THE AMERICAN VOTERStupid and Ignorant

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Full version: The American Voter: Stupid and Ignorant

TABLE OF CONTENTSHold on a Minute

Politically Speaking, You’re Stupid

Historically Speaking, You’re Stupid

“It Was the Goddamnest Thing...”

What the Hell Were They Thinking?

The “Fucked-up” Campaigner

“Where’s The Beef?”

Stupidity and the “Hollow Man”

America Elects George W. Bush...Twice!

Hope, Change, and Stupidity

Statistically Speaking, You’re Stupid

Excuse Me, I’m Stupid

Politicians Think You are Stupid

You’re Stupid - End of Story

Appendix

Connect With the Author

CHAPTER ONEPolitically Speaking, You’re Stupid

Only half of the people eligible to vote actually vote, and half of that bunch don’t have a clue as to what they are voting for. Pollsters report time after time that the general public shows an overall lack of interest in politics, yet many of these people will nonetheless show up to vote. In 2008, 61% of eligible voters said they had voted but only 43% of eligible voters said that they followed politics “very closely.”1 Surveys abound that show the American people have a general lack of knowledge about government and politics, yet many of these dumber-than-fifth-graders show up on Election Day. In November of 2008, Barack Obama received 53% of the popular vote; less than 2 years later 41% of those surveyed could not name Obama’s Vice President.2(if you’re googling, it’s Joe Biden). Political scientist Robert Putnam, Ph.D., told us in 1995’s Bowling Alone that since the advent of television our civic and political minded society has eviscerated like an Al Gore political career. However, once every four years far too many of these civically absent people will get all warm and excited and stumble into a voting booth with God knows what on their minds. We are uninterested, ignorant, and lazy when it comes to choosing those who may decide our fate, yet we still vote.

When it comes to voting we are stupid and ignorant. The stupid voter syndrome cannot be fixed or controlled. Society will always have its morons and democracy allows for the participation of even the dullest life forms. We will always have those like Ms. Caryn Johnson, better known as “Whoopi Goldberg.” Ms. Johnson has such a grasp of reality and political issues that she once questioned whether she should fear a return to slavery in the U.S. if John McCain were elected in 20083 (no, Whoopi, that would be the wrong Party). Of course, she did bring this up on The View, which is basically Sesame Street for adults; apologies to Sesame Street. Ms. Johnson’s voting logic runs contrary to a post which appeared on the Huffington Post, a web site that does its damndest to support radio host Michael Savage’s contention that “liberalism is a mental disorder.” The writer of this post contends that when it comes to voting, “women are too smart, informed, and astute at reading between the lines” to be fooled by political rhetoric and niceties.4 And then there is “Whoopi.” Furthermore, the left tilting Post would not use such rhetoric and niceties when discussing Governor Sarah Palin.

Obviously Ms. Johnson is not the only moron who has ever entered the voting booth. There are also those on the so-called conservative side who suffer from mental inequities. A blogger on the web site Loose TN Canon listed some of the retarded reasons voters were choosing John McCain.5 Apparently many conservatives felt that, among other things, Barack Obama “would let blacks take over,” Obama was “the antichrist,” Obama “is a Negro and is not to be trusted,” and “like most Negros,” Obama uses drugs. Based on these quotes, it is not surprising to learn from a 2008 Zogby International poll that of those polled voters who voted for Obama, only 14% of them stated that they were NASCAR fans6 - however, Obama received a larger share of the NASCAR vote than McCain received from the black voting bloc.

CHAPTER TWOHistorically Speaking, You’re Stupid

“Libraries keep the records on behalf of all humanity; the unique and the absurd, the wise and the fragments of stupidity.”

Vartan Gregorian; historian, scholar, former President of New York City Library, Iranian.

In his 2011 article, “Survival of the Stupidest,”1 Dutch physicist Johannes Koelman wonders, “Is stupidity rising? Are we witnessing an alarming proliferation of irrationality and an exuberance of ignorance?” Koelman goes on to say that stupidity survives because of its “abundance,” and he wonders why creationism hasn’t rid civilizations of its infirmity. However, if we look at the pages of history, we can see that stupidity and ignorance have never been in short supply; Koelman may have just crawled out of a cave.

While God kicked back and admired his little earthen creation, the first lady of humanity committed the first stupid act of history, condemning man to a brutish and absurd destiny filled with anguish and liberalism. We’ve been acting against our best interests ever since. Stupid people were most likely the human sacrifices of ancient civilizations. From Plato to Popes, Confucius to comedians, and Jesus to judges, we can read how great – and not so great – minds of the past have questioned, philosophized, and commented on the stupidity and ignorance of the human being. The guys who set up this company called the USA, being quite aware of the story of Eve, feared the ignorance and stupidity of the common colonist and held that only rich white guys would be allowed to vote. No, stupidity, as Mr. Koelman would have it, hasn’t suddenly spiked due to some evil Republican plot. The evolution of technology has put more eyes and ears into play by which the “fragments of stupidity” are better reported, recorded and thrown into the viral winds for a world waiting anxiously for the absurd.

Like stupidity, politics has also been around since the creation of the first elephant and jackass. Many feel the two have now become synonymous – stupidity and politics, not the elephant and jackass. Contrary to popular belief, voters who sent Nancy Pelosi to Congress are not the first voters to have their mental capacities questioned. Rather than with ego and arrogance, which some currently bring to the office of president, George Washington approached the task with trepidation; worrying that the ignorance of the people would bring unwarranted public criticisms over decisions he would have to make as the country’s chief decider.2 Abraham Lincoln warned a crowd in Bloomington, Illinois in 1856 that voters acting against their best interests and counter to their principles in order to protect the slave property of family and friends, while they themselves “detest” slavery, aids in the spread of slavery throughout the Union.3 Hello! And here we are today, with the voter in lime green flip flops.

CHAPTER 3“It Was The Goddamnest Thing…”

“It was the goddamnedest thing, here was a whippersnapper…(h)e never said a word of importance in the Senate and he never did a thing. But somehow…he managed to create

the image of himself as a shining intellectual, a youthful leader who would change the face of the country. Now, I will admit that he had a good sense of humor and that he looked awfully good on the goddamn television screen and though it all he was a pretty

decent fellow, but his growing hold on the American people was simply a mystery to me.”- Lyndon Johnson on the election of John F. Kennedy.

When an overwhelming and illogical emotional factor is not present in an election, many voters will develop an appeal, a likeability factor, for a particular candidate which acts in the same way as the emotional attachment; it makes the voter act stupidly.

A case in point is the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Milhouse Nixon. Author John H. Davis, cousin to Jackie O., wrote a book in 1984, The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster 1848-1984, which if you read it you’ll understand why it probably doesn’t sit on any Kennedy bookshelves, and in it he says that following JFK’s U.S. Senate victory in 1958, Jack, with ample arm twisting and check writing from daddy Joe, began the “great buildup,” a process to make JFK a national celebrity for a presidential run in 1960.1 It worked.

Back in 1996, Chris Matthews, before he lost all his marbles, wrote in Kennedy & Nixon of the personality that in 1960 would lead John F. Kennedy to the presidency. Kennedy, wrote Matthews, was “handsome, debonair, witty, wealthy, and a decorated war hero” who possessed “an innate ability to be liked, to have people want him as a friend, lover, son, brother, leader…Millions voted for him with no questions asked…He had the gift.”2 The “gift” was his celebrity. Gil Troy wrote in See How They Ran that Kennedy, “blessed with a wealthy family, good looks, and a beautiful wife,” was a “typical celebrity; he was famous, it seemed, simply for being famous.”3 Journalist Joseph Alsop wrote in 1959, “One thing, and one thing only, makes Sen. John F. Kennedy…the front-runner of the Democratic presidential nomination. Without the evidence of his extraordinary appeal to the mass of American voters, Kennedy would hardly be in the running at all.”4 Political scientists Nelson Polsby and Aaron Wildavsky, in the 1968 edition of Presidential Elections: Strategies of American Electoral Politics, discussed the importance of various voting blocs to future Democratic candidates following the 1960 election. However, in order to gain the support of the voter who feels personality is a strategic voting concern, those that do not get into “all that political stuff,” they added this postscript: “…it is also advisable to be personally attractive, energetic, photogenic, wealthy, skillful, determined” and it doesn’t hurt to have an opponent like the 1960 version of Richard Nixon5 (there were many versions – and often, aversions - to Richard Nixon).

CHAPTER 4WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING?

“…and boys, I’m not goin’ to be out-niggahed again.”George Wallace, following his 1958 loss in the Alabama governor’s race.

In 1968, with President Lyndon Johnson realizing that he had become the guy he had warned voters about in 1964, and with the only Kennedy left to run for president being a drunken philanderer, and despite having been out of politics for six years following his unsuccessful 1962 run for governor of California, Richard Milhouse Nixon, like Elvis, felt the time was right to make a comeback.

In contrast to his loss to Kennedy eight years earlier, Richard Milhouse Nixon now seemed like the elder, experienced statesman; a calm, confident, and clean cut candidate during a time of chaos, loss of direction, and so much damn hair. This was the “New Nixon,” more mature, relaxed, tolerant, and even humorous.1 This was Katie Couric replacing Dan Rather. In his book, See How They Ran,2 author Gil Troy writes that Nixon used staged television events with carefully selected partisan audience members to appear as “personal” and “authentic;” a tanned, “soothing alternative” to the tumultuous air surrounding the campaigns of tweedle-dee and tweeedle-dum - Hubert Horatio Humphrey (seriously, this was his name) and George Wallace (more on this man later). Theodore White, in The Making of the President: 1968, wrote that “the years had mellowed” Nixon, and with a country and a culture steeped in “violence, discontent, adventure and war,” his message was the same,3 (however differently it was presented) but the audience had changed. In his October 1968 newspaper article, “This Year’s Campaign Battle of The Images,” journalist Max Lerner wrote that Nixon had “scrapped the loser image and replaced it with the comeback image;”4 and Americans love comebacks. However, as Nixon historian David Greenberg would note, this was just Nixon being Nixon. In “Nixon In American Memory,” Greenberg wrote that Nixon was constantly reinventing himself depending on the political situation, persuading critics, journalists and voters alike at any given time that this was the “New Nixon.”5 Nixon’s chameleon act was working in 1968 because he was running against Humphrey and Wallace.

While Nixon’s timing was impeccable, Hubert’s timing sucked. President Lyndon Johnson’s political popularity and likeability had gone from Camelot-like to crap-like in five short years, and as his vice president, Humphrey was seen as a continuation of an administration that stood over a country going to hell in a hand basket. Humphrey was nicknamed the “Happy Warrior,” but in reality, he was damning his political circumstances. Max Lerner wrote at the time that Humphrey was unable to create his own image, unable to become his “own man,” because of his ties to LBJ.6 Theodore White wrote that in 1968, Humprhey was “…scarred and embittered by four years of servitude to

CHAPTER 5The “Fucked-up” Campaigner

“[Gerald Ford] is so dumb he couldn’t chew gum and fart at the same time.”President Lyndon Baines Johnson

The fresh, uplifting and successful appeal of James Earl Carter in 1976 (temporary as it was) was aided and abetted by the comedic presence of the non-elected incumbent president, Gerald Rudolph Ford. While politically correct “experts” climb and talk over each other in order to define the results of the 1976 election in terms of Ford’s ties to Nixon’s little Watergate thingy and his eventual pardoning of Nixon (an announcement he made on the same day Evel Knievel took a nose dive into the Grand Canyon), they fail to calculate for the effects of the “fucked up campaigner” on the psychotic psyche of the voting citizenry. Despite what the “expert” post-election analysis would like you to believe, Watergate and its political tentacles had little to do with Jimmy Carter’s victory over Gerald Ford in 1976.

In 1972, the American voter had ignored the warnings of Richard Nixon’s personal style, they had ignored news reports tying his administration to creeps and their dirty deeds, and they had elected him to another term as president. However, according to conventional thought, in 1976 the voters did not ignore the now gone Nixon and his Watergate adventure. Nixon’s hand-picked successor, Gerald (originally named Leslie) Rudolph Ford, would, they said, suffer the slings and arrows of this outrageous history. Ford, they said, would have to contend with the “ghost of Richard Nixon.” 1 Ford, they said, would suffer from the “public disillusionment,”2 and the “popular revulsion”3 the public now felt toward its government over the Watergate thingy. Ford, said his opponent James (Jimmy to those he sought votes from) Earl Carter, would have to face a voting public who Carter tried to convince was feeling (Democrats, especially the pious ones – assuming there are others – like to tell the American people what they are feeling¸ thinking, and dreaming) “betrayed” and “troubled by a lack of competence” in Washington.4 Ford, they said, would have to face the music for giving Mr. Nixon a full and complete pardon for all crimes he did commit or may have committed while president, dating back to 1969. Nationally syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick wrote at the time that Ford’s “…first sweet moment of national political triumph,” his winning the Republican nomination for 1976, “…may also be his last.”5 This is the how the “expert” political thinkers thought the 1976 election would play out.

However, more than a year after Nixon’s resignation and “the pardon,” a Gallup poll found that Gerald Rudolph Ford was favored by more than 50% of responders in head-to-head matchups against Democratic favorites at the time, Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie.6 Similarly, a Harris poll in February 1976, nine months before the election and nearly two years since the Watergate thing blew up, found that Jerry was leading Jimmy the peanut farmer by thirteen

CHAPTER SIXWhere’s the beef?

George H.W. Bush was “blessed with a Democratic opponent who could not have beaten anybody.”

Columnist Robert Novak, 2007, The Prince of Darkness

Just as they had in 1956, Democrats in 1984 were facing the impregnable public popularity of a Republican incumbent President and were approaching the election with as much enthusiasm as a Puerto Rican at a Fourth of July celebration. President Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984 was such a foregone conclusion that the spirit of “return” was in the air; the first Godzilla movie since 1975 would be released, the Olympic spirit was returning to Eastern Europe, and there was renewed interest in George Orwell’s 1949 “big brother” novel, 1984; a book foreshadowing the consequences of Democrats running America. The Soviets knew Reagan would win in a landslide in 1984, although they hoped for the normal weak-on-foreign-policy Democrat. Union leaders, normally confident that their membership would vote Democratic no matter who was on the ticket, were even more confident in 1984 that Reagan was the man. London bookmakers were so confident on a Reagan victory that they were not taking bets on the election. Walter “Fritz” Mondale, Jimmy Carter’s vice president, was predicted to lose the November election well before the election and media polls were telling voters “on a daily basis” that he had no chance.1 Bert Lance, the fraudulent banker from the Jimmy Carter administration, knew it; he resigned as Democratic candidate Walter Mondale’s general campaign chairman after only nineteen days. Liberal Ivy League students at Brown University, supporters Reagan’s opponent Walter Mondale, knew it and voted in a student referendum to allow school officials to stockpile cyanide capsules2 (liberal Brown officials would later suspend for one semester a student who had raped and choked another student).3

Following the election, an article appeared in the academic journal Political Science and Politics which analyzed various 1984 election forecasts, but in the end it stated that not much “astuteness” was necessary to pick the winner of this race.4 Inside the Reagan campaign things were looking “fairly comfortable” for re-election as the race against Walter Mondale appeared to be “child’s play.”5 The Democrats, said an editorial from the Lewiston Daily Sun (Maine) on January 31, 1984, were “facing a difficult challenge,” and were “hoping against hope” that Ronnie would ride off into the sunset after one term (much like the right thinking American found themselves wishing for in 2012). Journalist Loye Miller, Jr., who had once written a column that referred to the “foregone conclusion” of impeachment for Richard Nixon, said in 1983 of Reagan’s impending re-election: “…right now, even Democratic leaders have a hard time talking convincingly about their chances of turning out Reagan.”

CHAPTER 7Stupidity and the “Hollow Man”

“How was it possible for a president who consistently lied to the public and to his own administration; who was found guilty of perjury for lying under oath while testifying in a civil suit and before a federal grand jury, and who in both cases was guilty of obstructing justice; who personally orchestrated the most massive stonewalling effort since Watergate to keep the depth of his inappropriate private behavior from the public; who was believed

by the public to have committed the offenses for which he was impeached; and whose behavior would not be tolerated in any CEO, professor, military commander, or anyone in a position of power and responsibility nonetheless manage to maintain high levels of

public approval…” – Political psychologist Stanley Renshon on President Bill Clinton, 2002.

In the fall of 1991, Bill Clinton, Governor of Arkansas, one of the worst states in the union at the time – only because Puerto Rico wasn’t (and should never be) an official state – looked at the personalities that Democrats had been given to choose from since 1968 - McGovern, Wallace, Humphrey, Carter, Dukakis (LOL!) - and figured that since he had rescinded his request to renounce his U.S. citizenship and hadn’t really inhaled, he thought as Barack Obama would later think, he could play at the level necessary to capture the imagination of a voting citizenry getting their political news from MTV and Arsenio Hall. The first female national political correspondent for the New York Times, Robin Toner, wrote in August of 1991 that the Democratic Party was “…a party desperate for presidential options”1 (apparently Jesse Jackson didn’t fit the bill). Legendary political columnist Jack Germond and political scientist Jules Whitcover wrote in their combined syndicated column that Clinton’s candidacy “is a shot in the arm for the Democratic Party.”2 Three months earlier, then President George H. W. Bush was enjoying approval ratings of nearly 70%, but by the summer of ’92, with Clinton up to his jogging shorts in full campaign mode, Bush’s approval ratings had crashed to 30%. Nationally syndicated columnist Tom Larimer, from Arkansas, wrote of Clinton in July 1992, “…he’s certainly managed to shove the seated President out of the way…” 3

In 1992, William Jefferson Clinton was an amalgamation of the successful political personalities up to that point. He brought the youth, looks, vigor (and infidelity), and message of “change” that had validated the Kennedy campaign in 1960 (no, Obama did not create the theme). He would use his charm and good looks to woo voters, women voters, and women. Famed columnist and political commentator David Broder wrote shortly before the election in 1992 that “Democrats are doing their best to wrap Clinton in the mantle of John F. Kennedy.”4 Clinton turned on the southern charm and in-your-face-all-the-time campaign style employed by the Jimmy Carter show in 1976. Clinton himself said during the summer of ’92 that he and Carter had “surface similarities,” and his interviewer said both “excelled at a distinctly Southern style of one-one-one politics.”5

CHAPTER 8America Elects George W. Bush…Twice!

“Nothing is the matter with Mr. Gore except he can’t be elected president.”Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan on Democratic Presidential Candidate Al

Gore, 2000.

George W. Bush, son of George H.W., (members of the “Bush Machine” – hey, the Bush’s have won more elections than the much talked about and imagined “Clinton Machine”), was another two-term President who was unsuccessfully challenged by two personality challenged opponents. First, in 2000, there was Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., better known as Al Gore (or Algore if you listen to radio). Before the 2000 election season got underway, columnist Clarence Page wrote that “Al Gore’s biggest burden is Al Gore.”1 Then in 2004, with Democrats, “above all else,” looking for anybody that can beat Bush,2 went out and chose John Forbes Kerry (better known as John Forbes Kerry), who, wrote columnist Zev Chafets before the 2004 fall campaign season got underway, was “…the standard bearer for unbearable.”3

Despite the unique controversies presented by the 2000 Presidential election, some things remained the same: voting stupidly. Hanging chads, recounts, and the Supreme Court dominated the news and the excuses in post-election analysis of the election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, yet forgotten in this perceived “expert” analysis, was discussion concerning how shallow and unbelievably stupid the American voter really was. Elements of “Clinton fatigue,” Gore’s personality, the Hispanic vote, and even the Spanish language, are analyzed here to show how personality and perception were more important in deciding this race than were the chads, the count, and the Court.

In 2000 the nation just wasn’t into Bill Clinton any longer; not that they actually thought he ‘was all that’ in the first place as more people had voted against him than for him – twice. Unfortunately for Al Gore, it was as if Bill Clinton was a two-headed monster, with one of the heads being that of Gore himself; there could be no disconnect. Gore himself would later tell Clinton that his (Clinton’s) “drag plagued every direction,” and that because of the character issue he (Gore) was running with a very “weak hand” and against “impossible odds.”4 In their individual books, author’s William Crotty5 and E.J. Dover discuss the inability of Gore to convince the public that he was not another Bill Clinton, that he was his own man. Dover marks this as a problem that “ultimately deprived him of the nation’s highest office.”6 In his book, Crotty analyzes the election and describes how the 2000 election became a “referendum” on Bill Clinton.7

Before the 2000 race got down to the real nasty nitty-gritty, a June 1999 Los Angeles Times poll found that 23% of Latino voters said they were less likely to vote for Gore because of his ties to President Clinton.8 Many Hispanic voters, like Diego Garcia, an educated, undecided California

CHAPTER 9Hope, Change, and Stupidity

“I don’t necessarily like his policies; I don’t like much that he advocates, but for the first time in my life, history thrusts me to really seriously think about it.”

Conservative black journalist Armstrong Williams, on voting for Barack Obama, 2008.

In 2008, the emotion created by Dwight Eisenhower’s 1952 status as a military hero was reinvigorated and leeched to a fictional, superficial hero created by an overzealous media culture and a brand marketing scheme envied by McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. In 2008, Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 emotionally driven magic carpet ride on the coattails of John Kennedy’s death was reincarnated as an emotionally driven ride on the magical mystery bus celebrating the death of common sense. In 2008, Barack Obama, an insignificant U.S. Senator from Illinois, proved that in elections, words matter more than ability, intention, and a whole bunch of facts.

Just as the GOP was looking for that charismatic candidate to stop their presidential losing streak in 1952, so too was the Democratic Party looking to right a sinking ship after having nominated in consecutive losing elections dullets Al Gore and John Kerry. Senator Obama got his audition for America’s Got Talent (but no voting sense) during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, giving a rousing rhetorically laden speech of the sorts members of the clergy give to their congregations to get them rocking and rolling in their Pews with un-Christian like adulation for false Gods and idols. The live coverage of the circus by the semi-professional news organization MSNBC caught NBC’s Andrea Mitchell exclaiming; “…Obama is a rock star!” HBO’s Bill Maher commented on the media glow after Obama’s speech, saying that those covering the event “were ready to have sex with him.”1 Obama left the podium following his speech telling biographer David Mendell (Obama: From Promise to Power, 2008), “I’m Lebron, baby. I can play on this level. I got game.” The Obama coronation began on that summer night in 2004 and would prove to be based on nothing he had ever done and nothing that he could ever do, but on everything he said.

Obama’s 2008 duplicitous hijacking of the voters’ emotions was given life and blood by a complicit media eager to shed the boring objective professionalism of yesterday’s low-tech, high moral industry standard (Walter Cronkite died less than seven months after witnessing this charade). The media in 2008 covered the Obama campaign as the Obama campaign would have liked them to cover it, and in a manner and with numbers that makes one wonder why Democrats bellyache about a media fairness doctrine. Writing for RealClearPolitics.com, Tony Blankley said that the “media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign.”2

Politico.com writers John F. Harris and Jim Vandehei called the media, “Obama’s secret weapon.”3 The WashingtonTimes wrote that there was “an Obama obsession in the news media.”4 Following Obama’s campaign trip to Europe during the summer of 2008, an attempt to pick up those

CHAPTER TEN

Statistically Speaking, You’re Stupid

With deference to Mark Twain – “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics” – the time has come to add some meat and credibility to the anecdotal history of Americans acting stupidly when confronted with all that political stuff. DNA evidence played a larger role in freeing O.J. Simpson than did the anecdotal, “if the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” The landmark research book, The Changing American Voter, was a result of political scientists Norman Vie, Sidney Verba, and John Petrocik being commissioned to look beyond impressions and employ surveys to find out what was affecting the voter of the 1960s and early ‘70s;1 their contribution to making political science more scientific. That is not to say, however, that all evidence incidental to actually being able to climb into some of America’s emptiest skulls and recording what is or isn’t going on should be discounted, for example, the nine black jurors in the OJ trial may have played as much of a role in his release as did the science – I only mention this as a possibility because it appears that many felt in a similar way when George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trevon Martin. Robert Putnam wrote in Bowling Alone that “we must make do with the imperfect evidence that

CHAPTER 11Excuse Me, I’m Stupid

“Father, forgive them, for they do not knowwhat they do." Jesus, Luke 23:34, KJV

No matter the subject matter being discussed, there will be scholars, philosophers, economists, and other scientists with brain synapses firing like the Fourth of July who have taken the subject apart and through intellectual examination have given us something more to think about. Benjamin Franklin, inventor, scientist, patriot, and part-time flyer of tethered aircraft, studied the effects of pouring oil on water – he found that water and oil do not mix.1 As with all things, the incoherent nature of man has not been ignored by the great polymaths of history.

Reviewing the literature available on the study of man’s stupidity, we find that scientific thought has always found a way to excuse that stupidity. Long before Jesus prayed for the salvation of the blithering idiot, intellectuals were philosophical about the ignorance of man. Since he never put his words to papyrus, Socrates’ thoughts on matters intellectual and philosophical have been saved to history by the writings of his student numero uno, Plato. In Plato’s Protagoras,2 we join a discussion between Socrates and his long-winded fellow philosopher, Protagoras, about the nature and teachability of virtue. As a part of this discussion, we learn that knowledge is a part of virtue which is accessible and transferrable. However, it is agreed to, men still act counter to their

CHAPTER 12Politicians Think You Are Stupid

Abraham Lincoln was once asked, “Do you know who (Stephen) Douglas is?” Lincoln replied, “Why, yes, he’s a man with tens of thousands of blind followers.”

Carl Sandburg, 1926, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, 294.

Before you burn (or delete) this book due to my cynical bitterness toward the stupidity of the average voter, take a moment and consider that I am not alone in my opinions. Politicians, the men and women whom we vote into office, have long held the average voter in low esteem. Often times the politician’s insults come publicly in the form of veiled condescension, while other times they let slip with flagrant public insults directed at the citizenry that we can only imagine what they are saying in private. And, of course, those private conversations are often leaked into the public forum and our imagination comes alive with the sound of the voices of those that pander for our votes, telling us that we do indeed, suck.

Revealing the attitude that politicians hold toward the average voter in lime green flip-flops is a fairly rare occurrence. Those in earshot, those in the loop, whether looking to protect their own access to those with influence, or attempting to protect the influential, treat this as it was a state secret. Just as the media helped to conceal the disability of FDR and their stepping lightly around the sexual escapades of Democratic hero JFK when in the moment, so too have they suppressed the surly attitude that politicians hold toward the people who gave them power. Only Oprah, or the extremely naïve, would believe that presidents pull on their bunny slippers each night before bed and sleep deeply knowing they have not uttered a discouraging word about the American voting public.

If we listen carefully, there are other voices that say this is true. In their attempt to study politics as comedic endeavor, authors James E. Combs and Dan D. Nimmo wrote in The Comedy of Democracy, that “many politicians” view the voter as “reflexive,” and regard them as “manageable fools.” Combs and NImmo go on to say that it is considered political “conventional wisdom” that the average voter is quite ignorant.1 Veteran news/political commentator Bob Schieffer told the nation on a Face the Nation broadcast in 2007 that he was “annoyed” that too many candidates think that the voters are plain “dumb.”2 If you followed Schieffer’s career, you realize that he never really did a whole lot to change that impression. Pizza magnate and presidential candidate Herman Cain incorrectly wrote, “They think we’re stupid, but we’re not.”3 Herman got it half right.

In 1961, columnist Roscoe Drummond of the Deseret News (Utah), writing on the political battle between Sen. Mike Mansfield and President JFK, said that “[m]ost politicians do not blame themselves; they blame the voters for being gullible.”4 From the public sector comes this insightful letter to the editor of the Oregonian paper, the Register-Guard: “Another concern I, and voters like me have is…liberal elected politicians who treat us condescendingly – as If they know more than

CHAPTER 13YOU’RE STUPID – END OF STORY

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

Albert Einstein

Our stupidity is legendary and occurs within all aspects of our life. A history of stupid would include Adam and Eve chowing down on fruit in the Garden of Eden, the Boston Red Sox selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, the German people electing Adolph Hitler, and Apple Computer co-founder Ronald Wayne selling his stake in the company for $2,300 in 1976. Move about your world during an average day and the stupidity jumps out at you like an incoming text alert. Listen to the conversation as you stop by Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up your morning coffee and you may hear things like the elderly black trio I overheard in 2008, agreeing amongst themselves that George Bush wasn’t running for re-election because he knew he couldn’t defeat Barack Obama. Apparently these folks did not spend much of their long lives reading the Constitution. Drive to work and witness the stupidity of your fellow commuters who, with overinflated and underserved egos, push their vehicles to gain that extra car length before they get to the next red light a tenth of the mile down the road. Go to the DMV to renew your license and witness the ignorant twit who sits there for an hour or more to renew her license, only to have her number called and to be told that her license does not expire for another year (the DMV is like an incubator for those looking to study the stupidity of the average human being). Listen to your co-worker on Monday morning proudly discussing how he spent two-thirds of the weekend getting trashed at some hillbilly joint while the old lady stayed at home with 3 hungry little kids and a pile of past-due statements on the kitchen table. Go to McDonald’s for lunch and be amazed how the fool standing in front of you for the last 15 minutes finally gets to the counter and stares dumbfounded up at the menu board like he just walked into a McDonald’s for the first time in his life – and beyond that, what the hell was on your little mind during the entire time you were waiting to be called? Turn on the television when you get home at night and hear the rapper proudly talking about his x-rated “song” as being an artistic expression of his culture. Read the police blotters in your local paper, watch television shows such as Judge Judy, 1000 Ways to Die, or any of the “reality” programs currently popular and, through it all, I challenge you to find evidence of intelligent life. In our daily lives, common sense is quite uncommon. Why should we expect anything different when the ignorant go to vote?

In the context of voting, evidence of our stupidity is anecdotal, culled from voluminous documented interviews and from the results themselves: ‘I’m voting for Obama because I saw him on the Tyra Banks show and he “seemed pretty cool.”’ Evidence of voting stupid is also empirical, measured with statistically significant numbers to show that it is just not the viewers of Oprah that are fooled by a pretty speech: between 1952 and 2000, 64% of those that said government and

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Full Version: The American Voter: Stupid and Ignorant

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