Idiocracy has arrived
Sheila Jackson-Lee: “The Moon is made up
mostly of gases!””
Over the last few days the conservative press has been having a field day making justifiable fun of a number of Democrats and leftists for exhibiting incredible scientifict ignorance, an ignorance so profound as to be mind-boggling.
First, after the unusual 4.8 magnitude earthquake centered in New Jersey on April 5th, a Green Party senate candidate in New Jersey, Christina Amira Khalil, immediately tweeted, “I experienced my first earthquake in NJ. We never get earthquakes. The climate crisis is real.” The mocking on X was so great she quickly deleted the tweet.
Then, in an incredibly embarrassing segment of the television show, The View, one host, Sunny Hostin, showed off her complete lack of any scientific knowledge when she claimed that the earthquake, the solar eclipse, and even the normal arrival of the cicadas every seventeen years (which she thought happened every hundred-plus years) was evidence that climate change was real.
Finally, to top off this stream of utter empty-headiness, during an eclipse event in Texas, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee gave a speech of such stunning incompetency and lack of knowledge you have to wonder how she can figure out how to put on her clothes each day. This quote has been most often used to ridicule her:
Now those [the Sun and Moon] provide unique light and energy so that you have the energy of the moon at night, and sometimes you’ve heard the word full moon, sometimes you need to take the opportunity just to come out and see a full moon is that complete rounded circle, which is made up mostly of gases. And that’s why the question — the question is why, or how could we as humans live on the moon? The gas is such that we could do that. The sun is a mighty powerful heat, and it’s almost impossible to go near the sun. The moon is more manageable.”
It is worth reading her entire speech, however, in order to get the full flavor of her lack of knowledge or her incomprehension of some of the most basic scientific facts. For example, later she says “Today will be the closest distance that the moon has ever been in the last 20 years. Which means, that’s why they will shut the light down because they will be close to the Earth.” Then she adds, “That the solar system is bigger than us, though there are solar systems and there are systems that are smaller than the Earth.”
I doubt she has the slightest understanding of any of this.
Though all of these idiots are leftists or Democrats, and the right has had a lot of fun making mincemeat of them over their dumbness, the problem really isn’t confined to the left. For example, consider the high number of local governments, controlled by both parties, that declared states of emergency because of the eclipse, fearing panic and car accidents. These government officials feared they would not be able to handle the large number of tourists, nor would people know what to do when the eclipse occurred.
Or as Chicken Little screamed, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
That such people hold important positions in our political and cultural world, and still hold those positions after exhibiting such foolishness, speaks very ill of our entire society, not just those on the left.
Nor is these failures seen only in the political or entertainment world. The inability to think critically or with forthright intellectual honesty is now seen everywhere. For example, this week the American Library Association (ALA) released its list of what it considers the “ten most challenged” book titles in 2023, books it considered banned or censored. The problem was that more than half the books were those advocating the queer lifestyle, and the challenges to them almost all came from parents who did not want their little kids exposed to such porn in their schools. No books were banned, parents simply wanted the books out of elementary school libraries.
Emily Drabinski, president of the ALA and proudly
Marxist and queer
And yet, the head of the ALA was unable to recognize this very important and completely legitimate distinction.
“In looking at the titles of the most challenged books from last year, it’s obvious that the pressure groups are targeting books about LGBTQIA+ people and people of color,” American Library Association President Emily Drabinski said in a statement accompanying the list. “We are fighting for the freedom to choose what you want to read,” Drabinski added. “Shining a light on the harmful workings of these pressure groups is one of the actions we must take to protect our right to read.”
For Drabinski, who is a proud advocate of Marxism and the queer agenda, any disagreement is censorship, blunt and simple. It is impossible for her to analyze any dissent with any nuance.
And yet, she is the elected head of the foremost organization representing the nation’s libraries. What does that tell us about the nation’s librarians, and their ability to think critically or with intellectual honesty?
Then there was the long op-ed published yesterday by a senior business editor at NPR, Uri Berliner. He has been at his job there for 25 years, but he now considers the place a failure as a news organization, close-minded and unable to report the news with any competence.
An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.
To conservatives he states the obvious: NPR has become entirely focused on reporting only news that fits a very narrow and extreme leftist viewpoint, and as a result, it is now listened to by only a very small segment of Americans. Everyone else has been driven away by its partisan intellectual dishonesty.
He cites for examples NPR’s reporting on the Trump-Russian collusion, the Hunter Biden laptop, and the origin of the COVID virus. In all three cases the network accepted the accusations of the left without question: Trump won his election by working with the Russians, the laptop was disinformation and a fraud, and anyone who said COVID came from a lab was a wild conspiracy theorist who should be ignored.
Yet, when all three of these accusations turned to be wrong (there was no collusion, the labtop was real, and COVID almost certainly came from a Chinese lab in Wuhan), NPR refused to admit error and correct its reporting. Instead, it made believe it never happened, reinforcing this denial by generally refusing to cover the scoops that proved its reporting was wrong.
Once again, these examples are on the left, but once again, there are no consequences. Being intellectually dishonest to a point of absurdity, in a way that is plainly obvious, carries no penalty. If you get into a position of power today in America, you can pretty much say or do anything, with little fear of retribution.
From Idiocracy: “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.
It’s got electrolytes!”
And without consequence, this ignorance and arrogance of the ignorant will only grow. If you are wrong you need others to tell you bluntly that you are, and you need to be forced to listen, or else go elsewhere because of your inability to correct youself. This is how you teach people the necessary humbleness required for them to improve themselves.
Instead, our culture now teaches them to punish anyone who criticizes them. In such an atmosphere, our culture can only become even more ignorant and foolish at all levels, across the entire political spectrum.
Unless something changes very soon, this elegant, prosperous, but very complex technological society is going to collapse. It will become like the moronic society of the movie Idiocracy, where stupidity rules and critical thinking is entirely impossible.
If we aren’t already living in Idiocracy already.
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In 2010 Georgia Representative Hank Johnson asked a high-ranking Officer, in complete seriousness, if the addition of more troops to the base on the island might cause the island to tip over. The Officer responded that they did not anticipate that being a problem. An adroit understatement.
At the end of his article, Berliner still stands up for NPR and claims that defunding is not the answer because that will not change NPR. Probably true, but they will not be able to use my money to spread their propaganda.
Patrick Henry: The response to Berliner’s op-ed by NPR management today says all funding should cease immediately. See this article:
After Being Completely Exposed by Its Own Editor, NPR Responds in the Worst Possible Fashion
Speaking of propaganda, you may be interested in commenting on how a young leftist at Menlo Atherton high school on the San Francisco Peninsula was able to get the all too willing YouTube and Vimeo to pull a preview of a film by Eli Steele on antisemitism at the school. Thanks to free speech Advocate Elon Musk, Steele has been able to post the video on X. It is easy to find if you do a search on “Eli steele rumble.”
And Lee graduated from Yale University.
Let that sink in.
How could you live in the USA and not know about cicadas?
I have even lived through the cricket invasions in Texas.
Swarms so large and thick they changed the exhaust color of the jet engines they go sucked into. They were so thick on the tarmac that we could slide our trucks sideways on them.
I believe ALA President Emily Drabinski was misquoted. Here, I’ll fix it.
“We are fighting for the power to choose what you read,”
Declaring a state of emergency during the eclipse was a pretty good idea. I lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming during the last total eclipse. Somewhere between 1-2 million people flooded into Wyoming from Colorado to watch the eclipse. Interstate 25 southbound turned into a 150 mile long parking lot as people attempted to drive home after the eclipse, which ended around 2PM.
Gas stations in the few small towns along the way ran out of gas. People ran out of gas on the freeway and simply abandoned their cars on the side of the freeway and bummed rides, walked, or laid down on the side of the road to sleep. It was a post-apocalyptic scene, like the opening of The Walking Dead. I recall that a few people died from medical emergencies because ambulances could not get to them.
It took me eight hours to drive 40 miles from Glendo to Wheatland. Thankfully, I had a Suburban and had the foresight to fill my tank before I left, and to pack food, water, and a sleeping bag and pillow before I went. I parked in Wheatland and slept in the back of my truck until about 4AM when the traffic finally cleared, then finished the drive to Cheyenne in about 40 minutes.
Related:
“People and countries for that matter with too much time and money and the luxury of being safe and secure to spend it on their hands makes you stupid (and dangerous). That is my theory anyway. Which does not mean that you should be denied any of it or you cannot do some good for yourself or others with it. ”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/too-much-time-and-money-make-you-stupid
As a friend of mine points out, cf, Crane Brinton’s The Anatomy of a Revolution, one of the signs of a change within a revolution is the falling away of intellectuals from the movement, and Mr. Berliner’s defection may be a harbinger in this respect.
For the moment, however, and as Robert points out — https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/04/10/after-being-completely-exposed-by-its-own-editor-npr-tells-npr-that-npr-is-just-fine-n2172562 — Mr. Berliner’s critique does not appear to be something that The Powers That Be at NPR are ready to acknowledge or act upon. God, no.
The question is, if NPR is not ready to acknowledge this reality, then what can “ordinary people” like ourselves do to help them with this? First and foremost, *find ways to stop funding them.* Contact you representative in the House of Representatives and suggest to his or her staff that you are tired of paying for a partisan propaganda outlet that works tirelessly to destroy the institutions of this country, subvert its culture, and denigrate everything that you personally believe in. Likewise, you can contact the corporate sponsors of your local NPR affiliate and suggest the same to them, emphasizing that you will not be using their product or service so long as such support continues. Finally, for what it might be worth, you can contact the management at your local NPR station and attempt to convey your dissatisfaction with what they are doing. At least they will be exposed to ideas from outside their accustomed reality bubble, and they might even acknowledge that you have a point. That would be a start.
To be clear, I am not advocating the “destruction” of public broadcasting (as frustrating and angering as it can be to listen to it), but rather — along with Mr. Berliner — returning it to some semblance of its former self. Like everything else, this will take some work, but we get the kind of journalism that we support / tolerate / are willing to pay for.
The authoritarian impulse is a hard one to defeat. It is found strongly in persons of lesser intellect and, oddly, responds to the education of that modest intellect by becoming stronger. Attend to the subtext of the movie referred to in the article, it shows an understanding of this characteristic.
Our civilization is being destroyed by the deviants who have the motivation to obtain power. Not individuals with natural capabilities, persons with profound mental damage of many sorts. The pole is very slippery and climbing it takes obsessive determination and motivation, characteristics sexual deviants exhibit in abundance. Psychopaths and some sociopaths exhibit such characteristics as well, expressed rather differently.
Our goose is well and truly cooked, has been for some time.
At least Al Gore invented Teh Intertubes for us.
excuse if this was brought up earlier:
SJL, if I recall correctly, was/is a Ranking Member on one of the space related Committee’s responsible for spending huge amounts of tax money and formulating Policy.
Sadly, there exists a consequential number of people who haven’t the slightest idea of basic science, so SJL’s comments sound perfectly fine, and what’s more, if you bring it up, you’re the racist, anti-science, denier.
These politicians sound just AS STUPID, when they talk about stuff in which I have my own expertise, and I’m sure everyone else experiences that feeling along with me.
“The Encabulator”
https://youtu.be/MXW0bx_Ooq4
On the positive side. . .we soon will have Monday Night Rehabilitation ! 😎
It’s like what Christ told Thomas: “Seek, and ye shall find”…but don’t come CRYING to me when you FAFO!
That ALSO gets YOUR chapter deleted from the Book.
Just a heads up.
That was horrifying to watch the Sheila Jackson-Lee video. And we’re supposed to quietly nod our head and say that’s OK because blacks are oppressed.
Democrats created the current black culture to keep blacks dumbed down, unsuccessful and enslaved to the government teat and Democrat policy. Liberals believe blacks are inferior and must be “helped”. DEI is an insult to blacks who have succeeded through hard work and ability like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson (possible Trump VP).
Just some thoughts:
stupid can’t be fixed by a higher education.
A higher education installed in a junker brain is still junk.
You can educate a person out of the ghetto, but you can’t remove the ghetto from the person.
A don’t forget, the moon is made up of gasses that emit a special kind of energy.
Wat Lee said is stoopid, everyone nos da moon is made of cheese, you no wat I’m sayin?
Jackson Lee graduated from Yale University in 1972 and the University of Virginia School of Law in 1975.
That’s amazing.
Gaffes from wikipedia:
According to The Daily Beast, Jackson Lee has a “history of wild statements” and political gaffes.[70] These include incorrectly stating that the U.S. Constitution was 400 years old;[71] displaying a false version of the Confederate battle flag during a Congressional debate;[72] mistakenly criticizing Wikipedia instead of WikiLeaks;[73] incorrectly calling the Moon a “planet” that is made “mostly of gases”;[74][75] and saying that North Vietnam and South Vietnam were still separate countries.[76][77]
The Hill reported that during a 1997 visit to the Mars Pathfinder operations center, Jackson Lee asked whether the Pathfinder rover had taken a picture of the U.S. flag planted by Neil Armstrong; the flag had been planted on the Moon, not Mars. Jackson Lee was at the time a member of the Aeronautics and Space Subcommittee of the House Science Committee. [you got to be kidding me][78][79] In response, Jackson Lee’s deputy chief of staff accused the newspaper of racial bias without disputing the story’s accuracy. The Hill denied the allegations and stood by its reporting.[79][80]
In July 2014, Jackson Lee said that “we did not seek an impeachment” of President George W. Bush. Jackson Lee was one of 11 co-sponsors of the 2008 U.S. House bill H. Res. 1258, which sought to impeach Bush for “deceiving Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq WMDs”. Jackson Lee’s spokesperson later said that she “misspoke”.[81][82]
A campaign advertisement for Jackson Lee in the 2023 Houston mayoral election instructed viewers to vote on the wrong date. Jackson Lee’s spokesperson attributed the error to an external advertising agency.[83]
John: Jackson-Lee has been in Congress since 1994. None of these gaffes, any one of which should have resulted in a decent challenge and replacement in the next election, has done anything to hurt her career. The voters return her to office, over and over again (14 times). She remains in power, telling us all what to do.
Our society has not had any decent standards now for decades. We are now paying for it, big.
I know I am not the sharpest pencil in the box but i am glad these politicians make me feel like a Mensa member.