Flooding the Zone
Tonight, our president is disregarding virtually every recommendation put forth by his own health protection agency to hold a rally. I’d be tempted to call anyone willing to crowd into a packed arena with a hoard of maskless science-deniers “stupid” but I’ve been castigated for that before. Regardless of what thought you’re expressing, there’s no lack of internet scolds who will inform you that you’re expressing it the wrong way. I get it, condensing a human being down to their intelligence is reductive and often trivial. And, quite honestly, I’m far from brilliant. I’ve said, “I’m not smart, I just take good notes,” often enough that it’s the catchphrase that will likely haunt me to my grave. Admittedly, it’s an attempt at a pithy one-liner, but I’m somewhat sincere. In my adult life, what I’ve lacked in knowledge, I’ve taken great pains in exploring through rigorous research. It’s a routine I started in college and, while it sometimes sends me down byzantine rabbit holes of information—much of which I forget—it’s proven to be a valuable habit. So I suppose what I mean by “stupid” is intellectually lazy. And, holy shit, is intellectual laziness having its day.
The moment I heard the slogan of our current state of sloth uttered out loud was probably in the middle of a dispute with a family member back in the late 80s. I was finishing aforementioned “college” (two years at a community college in northern Idaho and two at a small art school in Connecticut) and I was gradually morphing from the high school C-student into an individual that had finally discovered the mysterious joy of learning. Yes, I was insufferable, I’ll cop to it. We were in the midst of another of our ever-multiplying political arguments and I challenged one of his biases with a well-regarded fact. He immediately reframed the argument to challenge my source with an everybody-has-an-opinion maneuver. The exchange ended when he proclaimed, “I used to have an open mind but now, with a job and a mortgage and raising a child, I don’t have time anymore.” There’s really no way to rebut that, and I guess that’s the point. He was already a Rush Limbaugh fan, taking comfort in the constant flood of taunts, distortion, and arrogance from, who at the time, was regarded as not much more than a Morton Downey Jr. knock-off. The next decade, when Fox News was birthed into this world by twin goblins Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, their “news coverage” fit neatly into his preconceived view of the world and it satisfied that confirmation bias sweet spot with perfectly executed precision. It’s the ideal coping mechanism to elude a fractured, post-modern landscape of discordant messages.
Which brings us to today, as they say in overwrought Medium essays. The electoral college has elected a president that not only encourages this laziness but feeds it generously. Conspiracy theories, that years ago would be scoffed at, are now amplified by the president, his administration, and his grotesque progeny. The parallel universes cultivated and nurtured inside the minds of so many of his supporters have deformed into a cult-like atavism. This summer has so far been peppered with instances of AR-15-clutching imbeciles all over rural America convinced that George Soros is about to send busses of black-clad Antifa operatives into their communities, often with the tacit approval of local law enforcement. If we still lived in a rational world, where satire existed as escape and not as routine existence, I’d put my time and effort into scripting an updated remake of The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! but this ceased to be funny four years ago. You can’t make amusing characters out of these puerile bullies. They’re shitty people. I know them. I grew up around them, went to school with them, at a time, was friendly with some of them (possibly literally, but that can wait for a future blog post). In many cases, their very ignorance is a point of pride… not something that I’d look for in a patriot, or for that matter, a citizen.
So no one is sure what will happen tonight. What we can all count on is more cases of COVID-19 in Tulsa in two weeks and more deranged stupidity, totally disconnected from facts or logic, floating around in the ether of information. Scold away.