Stupid is why
Explains everything
Jeffrey Denny
Liberal discomfort with meritocracy has backfired.
We can’t judge anyone for anything anymore.
Like when people are downright stupid. It’s not their fault. So it’s hateful to call stupids stupid.
But since hateful stupids have so much political power now, and democracy is all about holding power accountable, let’s have at it:
1. Stupid is why Fox News fans — “real Americans” — swallow outright lies fed by wealthy, educated, privileged “personalities” for money. Even after Fox was exposed for knowingly lying as a business decision to sucker fans. Stupid says Fox lying is ok because the mainstream media lies more.
2. Stupid is why Fox has been the #1 cable news network for seven years straight, Tucker Carlson is the #1 “personality,” and “Gutfeld!” is the “king of late night” (when it comes on at 8–9 pm in Red States).
3. Stupid doesn’t get that, by definition, as consistently #1, Fox IS the mainstream media. And that Fox reached #1 by declaring it’s the only media telling the truth while its competition is lying. Like Coke saying Pepsi contains rat hairs.
4. Stupid is why Marjorie Taylor Greene.
5. Stupid is why House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is roped and hog-tied by the likes of Greene.
6. Stupid is why Fox, the right-wing media, and Republicans harp incessantly on “wokism,” “cancel culture,” “grooming” and Socialism — stupid is addicted to fake issues and outrage.
7. Stupid is why Republicans don’t need a real actionable policy agenda to make America greater beyond vague boilerplate talking points or attacks on Democrats. Policymaking is too complicated for stupid to understand.
8. Stupid hates government and taxes while demanding and taking the most from government and paying the least in taxes.
9. Stupid is why the majority of Republicans still believe Trump was robbed of reelection, the violent J6 coup attempt was trumped up, and Trump didn’t incite insurrection and should be reelected.
10. Stupid is why Matt Schlapp, the head of the Conservative Political Action Conference — this year headlining Trump and election liars Mike Lindell and Kari Lake — can deny, straight-faced, that multiple Republican sources confirmed that he sexually assaulted a GOP campaign aide — a young man.
This while conservatives attack LGBTQ+ rights and respect as “wokism.” And claim Democrats are destroying family values (Schlapp is married to Mercedes Schlapp, a former Trump White House aide and CPAC consultant). He blamed The Washington Post, which broke the story, for trying to “silence a prominent conservative voice.”
11. Stupid is why bullies caught bullying play victim and win the support of stupid bullies.
12. Stupid is why Trump’s denial and mishandling of the Covid pandemic kept the virus spreading and caused 400,000 more Americans to needlessly die. Because stupid believed Trump and his amen media and internet troll chorus and refused to mask, distance and vax.
13. Stupid is why Scott “Dilbert” Adams accused Black Americans of being a “hate group” that White people should “get the hell away” from and stupid declared him a victim of cancel culture. (The bully-victim thing again.) Stupid is why White Supremacy, racism, antisemitism, and other hate are ascendant and normalized in MAGA circles.
14. Stupid is why America suffers a labor shortage in part because of stupid White hate for immigrants who are literally dying to do jobs that the stupid — many living on government handouts — won’t do.
15. Stupid is why America leads the world in gun ownership, concealed carry, gun deaths, and civilian mass shootings because stupid thinks their gun rights matter more than your safety.
16. Stupid are gun nuts who become Constitutional scholars — or re-bleat NRA talking points — when it comes to interpreting the Second Amendment.
Stupid also loves the 2008 Supreme Court’s conservative District of Columbia v. Heller decision that expanded the definition of “well-regulated militia” to include everyone — but ignores that Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the decision, explicitly excluded firearms like the military grade AR-15, the first choice of mass shooters who slaughter children.
17. Stupid believes library books and school curriculum that teach real American history and sensitivity to others are more dangerous to children than guns.
18. Stupid is why there’s book banning. And one book-banning group calls itself “Moms for Liberty” (headed by Tiffany Justice, real name). They bully teachers and librarians and incite the stupid to harass them.
19. Stupid is why the uneducated say the college educated are stupid, Socialist-indoctrinated “sheeple.”
20. Stupid is why Facebook posts with memes preening about independent thinking, meant to slander the college-educated, have thousands of likes and shares. And when you look at the profiles of the commenters, they say, “No education to show.”
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
