Idiots And Idiocracy

I try not to, but I fail. I desperately try not to, because it does not place me in an attractive light, but I still find myself mumbling under my breath often in the course of the day the simple word, “idiot!” or “idiots!” I apologize to those of you who should be offended by this habit, and believe me, my fellow Americans, there are a lot of you.

It is no longer a joke to say that our country has come to resemble that fictional, future America depicted in the movie, “Idiocracy,” more than it resembles any past iteration of itself. More fool us, for allowing that to happen. 

By now, students no longer seem to be learning anything besides some obscure modern job skills (and those only at university), no one seems to value knowledge or learning anymore, and most people cheerfully go through life unburdened by knowledge or understanding of any kind, beyond what is necessary to use Mapquest or operate a Facebook page. The average American’s meager store of historical knowledge is shallow and fifth-hand; it comes from TV shows written by people who have seen TV shows and movies about history that were based on magazine articles that may have been, in their turn, based on someone’s limited understanding of a couple of basic books on the subject. Thomas Jefferson evidently enjoyed horseback riding and exploiting his slave population for sex. Wow! Mission to be historically informed: accomplished!

This is a recipe for political disaster, and in fact, we are already in Act II of that play. Sad!

I do not exempt myself from the charges of idiocy that I throw around so freely. Far from it, I am as guilty as anyone, although the form of my idiocy is not typical. My amazing storehouse of unimportant, unmarketable, almost useless information notwithstanding, I perform idiotic acts of commission and omission on a daily basis, and I am capable of exhibiting idiotic behaviors for years and decades on end. (Would anyone like to know how many rounds-per-gun were carried by the Grumman Hellcat in 1944? Or the dimensions of the .50 caliber cartridge that they carried? I didn’t think so.)

Lord, give us the strength to abide in these preposterous times in which we find ourselves, and please, in your infinite mercy, allow us to understand that no one in the history of our race has ever been completely comfortable with what their world had become after they had outlived the world of their youth. Amen!