Roy has a catch over at Alicublog that defies excerpting. My head exploded three times while reading it.
The idea that we need to keep ourselves willfully stupid because liberalism might win a fair contest of wits does, however, go a long way towards to explaining this. And so much more.
myiq2xu
Ignorance and Apathy is the key to victory for the GOP – If the voters don’t know and don’t care, Chimpy can rule forever.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
Jen
Odysseus didn’t even stuff cotton in his ears, did he? I thought he had himself tied to the mast so he could hear their songs and the sailors put something in their ears.
Or am I just being all intellectual?
myiq2xu
Doughy Pantload is the kind of person that gives stupid a bad reputation.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
The Other Steve
I suppose. When you’ve got no ideas, they can always rely upon the old anti-intellectualism of Polpot and Mao.
Oh dear.
The Other Steve
Can we claim this to be reality based, considering it’s a fictional story?
myiq2xu
Doughboy should hang around with Forrest Gump so he could have someone to look up to as a mentor.
Of course Forrest wouldn’t fit in with today’s GOP:
He’s college educated, a war hero, earned his own money, and isn’t gay.
Zifnab
Wow. The party of literalist Bible Jesus-Talks-To-The-President, Global Warming denying, MLK-was-a-Republican, Mussolini-was-a-Democrat, snowflake baby, college-hating, obstructionists doesn’t like intelligent discussion? Gasp. I say again, gasp.
In the summer of 2003, when everyone was talking about the collapse of the Democratic Party and the bloody death of liberalism at the hands of Karl Rove Boy Genius, I don’t think I heard anyone in the Democratic Party talking about how it was such an abstract concept as ‘moral values’ or ‘intellectual discourse’ that was to blame.
How the conservative movement plans to pull itself out of this tailspin if “be more stupider” becomes their trademark slogan, I’ll never know. Talk about your appeal to ignorance.
RSA
Wow. Notice that Lee Harris is not talking about the kind of every day stupidity that allows you to be fooled by a conman (that’s not stupid enough to be an effective defense), but rather a much more comprehensive stupidity that prevents you from understanding that someone is trying to sell you something in the first place.
srv
After a week of holidays, I expect something a little deeper here to comment about.
TheFountainHead
Fascism, A How To:
Step 1: Put your economy in recession.
Step 2: Convince everyone that intellectuals and “thinkers” are dangerous.
Step 3: Remove Constitution.
Zifnab
Perhaps the root of Lee Harris’s complaint lies in the human understanding of language. If everyone was just too dumb to understand English, we wouldn’t have all the problems we suffer from under Liberal Intellectual Tyranny of the day.
4tehlulz
Fixed, and yes:
Punchy
Timmah, it’s the same reason they trash college profs as commie liberals, who dine on a steady diet of fetus milkshakes and sushi. If they can demonize “intelligence”, they can make their own relative stupidity look attractive. If they can discredit science people merely by pointing out their PhDs–as a handicap–make them illogical/irrational/irresponsible, then they’ve succeeded in eliminating a reality-based world.
Shorter: If I could succeed in convincing hot chicks that muscle and a full head of hair and a huge wang and a 7-figure income were all deleterious to their security and well-being, I’d be swimming in empty condom wrappers…
Zifnab
Your ideas intrigue me. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
TheFountainHead
Wow. That hit close to home. I think you just summed up High School.
myiq2xu
You need a new pool boy.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
Jen
As a solution for right-wing bloggers continually besieged by the intelligence of others, though, I very much prefer the original tied-to-the-mast version to the cotton in the ears revisionist version. You can still type with cotton in your ears, unfortunately.
myiq2xu
Not if it’s inserted on one side and extracted from the other.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
TheFountainHead
Fixed.
Face
Signed,
Typical Republican
Pb
Heh. TCS Daily now, is it? Yeah, they’re still full of crap…
Jake
Wow, using Odysseus as an example of stupidity vaults right over idiotic and straight to moronic. Maybe the author was afraid to show he understood the Odyssey because only pointy heads read stuff like that.
myiq2xu
He didn’t read the actual book, he just watched the cartoon version.
Reading books isn’t required at the “special” schools GOP geniuses attend.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
gypsy howell
I think he’s setting up the rationalization for the Huckabee nomination. This is clearly a winning platform for the “God Said It. I Believe It. That Settles It” crowd.
RSA
Here’s another bit from Harris’s essay:
What’s funny about this is that Harris’s view of conservative stupidity is no different from mine–he’s not describing some harmless strawman version of stupidity, in my mind. He just thinks it’s a good thing.
LiberalTarian
Bastards.
srv
The Odysseus comment is quite a laugh.
I keep waiting for GW’s speechwriters to insert more Graham Greene quotes into his speeches again. It’s like they’re trying to speak to us the same way they use evangelical code words.
RSA
There’s actually a better literary allusion for what Harris is talking about, I think. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates is going off to town when a bunch of his friends come up to him. They tell him he has to stay, and he says, “Couldn’t I persuade you to let me go?” They say, “Not if we don’t listen to you.” No stupidity involved.
demimondian
Odysseus is the cleverest of the Greeks at Troy, responsible for the underhanded Trojan Horse plot. He’s the very embodiment of the victory of cleverness over strength in the Iliad — mistrusted for being too clever but not wise. He’s the antithesis of what is being argued for here — if he’s the hero, then conservative stupidity is the ultimate villainy.
Incertus (Brian)
Odysseus didn’t even stuff cotton in his ears, did he? I thought he had himself tied to the mast so he could hear their songs and the sailors put something in their ears.
4tehlulz got the quote (which is more than I’d have done), but the interesting thing to me is the way the metaphor actually works. Lee Harris could have used the Odysseus example to show why it’s okay for Republican leaders to submit to the temptations of the world, because it helps protect their underlings. Instead, he used it as an argument for deliberate ignorance, which is understandable, given that it’s Lee Harris.
Jake
You call it a special school. The so-cons call it “home.”
Wait. You mean to say that Homer guy calls him “wily,” about five zillion times ‘coz he’s smart?? I thought he wuz talkin about that there coyote. /stupidfrightwingnumbnut
myiq2xu
Stupid is as stupid does – Forrest Gump
I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil – Molly Ivins
A mind is a terrible thing to waste, or not to have – Dan Quayle
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
Dreggas
The creation museum thought of this first with their “Don’t think, just believe” slogan which is exactly what the problem is. They always have and always will want to keep the populace dumb, it’s the only way they can maintain power.
Take NCLB. You can memorize things to pass tests but are you really LEARNING anything? If you have to memorize major dates in history to pass a test but don’t understand the meanings of those dates then you are, more than likely, doomed to repeat them.
The snake oil salesmen that the author of this article really alludes to are the “intellectual conservatives” or, more to the point religious con-men and corporate money interests that keep the sheep in line. Their wallets depend on you being dumb.
Welcome to reality folks, it’s not much different than the matrix, they want you dumb, ignorant but breathing so you can produce and work and die for them.
Sarcastro
Odysseus didn’t even stuff cotton in his ears, did he?
Nope, nor did his crew. Odysseus was lashed to the mast so he could hear the song (cursed intellectual curiosity!) and his crew put wax in their ears as cotton was a rare and costly substance in classical antiquity – imported from India – and probably unknown to the Helladic Greeks of the era of the Trojan War.
Oh well, it is a common mistake made by all truly stupid people.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
The spoofers are all kicking themselves right now for not coming up with this one. As usual, the imposters are merely pupils, mimicking moves learned at the feet of the genuine Masters of teh stoopid.
TenguPhule
You have to remember, we’re hampered by the fact that we’re not batshit insane.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
IOW, neo-feudalism, with a nice theocracy to buttress it. Gotta love the GOP. They’re stealing pages out of Clovis’ playbook.
As long as they don’t try to make clothing out of wax, it’s a mostly harmless error.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Yeah, but you at least have to be able to play the batshit insane on TV. Why not start a campaign to raze libraries and public schools to the ground? We can use taxpayer money to build lots of megachurches on the sites, after consecrating the unholy land.
Remember, burning pyres of books also makes a powerful statement about one’s lack of global warming fears.
srv
Why did Martin Luther want people reading again?
Krista
Fool. Actual stupidity only opens you up to exploitation and loss. I will admit that upon certain occasions, playing stupid can be the most expedient way to deal with certain people. But there is a big difference between playing stupid when the occasion warrants it and actually being stupid (not to mention being SO stupid that you actually trumpet your stupidity as a virtue.)
Jake
Or fly too close to the sun.
myiq2xu
I recall a quote from the 19th Century that went something like “Education leads to a discontented workforce.”
Sounds like a plan for the future. Out here in Big Smoggy,we had 16 straight years of GOP governators where we stopped building universities and concentrated on building prisons.
“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir.”
“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”
Scrooge was a GOP visonary, a man ahead of his time.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
Tsulagi
Okay, that was funny. I think I saw some guys trying that argument on NYE.
You’re doing it all wrong, Punchy. Think Republican. Think like one of those guys would at a Young Republicans gathering where they’re craving to mix their gene pools.
The bus tire around your middle? Reserve muscle to kick evildoer ass. Missing hair? Not missing, it’s kept in an undisclosed location to thwart the hair-loving beheading terrorists. The 7-figure income? You’re just one tax cut away from seeing it happen in your Taco Bell paycheck. Known truth. No evidence of a wang? Better, you’ve got a program for weapons of mass seduction.
See, it’s easier being Republican.
ThymeZone
Well, this is the crux of the matter. The conservative “movement” has never had a “heritage of ideas.” Taxes are bad, government is the problem, foreigners cause all the trouble. These aren’t exactly ideas, they are just conceits.
“All men are created equal” is an idea. “Defense of Marriage” is just cover for bigotry.
If these folks can’t tell a “heritage of ideas” from the empty shit that has characterized the imaginary “conservative movement,” then …. they deserve what they are probably going to get in 2008.
Viola Cella
“The creation museum thought of this first with their “Don’t think, just believe” slogan which is exactly what the problem is. They always have and always will want to keep the populace dumb, it’s the only way they can maintain power.”
“Fool. Actual stupidity only opens you up to exploitation and loss. I will admit that upon certain occasions, playing stupid can be the most expedient way to deal with certain people. But there is a big difference between playing stupid when the occasion warrants it and actually being stupid.”*
Here ya go:
http://buffalobeast.com/117/let_there_be_retards.htm
*Sorry, I don’t know how to do that there fancy block quote stuff – too stupid.
ThymeZone
Bquote: Just highlight the quote, and press the B-Quote button.
Embed a link: Highlight the text you want to use for the link, and press the Link button; paste in the link (url), click OK.
Voila!
myiq2xu
What do you call all those inspirations that occur after binging on Cheetos and red kool-aid 24/7?
Well Mr. Smartypants?
Jake
What is: More stuff to whine about?
I think this must be the hardest thing for the doughy warriors of the fRight. Assuming they have the power of introspection:
1. They love to scream about the forces of evil.
2. If they achieve utter victory over the forces of evil they’ll have nothing to scream about.
3. If they have nothing to scream about, they’ll be unhappy.
Plus, after the last librulimmiislahomo was hunted down and shot, people like Flush Limpbags would have to get real jobs.
Zifnab
We have to protect marriage for teh gheys! Because if gay people get married, married people will turn gay! Also, I’ve got this nice bridge for sale…
I will certainly give conservatives points for the idea of “Defense of Marriage”, just as I give Luntz, Gingrich, and company points for wordsmithing and fearmongering their way into power. Rounding large numbers of poor, disenfranchised people up and throwing them in prisons or demonizing them and tossing them out of the country takes a certain degree of thought to implement and sell to the masses, especially the poor and disenfranchised who serve to benefit least. Coming up with new and inventive ways to justify giving rich people tax cuts takes a certain amount of genius, I’ll admit.
The problem with conservatives and their ideas are that they are one-sided, kleptocratic, and generally bad for the at-large population. The geniuses who usually come up with pitch-slogans and catchy selling songs aren’t finding the purchase they found back in 94 or 2000, so – in classic conservative fashion – they’re blaming people for not being gullible enough.
Honestly, one could argue that Democrats haven’t come up with any “new” ideas in a while. Universal Health Care has been around for decades. Revitalizing public education, enforcing civil rights, and promoting clean technology aren’t revolutionary concepts Al Gore invented in the off season. These old ideas just happen to be better than the “new” ideas of the conservatives involving privatized education, legalized racism, and giant handouts to industries wracked by the costs of their crappy and defunct hardware.
ThymeZone
Loose, orange stools, I think.
Krista
Thanks for the link, Viola. That was hysterical.
Jake
The problem with Protect Married Zygotes From Ghey Abortionists is the GOP promised a concrete result in the form of a Constitutional amendment and then failed to deliver. It is one thing to say “We’ll get tough on crime,” because to the target audience “Tough on crime,” means “We’ll lock up brown people who live in the Big City.” There’s no way for the knuckledragger in BFE, KY to measure the success of the Tough on Crime promise and he doesn’t really care.
Worse, they used DOMA to attract bunch of exceedingly inflexible people (at least in some regards, fun with wet suits not included), who saw the failure to deliver as much more than a broken campaign promise, it was an offense to the Lowerd. Now the So/Theo-Cons all singing “Won’t get fooled again,” and rooting for something like Huckabee, which is freaking out the Bu-Cons because they have just enough sense to realize the majority of people really don’t want to go there but they don’t have any real bait to make them flock to someone like Rudi or Mitt.
HyperIon
my favorite line from the linked article: diddly-shit demi-ideas
i’m gonna use it the next time Demi annoys me.
myiq2xu
If they really want to stop gay sex they should be in favor of gay marriage.
Any married man will tell you that the best way to stop a woman from having sex is to marry her.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
Face
Someone needs to remind Thymezone that when he thinks he’s posting at 10am, that many of us in the Midwest are busy eating lunch, and it’s this kind of snark that makes me nearly ralph.
myiq2xu
He’s just trying to help y’all with those resolutions to lose weight.
Besides, you should be blogging on the clock, not during your break. What kind of employee are you?
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
ThymeZone
This is what we call “losing your Cheetos.”
:)
Dan
Interestingly enough, there’s another sort of person who doesn’t get conned easily: one with a sense of personal justice. Most cons are based on the idea that the mark is “getting away with” something, or that they’ve got an “inside track” on something bigger, or that the money’s going toward a “sure thing.” Basic notions of fair play tend to make a person less vulnerable.
Nonetheless, if you can’t have integrity, you might as well have stupidity.
myiq2xu
Which is about the closest the Doughy Pantloads will ever get to losing their cherries.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
Z
So true… his article was a sad, sad thing. There IS an intelligent argument for being cautious in modifying traditional ways of doing things. He danced around it a little with the references to the hygene rules in Leviticus, but then he totally screws it up by arguing ignorance and submission to authority is best. In the end, he sounds like a cross between a post-modernist(reason = bad, there are other ways ways of ‘knowing’ things) and an authoritarian(culture is the authority…SUBMIT), which is completely insane.
The intelligent argument is that cultures evolve the way they do for good reasons. Cultural prohibitions exist because they help people survive and thrive. We may think we fully understand all the consequences that occur when we remove a cultural prohibition, but that isn’t always true. Sometimes there are unanticipated negative consequences. But the solution to that is to think HARDER and to make changes slowly, not to stop thinking altogether. How pathetic.
Chris Johnson
Dare I say that this Lee Harris notion seems like a really stupid idea? :D
Chris Johnson
To be more specific, if it’s actually a very smart idea to be stupid because only that produces good results, well all righty then, we’ll plead common sense.
But if it’s actually a really stupid idea to be stupid, what then? Where is your common sense now?
myiq2xu
Common sense isn’t that common – Lazarus Long
Anne Laurie
At last, Commander Codpiece finds the perfect motto for his Preznidential Lie-berry.
Tim (the other one)
Stupid printing press.
Dreggas
And Phalus-orangeus…
rachel
Dare to be stupid!
myiq2xu
G-Dub will be opening a bookstore instead of a library, in keeping with his philosophy that everything should be for sale.
merlallen
All I can say it’s I’m glad I work alone. I laughed all the way through that story, thanks Viola.
dj spellchecka
if being ignorant is the best way to not get conned, how come all the ads at, say, newsmax are from con artists looking for rubes?