hole opens,
so eager is Hell to have him. 

 

Preliminary French version:

PEUR DE TOMBER

L'homme qui veut devenir roi
évite les hauts parapets,
les sommets des collines
      et les falaises,

de peur qu'un vent rapide
     ou une main secourable
devrait le renverser,
un parachute,
     doublement vérifié,
est toujours à portée
     de ses petites mains
lorsque son jet privé
virevolte d'un endroit à l'autre.

En sueur froide,
     il rêve de tomber
     de la stratosphère,
     plus bas,
          plus bas,
               plus bas,
non pas dans une mer calme,
mais dans l'endroit précis
où s'ouvre un gouffre;

L'enfer tremble pour le recevoir.

 

By the Number

by Brett Rutherford

knocked down to size

by thirty-four verdicts,

what shall we call him?

 

not forty-five,

those numerals kerned

into a near swastika,

 

not even the ever-

diminishing length

of what, to him,

meant "huge"

 

now he's just two,

the number,

child's signal

of toilet urge

 

and then just one,

an amorphous heap

of tangerine excrement

The Cannibal Hymn

The Cannibal Hymn is at least 4,300 years old. It is found in Egyptian Pyramids, and also occurs as a "coffin text." It was so alarming and primitive that the Egyptians eventually stopped making copies of it. It is one of the masterpieces of ancient literature. Here is an abridged, modern adaptation the era of King Donald. (2018 slight revision).


Warming, the weather turns terrible.
The stars frown.
Fracked bones of the earth tremble.
The coal mines are empty and dark
at seeing the Donald rising,
a god of inherited fortune
who feeds on the flesh of his mothers.

Though Donald is Lord of Wisdom, bigly,
his mother does not know his name.
She meekly calls him The Tiny One,
The Giant-Insane-Baby Who Eats the Sky.

Donald’s glory is in the clouds, bigly,
his large hands span the horizon
like his realtor father before him,
though his son, Jared,
is mightier than he.

Donald’s tweets are behind him.
His party, his Dark-of-Water are at his feet.
Jesus and Mammon are over him,
the eyebrow-serpents are on his brow,
the Donald’s guiding over-comb
protects his forehead,
each hair alert for enemies
to add to the death-list.

His neck is there,
not to be moved from his mighty Trunk,
nor shall he arise from his golf cart
except to smite bad people, bad.
His mighty implement is not a mushroom;
yea, bigger than a Behemoth's
is his engorgement.
Donald is the Bull of the Sky;
flag-waving, he alternate-facts
his enemies into submission.

He lives on the past:
without reading its books he
devours its innards.
Everything he does, he does firstly.
He swallows even scientists
without acquiring knowledge;
their magic counts as nothing.
Donald himself suffices.
He assembles his cabinet, then fires them.
Assembles more, and eats them.
Beware the field of spit-out ministers!

Donald appears as the Great One,
shoving aside the foreigners,
yea even Montenegro’s leader.
He calls on tribute lands for tithes,
withholding his hands and mighty arms
on account of less than two percent.

He sits with his back to the Potomac.
He needs no Congress for his advisor
since Him-Who-Is-Not-Be-Named,
the faraway Tsar advises him
on this day of drone-and-missile-sending.

Donald is the Lord of Offerings.
His coffers swell, his tax returns
known only to the gods below.
His meat and his ketchup suffice him;
no foreign chef does he require.
At night he eats his enemies
and sends out tweeted warnings
that the pundits and journals tremble.

His thoughts are like falcons, bigly.
It is “Bring-Back-the-Slave-To-Service” who is Sessions
who lassoes them for Donald.
It is “Snake-Even-Worse-Than-Donald”, the Pence, who guards and keeps the Congress fattened for him.
It is “She-As-Dumb-As-Willows”, named DeVos,
whose job is to keep them meek and stupid.

It is Ryan, slayer of Big Government,
demolisher of Bureaus,
who cuts the throats of the victims, singing,
McConnell the one who will extract the innards.
Conway will cut them up for Donald,
and Sanders the messenger whom Donald sends forth
to say the Yea-That-Is-Nay daily.

His consort Melania, and Ivanka,
darkly-beloved daughter, who cut them up
and pour spice into the Donald’s dinner-pot.
Bigly, the meals, with ketchup.

The ones who serve in Congress,
yea, even the Senate and the House,
from their heights they serve Donald.
The uninsured are butchered, the unborn
one and all are guaranteed to his platter.

Donald eats everything:
athletes for breakfast,
businessmen for his business-man’s lunch,
children for dinner with alt-spice and pepper.
Veterans and seniors are burned as incense.
A cauldron of women for a late-night pussy-grab.

Donald has filled the sky, and is the sky.
He crowns himself with the Pope’s mitre,
the crown of many Kings. He dreams
of Jared, Ivanka as Tsar and Tsarina
of Russo-Europe, the coming empire.

He has swallowed the Red States.
Though he does not like their savor,
He will devour the Blue.
With the help of his Dark-of-Water,
he will march against the Urals
and snap the necks of the Asian warlords.

He has swallowed all knowledge
and never once passed gas or turdling,
so he has forgotten nothing.
His reign will be limitless; he is the sum
of all the enemies he has devoured.

Whomever he likes is good,
whomever he dislikes is loser, Kenyan.
Soon no one will be left unbowed.
The rest will be eaten.
Do-gooders and liberals are helpless before him.
His tower of gold and marble the highest,
himself on top, immortal, beloved
of gods and the blazing stars.

He is forever, and forever, the Donald.