America has gone Stupid

Two weeks and one day ago we returned from “The Trip,” twenty days on the road of not listening to news, if you can call it that, not reading The New York Times or the Washington Post, not listening to CNN’s Headline News (HLN) or Anderson 360 or MSNBC or ABC News or Rachel Maddow (our hometown gal), and not listening to The Daily Show or Colbert Report. I don’t listen to Fox even when I’m home, so it’s excluded and I don’t miss it. On reflection, it was glorious; peace of mind that caught me by surprise. Alas, now that I’m back, I’m subjected again to the daily inundation of misinformation. And, while I was gone, America went stupid.

What happened? Well, for one thing Congress went on vacation, its “August Recess,” where each member presumably returns to their constituency to “get an update.” Ha! What they faced, instead, were unruly mobs yelling questions, threatening, bullying, and otherwise disrupting the meetings that is intended as two-way transfer of knowledge. But, how can one have a transfer of knowledge when one side of the transaction is stupid? One lady’s sign said, “Keep Government out of my Medicare.” Another said, “I don’t have healthcare and I don’t want the government to give it to me.” A man asked Senator Specter, “how do you read a 1,000 page healthcare bill?” then the mob wouldn’t let the Senator answer the question. A woman shouted, “Don’t kill old people,” referring to the myth circulating that the healthcare bill provides for euthanasia of the elderly. And, to top it off, Sarah Palin says, “Government healthcare could kill her Downs Syndrome baby.” Are you kidding me? Where do these people come from?

I can answer all the signs, statements and questions, but it wouldn’t help. Stupid is an incurable disease. But, I’ll do it anyway:

• Medicare is a government healthcare program.
• The proposed healthcare reform bill is not to “give” it to you, but to provide you with a less expensive option than the healthcare industry will and to force the healthcare “rip-off” insurance industry to become efficient.
• You read a 1,000 page bill in a short time by separating it into logical pieces, passing each section to an intelligent staff for reading, and then discussing and re-reading relevant parts of the bill that may present problems for the constituency or people at large.
• The Healthcare Reform Bill does not provide for killing “old people” nor will it kill Palin’s Downs Syndrome child. Don’t be ridiculous. It will provide better options of “choice” for end of life decisions an elderly person may desire. I will also provide better options for caring for a Downs Syndrome child, or any other special needs child for people who don’t have Sarah Palin’s wealth (wealth = money, for people who don’t know what “wealth” means).

Don’t be stupid.

I have to agree with Bill Maher’s New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart People. For those who don’t know what “≠” stands for, it is “not equal.” Bill says American people are too stupid to “update” congress on their, “the peoples',” real needs. Congress, Bill says, should do what’s right and ignore “the people.” I couldn’t agree more, but when you look at Congress members like Boehner, McConnell, Braun (R-GA) and all the other Republicans, you really don’t see a single member worth his/her salt representing “what’s good” for the country. All you see and hear from these people is an agenda to disrupt, delay and defeat good changes for America and the sole objective of their agenda is to regain power, nothing more. They would sacrifice millions of Americans for their own purposes.

While I don’t always like their language, my favorite comedians are Bill Maher, Ron White, Lewis Black and John Caparulo, not necessarily in that order. They all have one thing in common; their humor is “the irony of stupid.” Ron White sums it all up; “you can’t fix stupid.” So, I’ll listen to their profanity because seeing America go stupid leaves me speechless and the only phrase I can think of that describes America today is “f**ked up.” And it can’t be fixed.

Dave

P.S. Would you believe that as speechless as I am, I still can’t put the “uc” in the word? Sheesh. How the hell do you pronounce “f**k” anyway? fasteriskk? A new word.