STUPID IS
By Elizabeth R. Albertson
March 8, 2000
"...
W. is not a mere idiot,
though
we like to cast him that way.
He is
also mean, greedy, corrupt,
dishonest,
and petulant.
He wears
the stupidity,
and the
offensive charm,
to hide these other traits."
I admit it: sometimes it pleases
me to consider my adversaries stupid. It's easy enough, in some ways, because
many conservatives gamely contribute evidence of their stupidity. One need only
look at the hate mail that comes in to liberal websites, the ridiculous things
Rush Limbaugh says, or the fact that the Resident, as Michael Douglas said in
The American President, "couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands
and a flashlight." Furthermore, there is the maxim that one should never
ascribe to malice that which mere stupidity can explain.
That's the thing, though;
stupidity cannot explain certain things. For example, if the mainstream media
were merely stupid, they would bungle in an egalitarian way. They would
relentlessly hound the donors to both parties. They would conflate marital
fidelity with fitness to serve in cases aside from Bill Clinton, and report the
marital infidelities of Republicans before Larry Flynt forced their hands. They
would gleefully mock Republican and Democrat alike for perceived personality
quirks, and hold members of both parties to the same standards of honesty,
fairness, and responsibility. Therefore, the media, either by carelessness,
corporate dictum, or personal bias, have gone beyond mere stupidity in their
reporting blunders, and progressed, at the very least, to sheep-like following
of the Republican agenda. Somehow, the GOP has snagged the bellwether media
sheep (perhaps, I shudder to think it, FOX) and leads the rest of the flock
around thus.
One of the most ironic excuses
the media makes for its behavior has been intelligence itself. Gore was blasted
for mistakenly saying he had traveled with a certain man from FEMA on a trip
when he had really traveled with that man's assistant. This was a "lie"
because Gore was "intelligent", and therefore was not allowed to make
a single insubstantial error. Bush, on the other hand, is never held to a
single thing he says, even when he does dip his toes into the waters of
specificity, because everyone knows he's as dumb as a box of rocks. He inspires
praise simply by trying, as do athletes at the Special Olympics. I hesitate to
even make that comparison, because I have far more respect for them than I do
G.W.; they've actually worked hard to overcome obstacles. As a person with a
disability myself, it is not my intention to mock their efforts. But no one
expects these athletes to compete in the Olympics; it would be cruelty to do
so. It is similarly unfair to expect Bush to participate in government at such
high levels, and if he hadn't brought it on himself, one could almost feel
sorry for him.
It seems that it has become
taboo to dare suggest that a chief executive officer of a country might require
more brain cells than seem to survive in a previously-mediocre mind after a (we
suspect) decades-long cocaine binge. In a fit of anti-intellectual pique, the
media ignores or denies the possibility that an educated person might benefit
the country by their intellect and knowledge. Meanwhile any attempt to question
Bush's intelligence is brushed aside, with comments to the effect that the
American people don't care about things like that, they care about policy.
Aye, but there's the rub. A
president must be able comprehend policy, to project possible consequences, to understand
the underlying philosophical, practical, and moral issues. Public servants need
not be able to read Greek, solve differential equations, or even program a VCR.
(Of which three I can do only the last, and it seems to be a youth-linked
trait.) But it is a prerequisite of the job that public servants be able to
follow what they and their colleagues are doing. As their influence expands to
encompass a nation and its interests, this ability becomes more and more
crucial. Bush has demonstrated his ignorance repeatedly, notably in seeming to
misunderstand his own executive order restricting the free speech of family
planning services that accept American money. In this, he fails the first test
of a leader, which is whether he knows what he is doing, (which is different
from him knowing what he's doing, if you catch the distinction). This basic
failure to comprehend makes his unfamiliarity with and lack of interest in
topics such as history, sociology, ethics, and economics, pale by comparison.
But I have had a chilling
thought: stupidity is a highly effective mask.
It doesn't matter that Bush is
actually stupid if he plays stupid. He, or those close to him, may have
realized long before I did that playing dumb is a highly effective strategy.
During the months I ranted about how he was a moron, dismissed him because he
couldn't really get elected, (well, he didn't, but he shouldn't have even come
close enough to steal it), they were playing the cards they had, to devastating
effect. They realized, long before I did, the extent of the voters' gullibility
and the pervasiveness of the anti-intellectual sentiment in this country. They
realized that vague platitudes would soothe many people, that generalities are
inclusive while specifics are divisive. If he gave no concrete details, how
could one effectively assail (or even know to object to) his lofty-sounding
ideals? And he could get away with it, because everyone knew it was really too
much to ask him to know his own ideas off the top of his head. When W. spoke of
the "soft bigotry of low expectations," who could have guessed that
the low expectations of him would get him to the White House?
It seems I was not cynical
enough. And that is saying something, because adults started telling me I was
too cynical in grade school, when I spoke truths they were uncomfortable
hearing from a child's mouth. It probably had something to do with waking up to
the Iran-Contra scandal on NPR every morning.
Furthermore, W. is not a mere
idiot, though we like to cast him that way. He is also mean, greedy, corrupt,
dishonest, and petulant. He wears the stupidity, and the offensive charm, to
hide these other traits. As a child, I couldn't understand why anyone believed
in trickle-down economics. Why couldn't someone explain to them how flawed it
was? Why didn't they listen if anyone tried? What I was not cynical enough to
understand then was that the conservatives in power didn't believe in it. It
was a sham, a useful front to disguise giving money to the rich. What I didn't
want to think growing up in the Reagan years was that there were people so
heartless that they truly didn't care about the good of the majority, or what
was fair; people who were deprived, by birth or training, of their senses of
compassion. And what pains me even now to realize is that there are enough
racist, sexist, homophobic, or just deluded people, to keep the party of the
selfish amoral rich white straight Christian men in power. They don't need to
believe their rhetoric, they just use the rhetoric to sell the ignorant on
policies that harm them.
It is comforting to think of W.
as vapid, because the alternatives are more frightening. Last fall, in the
weeks leading up to the election, I spent much of my free time surfing the web
reading about George W. Bush. And then I'd call up family members and say,
"He isn't just stupid, he's evil."
Stupid is easier for us to cope
with and believe than evil. But the truth is, whether blame belongs to him or
the powerful people behind him, we can't just chalk Dubya's policies and past
actions up to mental deficiency. His modus operandi has been to benefit himself
and his rich conservative friends, at any cost. When the cost is the loss of
social programs that help the most disadvantaged and financial policies that make
the rich richer; when our sacred franchise is eagerly sacrificed on the altar
of technicalities to create a god-king; when health care providers around the
world are gagged in a manner that our own First Amendment would disallow here;
when profit is the only ethic; Dubya's policies pass beyond stupid into
malicious.
Our opponents represent de facto
evil. That probably sounds melodramatic. But if we enter this fight for our
nation's soul considering it to be any less, or the outcome any less essential,
we run the risk of being ambushed by the venality of the other side.
© 2001, Elizabeth R. Albertson