Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: The stupidity of talking about stupidity

Skip to comments

Mike Peterson Published: December 22, 2015 1 minute 1 comment

Tom Tomorrow is out with Part One of his year-end wrap-up comic, of which this is only the top two of a five-tier cake. You should go here to read the rest.

He suggests there that the flood of stupidity is getting hard to encapsulate in two 20-panel comics and I agree. Years ago, O Best Beloved, Esquire Magazine had a fun annual wrap-up, a collection of single-paragraph items that combined politics and general dumbass events, punctuated with then-President Nixon and the caption "Why is this man smiling?"

Today, you'd have to do an entire issue if you wanted to include the stupidity that matters and still have room for the dumb-crook, bizarre-mishap and animal-in-the-wrong-place stories. 

I don't think people are any more stupid than they ever were, but really stupid people were once not only voiceless but at risk of being mocked. Today, they've not only got the Internet but a flood of eager exploiters who have elevated the thimble-rigs and medicine shows that once ended with tar-and-feathers into million-dollar mainstream entertainment.

Jen Sorensen at least provides a little humor at the expense of the clueless, and she's certainly on-target, though this is a mere touch-and-go landing on the topic of people who don't get it.

One of the sad casualties of the modern age is the New England Town Meeting, in which residents would go through the entire town budget line by line and vote each item up or down. I've seen town meetings where someone would rise to question a budget item and the town manager or the highway commissioner or whoever's bailiwick it was would explain things and everyone would agree.

Or the town official would admit that they could get by with a little less and they'd all agree to that. Either way, it was an open dialogue.

For instance, one year an item came up on the budget for Phillips, Maine, of a couple of hundreds dollars for a homeless shelter in Portland, which is about 100 miles away.

Someone asked why the item was there, and a board member said it was a request for partial reimbursement for a Phillips native who had stayed at the shelter. There was a little murmuring in the crowd of people saying who it surely must have been, poor soul, and the item was approved.

Another time, at Chesterville, there was an item of about $1500 — I forget what for — that got strong questioning because the previous year it had been in the low three-figures.

There was an explanation for the leap, but people were still clearly unhappy, until the public works superintendant spoke up and suggested that he had been collecting money for a few years for truck replacement and could shift some of that over to cover the new expense, if someone would make the motion from the floor.

Which they did, which people agreed to, and then they approved the amended budget item.

But schools and businesses used to close on Town Meeting Day, and then they didn't. Too inefficient.

The meetings were moved to evenings and weekends and then people complained because some of them worked at those times, too, and a lot of towns have changed to discussing the budget at meetings but then having the whole thing approved by balloting throughout a day.

This is more fair, because then people can come in and vote anytime they want on a budget that they know absolutely nothing about, up or down, no compromises.

This aside from the fact that, in Town Meeting, they have to raise their hand on most items, which means we all know who opposes supporting Meals on Wheels or making a safer crossing at the elementary school.

Ignorant and selfish. A fine, efficient and eminently more fair combination.

Finally, Matt Wuerker offers a combination greeting card and bit of advice: Shut off the toxicity and mellow out for a bit.

Somebody was arguing the other day that you shouldn't unfriend Trump fans who post bigotry on Facebook because you are walking away from engagement, to which I have to ask "What engagement?"

People who want to believe untruths are not going to be dissuaded by facts or logic, as this On the Media piece indicates, while "stupid bigot" is a tautology, and so surrounding yourself with willfully ignorant, hateful people simply makes your life unpleasant without in any possible way improving the universe.

Consider the evidence: Various cartoonists have commented on the fact that Donald Trump, who appeals to the most flag-waving of American jingoists, has aligned himself with Vladimir Putin.

The problem is that this partnership is so astonishingly illogical that you can't make it look any more bizarre than it is, and yet so uncritically accepted by the True Believers that you can't hope to say anything that will change anyone's mind.

Personally, I welcome it, because I've been waiting some 40 years to be able to say, "If you don't like the way we do things here, why don't you move to Russia?"

Meanwhile, however, I'm going to do my best to avoid unpleasant company for the next little while, and I suggest you do the same.

Don't worry: Stupidity and evil aren't going anywhere.

Now here's your moment of holiday cheer:

I've been posting this on the winter solstice each year, and here it is again. 

If you don't need it, share it with someone who might.