COVID19: Making America dull-witted & ignorant, but don’t say “stupid”.
I have to write at how dismayed I am with a number of people I have known on and off social media. Some for a long period of time, others for just a few months. Granted, not all my friends emerged in social media. However, as this has become the most convenient manner of staying in touch and holding discussions, let’s start there.
It’s easy, as I have done, to deem some of them intellectually deficient, shockingly ignorant, incredibly dull-witted, politically dangerous and yes, even stupid. Despite what you might think I abhor using that word, and go to great lengths avoiding it. I’ve slipped in recent days, much to the spiritual chagrin of my dearly loved and long departed Granny Berliner, who drilled into me how rude it was to use that word.
However, were she alive today, I believe even she, in her infinite wisdom, would have slipped more than once at what is happening in America.
And while I would like to believe this is all due to the COVID19 pandemic, I certainly know better. As I believe, you do as well.
This didn’t happen overnight. It’s been the creeping disease that has enveloped friends, family, cohorts, colleagues, people we don’t know and never wanted to, those we thought once could have been voices of reason.
We have not s0 quietly transformed into a nation of addled-minded, politically destructive, common sense lacking and often dangerous individuals. The most obvious takeaway from this is perhaps the greatest threat to our immediate future, and that of future generations.
There is simply no turning back for these people. None. No amount of discussion, presentation of facts, textual or oral bellowing will change their minds.
Honestly, we have to stop trying.
You heard me. Stop trying. Cease engaging them in senseless, tiresome, time wasting boisterous battles. Sure, present an opposing point of view, but make it stick one time and then walk away.
You, I, no one of common sense will change their minds. They are locked in step with their politically based decisions. Every single one of them I have encountered over the past several years, and certainly here in the last few days, share certain traits.
They believe, without question, anything they are fed that slams against the facts of COVID19. This includes half-baked, poorly or little trained, alleged “doctors” presenting prepared remarks and shoveled forth onto global media by an alleged news organization that has long dealt in propaganda, conspiracy theories, and provable lies. They do so as a tight knit political group, almost exclusively conservative, Trump following, hard core Republican and thus despising anything they deem liberal, Democratic, or counter productive to what they perceive as fact. Of course, it’s not. Their angle is overflowing with fraud, lies, propaganda, and an unwavering belief no one could be as correct as they are.
Certainly, that way of thinking is not exclusively conservative. It would be another flat out lie to say that many liberals are not also set in their ways and refusing to see any other side. We’re so divisively split along these lines, I honestly do not see us coming together as a nation for the remainder of my life.
The difference here, in this instance, is the wanton carelessness toward everyone around them. COVID19 is a killer to some, to others it will be the watermark of their lives where they can look back and find the exact moment their physical lives changed forever. Where their lungs stopped working to full capacity. Where they were forced to stop working out or having those simple walks with their dogs or kids. Where their joints began to ache and never stopped. Where they lost a portion of their mental capacity to just form certain cogent phrases. Where because of either their carelessness, or in most case that of someone else, a life that held so much promise was damaged.
Forever.
Thus, those who so blindly and casually believe in every little slice of lie they are fed, as in the case of the alleged doctors and their badly staged, phony “news conference” announcing their findings and opinions about the virus, all of which were based on lies and misinformation that has been discounted literally hundreds and thousands of times, perhaps need more to be pitied and removed from any rational discourse. They offer nothing intellectually stimulating nor factually possible. They are, in every sense of the concept, necessary pariahs of current society. As such, they must be ignored at every opportunity.
COVID19 is yet again another hard-earned lesson in who we are, who we should avoid, and who we could be if only the stain of political bias had not infected so many souls. Where once there were smart, clear-headed, rational individuals relying on common sense, there now stand, sit for the most part as they bang out laughable commentary on social media, those who we must fear are beyond saving. Certainly, they should be beyond our desire to change.
Time wasted is time that is never recovered. The time has thus truly arrived to seek higher forms of discussion and debate.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. once intoned, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”.
As I have said many times, “Common sense is far less common that we might believe”.
The time has come to ignore the buffoons and blowhards, especially those who place the lives of others in danger with their dull-witted diatribes.
However, keep track of who they are and the manure they spread. Remember the stench, and leave them to their mental excremental piles.
Seek and be part of a better smelling air of truth and actual concern for yourself, your family, and the world around us. Only in this fashion will we survive the virus, and hopefully emerge as better people and a more intelligent America.
(Editors note: The original commentary along with others are available for viewing at https://edberliner.com)