All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day
I'm pretty sure this isn't a new idea for me. Most likely at least once in the last eight years, I've ranted about fools overpopulating the world and my country. However, this last election sure pointed out how true it's becoming: the dumber are becoming dumber and more prevalent. We've been working at this for 200 years as a country and for at least ten times that long as a species, but it's a little scary how quickly the viciously stupid are taking over the world.
NPR did a series of interviewing various folks from various parts of the country, asking about their political views and Presidential choice for 2004. One stop that particularly entertained me was in western Nebraska. Other than the town's barber and a retired teacher, every person interviewed was a single issue voter with absolutely no intellectual grasp of that lone issue. Most of the reasons for voting were embarrassingly stupid or selfish. I was appalled at the lack of knowledge of the candidates or their real positions on the only issue the small town spud cared about.
My favorite is the sole moral position of the religious right; anti-abortion. Or, as they put it, the Right to Life or, even less consistent, Pro-Life. Outside of this one issue the Right is consistently on the side of immorality and about as anti-life as a group of living beings could be. Take, for instance, their goose-stepping leader, G.W. Bush. While the Governor of Texas , Bush executed 152 people. Does this sound like someone who believes in the "sanctity of life?" Bush even ridiculed the pleas for a stay of execution Betty Beats, mimicking her words ("Please don't kill me!") to a Time reporter and laughing at her doom. That was early in his reign of death. Beats was his 121st victim, but Bush still had work to do. He loved killing people and, given his charge into an unjustified war, still does. The difference between G.W. Bush, the Governor, and GeeWiz, the President, is that he can kill thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people as President. So much for that moral position. The only time Bush turns the other cheek is when he's using the cheek to take aim. The best I can figure is that the right wants more people to grow up in dysfunctional families or orphanages so they can have the pleasure of killing them as adults. That's hardly a moral position.
The other farcical pro-Bush position is a deluded belief that Bush is some kind of defender of capitalism. If there ever was a socialist in the White House, Bush is the man. GeeWiz comes from a state and family history of socialist leeches who have made their fortune feeding on the public blood vein. The Texas economy is based on federal welfare from military installations, oil, and aerospace. Without federal subsidies, Texas would be just another southern state populated by backwards hillbillies, crooked politicians and illiterate fundamentalist preachers.
George, himself, was a total failure at everything he attempted until he hooked up with a pack of corporate socialists who conned Arlington, Texas into condemning a few hundred acres of prime private property and handing over $600 million in public financing for a new stadium. Bush and his co-conspirators still owe Arlington Texas $7.5 million for their piddling share of the stadium costs. Apparently, they have no plans to pay back the debt, tying up the city and citizens in court while the Statute of Limitations runs out on the balance due. The extremes Bush and his buddies have gone to hang on to the largest-ever baseball team sale profits have been very close to criminal. Being good socialists, they've offered absolutely nothing in return to the city that made them millionaires and moved Bush from the "loser" to the "winner" column. Even as President, Bush is taking advantage of rich guy tax breaks, handing federal money to his crooked cronies, and violating national and international laws on a daily basis.
For anyone with a lick of sense, those two inconsistencies ought to be enough to make folks think twice about putting someone like GeeWiz in charge of catching stray dogs. But not small town Americans. So the real question is why are these people so irrational?
Anyone who's lived in a small town knows the real problem facing rural America. The smart kids leave and the dumb ones stay. Even the dumb kids who stay know that they are living in a depressed fools' paradise. Because of the ag economy/ecology, the down-breeding has not just been a passive sport. I moved my family from western Kansas to western Texas to central Nebraska during the 1970s. Part of what chased us across the plains was the runoff of industrial agriculture. Literally.
Agriculture is one of the dirtiest industries in the world. In the mid-1970s, western Nebraska's water was so contaminated with nitrogen from irrigation fertilizers that the EPA was faced with the the decision to cut back industry's productivity or poison children. The government chose the poison and the allowed levels of nitrogen was raised to ten times the previous limit. Exceeding the previous limit was known to cause brain damage in small children and likely would cause unknown/unstudied harm to adults. So, over the last 30 years, just this one source of vicious pollution has been doing a job on the IQ of country folks. There is no shortage of harmful pollutants in the rural environment. Cities often dump their really toxic waste in the country, under the assumption that what the hicks don't know won't hurt them. Which is another reason why the smart kids get out of the country as quickly as possible. If they don't, they won't be smart or healthy for long.
Small towns have been down-breeding since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but the last 40 years have been incredibly hard on village IQs. For a few short moments, in the 1990s, telecommuting looked like the answer to the shrinking gene pool. When technical folks found that they could live anywhere and get their job done, small towns experienced a short revival in their quality of resident. It didn't last. The economy went bust and many telecommuters became tele-unemployed. When they did find jobs, they had to move back to the office and the city. When they didn't, it was because they were over-employed and under-skilled and that meant that they were the same kind of folks who were already living in the outback. Of course, many of the technical types discovered that rural existence is less than Mayberry-like long before the economy died. They discovered the pollution, the corruption, and the ignorance and learned that these faults are something the locals actively designed into rural life.
The rural economy is so bad that they've been exporting dumb-asses to the city for decades. Now, we have huge populations of inbred hillbillies surrounding urban areas, sticking the cities with the foolishness they've imported from the boondocks. Those areas are politely called suburbs, but the citizens would be more accurately called "urban hicks." They've brought the rural desire to pretend to independence while relying on state and federal handouts for survival. They've brought their provincial dependence on superstition and religion to urban government. Worst of all, they've continued their breeding practices which means that the stupid are having large families while intelligent citizens are having small families or avoiding reproduction altogether.
As if the degeneration of the species wasn't progressing fast enough, our immigration policies have been slanted toward increasing the importation of rural fools from all over the world. With a recession well into its fifth year and real unemployment heading toward the 1980s levels, you'd think that immigration might become a little more selective. You'd be disappointed. We're importing the world's menial laborers in record numbers. The one thing the Republicrats need most of all is a stupid electorate. The Heartland is doing its part to supply all the fools necessary to satisfy this demand.
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