Fool’s Parade

In the land of the blind, anyone who claims to see gets good poll numbers.

By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

06/17/03

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/fools.htm

Just how dumb are right wingers, anyway?

Remember back to April, when after weeks of administration propaganda, over half the American public believed that some or all of the hijackers on 9/11 were Iraqis? Granted, some of that was because el Presidente and his henchmen are a bunch of sleazy, morally bankrupt two-bit con men who, while never actually claiming that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, mentioned it in conjunction with Iraq whenever they could (Putsch, in that strange parody of a news conference in the days prior to the rape of Iraq, mentioned 9/11 six times, apropos of nothing), and made broad, if unverified statements like "Saddam supports terrorists."

Given a sleazy and dishonest administration spouting mendacious bilge like that, it’s easy to see that some Americans might have gotten a little confused on the matter. If we all started mentioning Charlie Manson whenever we mentioned Putsch’s reelection bid, after a while people would conclude that Putsch and Charlie Mansion have something in common other than general moral character. In fact, only 17% of Americans knew the correct answer to the question, "How many of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis?"

But of course, the main problem with the "50% percent think Iraqis were involved in 9/11" noise is that it shows that an awful lot of people willing to run their mouths to pollsters are a) absymally ignorant and b) profoundly stupid.

Well, we all knew that the backbone of Republican support are ignorant and stupid people wh are easily led by their noses.

That a percentage of the population consists of ignorant morons is hardly unique to America, or even abnormally high. Intelligence and acumen are both bell-shaped curves, two that intersect fairly well, and all countries have them.

In honest democracies, elected officials work around them, mindful of their interests but realizing that there would only be a narrow set of conditions under which they might be of real value to society; as cannon fodder in a war, perhaps, and as the drones of society. Any politician who tries to capitalize on this easily led and easily swayed segment of the population is looked down upon as a demagogue, and considered dangerous to a free society.

In America, the demagogues, who insist that they are the true elected government of the land, call such followers conservatives in order to dress up ignorant reactionaryism and any sort of coherent political stance, and claim that they are the true husbands of the flag and the faith. Just as every tin-horn dictator has done with the unwashed rabble since time immemorial.

What percentage of Americans are too frigging stupid to wipe their asses, politically speaking?

A poll, conducted by the International Policy Attitudes group at the University of Maryland and reported upon by Frank Davies of Knight-Ridder, gives solid evidence that between 22 and 33% of voters are so stupid they would believe dinosaurs still walked the earth if Putsch started mentioning dinosaurs whenever he mentioned Democrats.

According to this poll, 33% of respondents believe that weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have, in fact, been found. And 22% of respondents were of the belief that said weapons were used against American troops during the course of the American invasion.

It says something that Davies felt obliged to mention in his article that no such weapons have been found, and that certainly none were used by Iraq during the invasion.

Hell, between a fifth and a third of the population are stupid enough to require such a warning.

Of course, none of them are going to be reading Davies’ piece. Folks like that don’t read newspapers. "Close cover before striking" is their idea of a literary adventure. They base moral decisions that result in the deaths of thousands on something someone who watches faux news mentioned in passing.

Of course, the administration has been working hard to create some confusion on the matter of whether weapons of mass destruction. Pentagon clowns trumpeted the finding of such weapons every time a trailer or vacuum cleaner or bag of medical waste turned up. The First Idiot declared in Europe last week, "Weapons of mass destruction have been found" a lie so profound that the servile American media, always willing to cover up for the national embarrassment, pretended to accept Dirty Ari’s nonsensical explanation that el presidente meant, of course, that "weapons of mass destruction PROGRAMS" had been found.

Ah. Nope, George. The boys ain’t found none of that, neither. Of course, they’ve been distracted, trying to avoid getting their asses shot off by the locals, who are grateful that we freed them all from Saddam.

And of course, the trash right media, Rush and faux and all of them, are blaring the "discovery" of WMDs each time some idiot colonel says he thinks the boys have found something, and whispering their retractions when it comes to light that what they found wasn’t sarin or VX, but was just a container of yoghurt that was past its expiration date.

Now, an astute reader might note that 22-33% of the population might really be this stupid, but did that mean that they were necessarily right wingers?

The trash right media insists that all liberals are asking where the WMDs are just to embarrass Putsch, and if the man didn’t have the morals and manners of a sewer rat, he might even be embarrassed by such a question. After all, we slaughtered a whole bunch of people because Putsch told us those WMDs were an immediate danger to us. The poll noted that virtually all of the 33% were pro-war, and that they were heavily Republican in registration.

So yeah, these morons were mostly right wingers. Probably at least nine out of ten.

The poll concluded that the main problem was that this bonehead contingent of the population paid scant attention to the news. This seems a reasonable assumption. You have 22% of people who think that Saddam employed weapons of mass destruction against US troops just six weeks ago, but don’t find it curious that faux news didn’t mention the tens of thousands of casualties such an attack would cause. Silly faux; they were so busy covering the Lani Peterson case they forgot to mention that 50,000 American troops were incinerated in a nuclear fireball. But hey, these things HAPPEN, you know?

It’s a sad commentary on humanity that there are people that stupid and that ignorant willing to make fools of themselves by insisting that their ignorance is apt political content for polls. It’s even sadder that most are that way willingly, that it is laziness, rather than mental retardation, that made them what they are today.

But it’s evil, disgraceful and frightening that this administration regards such fools as the backbone of their support. And it says more about the vicious little clown in the White House than just about anything else.

Even morons need a lead moron.

And tinhorn dictators have always been willing to lead a parade of fools.