It’s not the first or the last time Garry and I will have this conversation. Really, we started having it a few years ago when we realized how many people were convinced there is no global weather change in progress. When Trump hit the ground running for office, we had a lot of trouble believing other Americans could be stupid enough to really vote for someone so obviously unqualified for the position.
When he was elected, I had to accept how many Americans are far more stupid than I imagined possible. Even all these months later, I still can’t fathom the depth of their dumbness.
Last night, on Facebook — I swear this is true — there was an article announcing all the hurricanes are man-made with laser beams. Proof? A Chinese guy with glasses said so. I got through perhaps three paragraphs before I clicked off. I’m sure millions of American morons already believe this. Somewhere, men and women are discussing how “They’ve proved it! The government is creating hurricanes so they can take over the world.”
Nothing anyone tells them will convince them otherwise.
You think I’m making it up?
Geo-engineering theorists and researchers say that Hurricane Harvey is a pretext to impose martial law © Neon Nettle
Hurricane Harvey Exposed As ‘Man Made Weapon’ Used To Impose Martial Law © Neon Nettle
And if that’s not enough, check out: PUTIN HAS PROOF US MADE HURRICANES WITH MACHINES. Feel free to put your brain in cold storage and believe. You saw it on Facebook, so it must be true.
Garry commented he sees total stupidity in the vacant eyes of Trump supporters at the last rally — wherever it was. “Maybe Alabama?” he asks me.
“I think so,” I admit.
It is so hard to keep track of this stuff. Why is the president holding rallies anyway? He was already elected. How many times does he need to be elected? Isn’t once usually enough?
Garry thinks the empty-eyed, slack-jawed followers must have eaten something. Maybe they weren’t always that stupid, but something came along and stupefied them. I said I think it is because we have allowed and encouraged the mythologizing of history. A war to promote slavery becomes a sentimental cause célèbre. A battle to eliminate our Natives is suddenly a rational battle to create a “real country” as if it wasn’t “before.”
All countries do it. It isn’t just us. After some appalling event has occur, before the last blood is dry, there’s a rosy wash splashed over the occurrence. It wasn’t so bad. It doesn’t take long, either. Ten years, tops — and suddenly, everyone is saying “Oh, it wasn’t all that bad.”
An older person … a gray-haired elder stands and says “NO, no, it was terrible. I was there.” We pat him or her on the head because obviously, she or he must be senile. We know we are right because it says — right here, in this book or on the silver screen — it wasn’t bad. It was noble. It was just. It was good.
The years have marched on. As my interest in history has deepened, I have lost all patience with glorious tales of rulers and their battles. All monarchs are tyrants. All are corrupt despots. The people who follow them are no better than their rulers. They either have lost — or never knew — that when you dispose of intelligence to mindlessly follow evil, you are equally evil.
Don’t forget: somewhere today, groups of people are talking about how hurricanes are made by secret government agencies … because there are no climate changes here! When you can’t believe science, you might as well believe any deranged idea someone promotes online.
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Categories: climate, Government, Humor, political parties, Politics, POTUS
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
I could not agree with you more…and the older I get the more I worry about stupid. Because, my husband and I realized a long time ago that you really, truly. cannot fix stupid. I try hard to point out “fake” when I see it. I actually commented, on a facebook post last week, that the story posted was fake news. I swear to you that the poster commented back…”I knew it was fake when I posted it, but it makes my point”. I am not sure where we go from there.
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I don’t know. I thought we’d hit bottom after the election, but it seems we are sinking into the mud. Will we ever arise?
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I hope so…but hope is helping much.
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Good question though what isn’t improving the situation is all those little screens, and the users totally ignoring the world around them. Being observant used to be a virtue.
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I don’t think being absorbed in playing with a telephone is being observant. More like being utterly out of touch.
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Exactly what I meant– They are being oblivious to what is happening around them, Not looking where you are going has never been considered intelligent or observant…
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In answer to your question….Yes, yes they are.
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Spot on!
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Thank you 🙂
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Laser beams? That’s a new one. Geo-engineering has been used for decades, but I doubt they can create havoc and make hurricanes and then make them go where they want them to. Government websites have to list what is being used and where. An insurance company here in Canada did some experiments with great results.
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A storm, maybe. A category 5 hurricane and a set of directions? I don’t think so. To what purpose?
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People will believe anything.
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Yes, obviously. But WHY? Do they also believe in the tooth fairy? What is WRONG with these people?
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I try to stay away from politics because it gets me riled up. I think it is because so many people have been let down so many times by corruption and lies that are commonplace, they don’t believe anything anymore. It’s hard to trust when it has become so normal that we barely seem bothered by the headlines we see. I don’t know.
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I can understand distrusting politicians. I can understand distrusting corporations. I can understand distrusting absolutely EVERYTHING written on the Internet until it has been triple-checked.
I cannot understand believing the world is flat, or that vaccines produce autism, or that humans have nothing to do with climate change … or that our pollution doesn’t count because y’know, the earth will ALWAYS bounce back. It will bounce back, but not necessarily as a place WE can live.
Distrust? Sure. But this stuff is flat out stupid.
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“or that our pollution doesn’t count because y’know, the earth will ALWAYS bounce back. It will bounce back, but not necessarily as a place WE can live.”
Exactly.
I wish I had answers to why people believe certain things. Maybe upbringing? You would never imagine the things I was brought up to believe in. Seriously. One side of my family was quite unique.
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We all had unique families. Sometimes not in a good way 🙂
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And the stupidity is downright scary… but we also can not forget the dumbing down of the school’s curriculum…
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Yes. Stupidity is not helped by stupid — and getting stupider — schools.
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Yes, sadly, there are people dumb enough to believe this crap. But you must understand that this isn’t the only dumb thing they believe. They also believe that 9/11 was an inside job, that the Sandy Hook gun massacre was faked, that vaccines are an insidious method to introduce RFID chips into people, that climate change is a hoax, that Jews secretly run the world and that JFK was shot by a secret service agent. Many of these people also believe the world is run by shape-shifting reptilian aliens who only pretend to be human. It’s a comprehensive belief system of paranoia and delusion, usually heavily influenced by racism and neo-fascist ideology. It’s easy to laugh this off or shake one’s head at such nonsense, but it’s actually connected to a very deep, very dark and extremely dangerous mindset in this country, and the world, that’s unfortunately been emboldened with the rise of demagogues like Trump. Quite disturbing.
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It seems to me that people assume our first amendment includes a clause that says “If you don’t LIKE it, you don’t have to believe it.” So science, no matter how well-researched, is optional. You can believe that vaccinations stopped small pox, or not. Take your pick. You can believe any deranged idea anyone promotes, regardless of it having no basis in science or even commonsense … but if the coffee from McDonald’s is too hot, sue the bastards. And if your own stupidity gets you into trouble? Look around to see who you can blame, then sue them, too.
Is every country half filled with people who believe any idiotic thing someone suggests on the internet? Or is it just US? Do we have an excess of morons in this country? Is it television? The air? All the pollution from the past coming back to haunt us?
I believe that earth does have a natural cycle, but human mismanagement and pollution has completely altered it. Of course there is a natural cycle, but not like this thing we are seeing. This isn’t like the past. All that past pollution and trash and hazardous waste didn’t just vanish when we started to deal with the worst of our industrial destroyers. Whenever I’m at one of our dams, the real story is that they can’t remove the dams because they support a vast amount of horrendously hazardous earth that if allowed to run into the river would poison everything, from fish to birds to anyone that dipped a toe in the water. The level of hazardous material locked behind our beautiful old stone dams is scary. You wouldn’t think the 19th century had poisons quite that devastating, but they did. The tanning and dying industries in particular produced toxins that may never disappear.
Just because we’ve cleaned up a bit doesn’t mean that it all just “went away” and now it’s all “right as rain.” Garry covered these stories for 40 years and all he does is sigh … and turn off the television or fold up the paper. He is the one person who believes human stupidity is unlimited. There is absolutely NO maximum. Where there is stupidity, the sky is the limit. The more idiocy we are fed, the more people will adopt it, believe it, proffer it to others.
And be PROUD of their stupidity. It’s the pride that really kills me.
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Love your post, Marilyn. Scary to see what people can believe. Like you I had promised myself to remain open and understanding. But sometimes enough is enough.
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How can you “understand” or sympathize with people who won’t get their children immunized? We have a resurgence of measles, whooping cough and other easily suppressed diseases. It’s a wonder we don’t also have small pox and plague and if our “citizens” had their way, they’d be back, too.
I have lost patience with this stuff. Sean is right. It isn’t “just” nonsense. It runs deeper than that. The complete rejection of science and knowledge by so many people is dangerous — with potential horrors I can only begin to imagine. Soon they really WILL be banning books because they don’t LIKE them.
Our first amendment gives you the RIGHT to speak your mind. It does not require you to be a moron. To the best of my understanding, it also doesn’t give you the right to ignore proven science in favor of whatever you want to believe. Not liking the truth doesn’t mean you can outright reject it.
Just one more note. When the climate change discussion began years ago, I thought “Well, we do have a natural cycle on earth … so maybe we nudged it a bit, but we’ve had ice ages and warm ages before …” But I read the science. I read the papers and over a period of months, I realized that we didn’t just “nudge” the earth. We’ve turned it inside out.
Will the planet survive? Sure it will. But it might not be a place where we can live. We may yet create a planet suitable entirely for cockroaches.
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If it were possible, how much energy would it take to create a hurricane? I haven’t seen stats, but I think Maria put out more energy every day as a CAT 5 storm as the US used. I want to know the source of all that energy, is all I’m saying…
I can’t tell you how many conspiracy theories I’ve seen about the Las Vegas shooting. Either there was a bunch of people shooting, not one, or there was no shooting and the government wants to take away our guns.
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You should re-read our first amendment … the HIDDEN clauses. Those are the ones which tell every American that we have the absolute RIGHT — even obligation — to reject anything we find uncomfortable or unattractive. What is more, we can and probably should embrace every nonsensical idea some cackling hacker created in his basement between rounds of video games.
I’m sure these “conspiracies” are created by the same people who launched our “new” president. They will never quit. What is weird isn’t that they won’t quit. It’s that so many people BELIEVE them.
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I can’t even begin to fathom why so many people believe them. Just blows the mind.
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I know. It defies anything resembling commonsense.
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i will buy climate change, because about every thirty or so years we have one. I have photos of my mother standing on a snow drift and actually touching the guy wire on a telephone pole outside their house in 1940. It was Easter Sunday. I used to regularly, as a kid, climb up a drift that formed beside the barn, up ONTO the 2 1/2 story barn roof, and sled down to the bottom.
By the late seventies the climate had changed so drastically that I can remember coming home one night at midnight, passing through a nearby town, and the temperature was 90 deg. That summer we got so accustomed to 90 degree temps at night we could fall asleep under a blanket. Ten years earlier the standard winter temperatures in January were around 20 below. By the 70s we were having open winters. I think what we’re seeing is Al Gore panic. Climate always changes. Tilt of the earth, sunspots, even the trade winds and trade routes shift. But the thing I do object to is the idea that it’s somehow Our Fault.
If it were, we would have been in this kind of trouble in the 50s when the pollution in some industrial cities was so bad women couldn’t hang clothes out to dry, or they’d come back in with holes in the sheets, from the acidic pollution. Easy to forget what it looked like. At times it would be so bad you couldnt see across the street, literally. There were no emissions controls on cars, no concerns about emissions from factories. In that regard I think we’ve made huge strides–but there is this incredible need for people to blame themselves/god/whatever for things they have no true control over.
It’s not our fault. It’s not a government conspiracy, or martians, or the return of the dinosaurs. It changes, and placing blame doesn’t do a thing.
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Judy, you’re mistaken. It *is* our fault. The human fingerprints on climate change are quite unmistakable and have been proven beyond all scientific doubt. There’s a great resource on that very question here: https://skepticalscience.com/its-not-us.htm
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You should write about this too, you know. As much as I hate our politics, THIS is what I worry about. The bad pols will pass and new bad pols will take over, but I think there’s a ticking clock on having a planet with air to breath and soil to grow things. As we chop away the last of the old trees, drain the wetlands and drill into the core of the earth … what will my great grandchildren have as a planet? Will we build ships so we can go destroy other worlds?
We don’t deserve another world.
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This is precisely why it’s so important to combat nonsense like “humans aren’t causing climate change,” because those beliefs are specifically designed to make us blameless (and thus morally justified in ignoring climate change). In fact climate change has a strong moral component to it. I’m personally not Catholic, but I think the theology of Pope Francis hits the nail right on the head. Climate change is not a natural condition. It’s a sin we committed. For strong secular reasons we must leave a livable planet to future generations, but adding the moral and religious dimensions makes climate change not about the future–but about us here today, and what kind of people we are. Ducking behind denialist tropes like “it’s not us” is not only scientifically incorrect, it’s immoral. I wish more people would see the bigger picture here.
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I don’t remember who said it, but it’s true. If we lived longer lives and had to suffer the results of the things we do to the earth, we might be a lot less insensitive to the damage we do. If there is anything like the devil, I’m pretty sure developers, industrialists, the air and earth poisoners, the idiots who think fracking is a great idea, the people us and think if no one catches them, it’s okay. The super rich who see nothing worth doing on earth but adding to the wealth that is already beyond their ability to spend. I do the best I can, but I get exhausted after a while. There is so much of this stuff going around and you find it in the most surprising places — amongst people who you never thought in a million years could THINK that way. Sometimes, I wonder if they are thinking or just flowing the way the water runs. There are many things I don’t understand. I don’t understand greed for those who already have more than i can even imagine. I don’t understand the complete lack of compassion i see in so many of the people in power — here and elsewhere in the world. I don’t understand how they can fail to see that what they do is wrong on every level. I wonder how they can look in a mirror and if they ever had a conscience — and if so, what happened to them?
I do know that the more of us who write about it and call people on the stupid stuff they say, the better. I’m too old to go marching with signs, but I’m not too old to write and think.
There aren’t that many of us who write well enough to MAKE our points. We who write — have always been writers — sometimes forget that most people can’t so what we do. Even if they have a point to make, they don’t know how.
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I still say the loonies over in the Flat Earth are tops for outright craziness.
I have read intricate details of why the Sun and Moon are no more than 3000 miles away from the surface of our planet and rotate about a spot above the North Pole and that seasons are a result of the sun/moon radius ‘orbit’ expanding and contracting about the ‘flat circle’ equator! maps showing no such thing as a South pole but a giant wall of ice preventing all the water running off the flat surface circumventing the entire world ( and having to be 48000 miles long – twice the distance of the equator.
Not that it ends there!!! There is the ‘fact’ that gravity is a plot by Einstein and does not really exist (supposedly ‘proven’ by the inventor Nicola Tesla!) We are apparently pulled to the earth’s flat surface by electrostatic charges! They also ‘explain’ that the reason we don’t see the sun at night while it remains 3000 mile as above a flat surface is that light does not travel in straight lines! These nut jobs are actually capable of proposing seemingly intelligent explanations and theories to back up their completely ludicrous suggestions – they (well some of them) actually have some degree of intelligence but they are, for some reason, so anti established science that they simply cannot accept the accepted scientific order and strive to propose an alternative.
The really sad thing is that so many of us are incapable of using critical thought that they go along with these whackos because it seems ‘reasonable’ or makes good ‘sense’ to them. They believe that science is full of ‘conspiracies’ designed to confound and rule over them and the loonies who tell them so are actually the ‘good guys’!?
I have to face it – much of humanity has passed it’s use by date and is doing it’s level best to turn back into monkeys. ( not that evolution is anything but a science conspiracy designed by Satan of course!)
love
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Flat earth. Anti-vaccination families. People who actually BELIEVE that fracking is “no big deal.”
Are they really that stupid? Can they POSSIBLY be that moronic? Isn’t there some little core in them that screams “NO NO NO” when they leap on something utterly idiotic and embrace it?
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Reblogged this on Espiritu en Fuego/A Fiery Spirit and commented:
The Answer to that question is a resounding Yes!! People are stupid and then some. They have signed the Insanity Clause!
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Were we always this stupid or is this a new thing?
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Not new but the advance of technology has allowed the stupidity to spread faster.
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That, sadly, is absolutely true. That is the ONE thing we can say the Internet has accomplished. Stupid idea spread a lot faster these days. The stupider, the faster they go.
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It’s all about dollars and impatience. Some people want, NO NEED, to be rich, some people need jobs. You can ignore a lot of “truth” when you choose to “tunnel vision” your personal existence. It’s Idol worship.., Trump is the Golden Idol resorted to when Moses went up the mountain. Stupidity spreads like a disease, and no one believes they are.
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That is all true, but I actually thinks it is more malignant than that.
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Could be.., I was just romanticising it.., ya know, glossing over the whole thing. All in all, it’s pretty serious whichever way you look at it.
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I swear that there are more of them than of us and they are running the country. Maybe … the world.
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I don’t even have to read past the headline. I can say fully and unequivocally YEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!
The human race as a general whole really IS that stupid – and then some. It is proven to me day after day.
Now i’ll go back and read the post and add any further comment, if warranted. 😉
love.
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Mind- boggling. It really is.
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That’s just what I was going to say – it boggles the mind.
Leslie
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You forgot to mention the abject stupidly of the flat earthers.
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There is SO much stupidity on the march. How about the anti-vax morons? Or the people who are still saying that not voting doesn’t matter and complaining about the election.
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…and the list goes on and on.
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Yup. There is no end to it.
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The earth is growing old, but we are still here. It has seen many climate changes, although the only one I can think of now is the ice age, but caveman or whatever killed a few more animals for their fur and survived. Now we have do it yourself weather according tö the Trumpists. How did that moron get to be president and keep the job? No good thinking about it, the man is a clown, one of the evil clowns.
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I’m still having trouble believing ANYONE thinks we are making hurricanes with laser beams. That so many people are as stupid as they are explains how come we have Trump and England has Brexit, and the entire world has gone a little bit wacko. It must be the air. There’s something in it that is making people stupid.
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During my working years, I remember interviewing these empty-eyed, slack-jawed people. Sometimes they drooled as they considered my questions.
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The earth is growing old, yes … and you live in a country where mostly, they leave it in peace. No one is fracking. No one is destroying your mountains to build tract housing. You don’t have factories poisoning your water or turning your air to deadly gas. Where you are, it is probably easier to believe that it will all be fine.
But it’s not the same here. Not even close.
The United States was a magnificent place and it still is. The efforts being made to take that beauty and destroy it — for no good reason — is mind-boggling. There is real science involved in the climate change scenario. It isn’t just “an idea” some people have. It is real.
All the poisons we’ve leeched into the earth and the water and the air don’t disappear. They do NOT vanish. That’s why the great barrier reef is almost gone and so much of the ocean is already polluted beyond repair. Everything GOES somewhere. It sinks into the soil or leeches into the oceans or burns out the atmosphere. IF we don’t keep producing more, we might just survive. If not, we won’t. We’ll make it … but our grand children and great grandchildren, won’t.
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