There’s just no cure for stupid

I’ve been told that I can be impatient and intolerant of folks on occasion (ok, perhaps more often than that). It’s a charge I plead guilty to, especially when it comes to the stupidity of many of my fellow citizens. This is not an attack on those who are less educated and who may not have had the advantages bestowed upon those of us fortunate to attend decent schools. Indeed, many of the purveyors of stupidity come from the ranks of the privileged and highly educated. Rather, the kind of stupidity to which I refer stems from failing to engage in basic common sense, doing something that causes harm or doesn’t work and then refusing to change and doing the same thing over and over again or failing to recognize the inconsistency or absurdity of your positions.

I appreciate that a better human (like my wife) would feel sorry for these folks and empathize with their inability to form logical thought. She might even go out of her way to try to help them understand the flaws in their thinking and in a manner that was not condescending. But I contend that some people simply can’t be helped.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised given our country’s history. Many of our citizens’ forefathers fled from Europe because of persecution; the refusal of those in power and fellow citizens to treat them as equals because of their heritage, religion, or economic standing. The early Americans bravely travelled across the ocean at great risk and without knowing what life would await them at the end of their journey. Those who survived ultimately established a government, society and Constitution with a core ideal to build a new great society where “all men are created equal.”

But then, after having killed many of the Native American inhabitants in droves, many our forefathers went about enslaving millions of others because they happened to have more pigment in their skin and were thought to be inferior. Our ancestors even had the audacity to write this hypocrisy down on a piece of paper – and in our country’s most cherished document. The Constitution proclaims, in effect, that black men should be considered only three- fifths of a human being! (And this provision was not established to ensure that black men had at least some say in who the leaders of our country should be, but rather so that the Southern slaveholders would have more power, as far more black people lived in the South.) It took nearly 100 years before people of color were allowed to exercise the most basic of citizen functions- the right to vote (well, at least those who were male).

And our ingenious brethren managed to completely forget about their own wives, daughters, mothers and female friends (i.e. half the population!) in depriving them of any voice in our government. It took 19 Amendments before this glaring error was corrected – some 144 years after forming a government.

So it aint easy being a logical bunch when we come from this level of duplicity. One could say in our defense that this was a long time ago, that we (the mere descendants of these forefathers) had nothing to do with these bad and immoral decisions and can’t be blamed for them, and that we are different. Yet, large numbers of current Americans (including most of our Supreme Court Justices) apparently think these forefather guys were so brilliant that we need to follow exactly what they wrote down when interpreting our nation’s laws under the doctrine of being an original and strict constructionist.

And in a shameless return to our prejudiced roots, many now seek to suppress the long-awaited right to vote by imposing substantial barriers that clearly targets communities of color.

No political/legal topic represents our nation’s collective stupidity more these days than our obsession with guns. The literal language of the Second Amendment merely affords the “right to bear arms” in the outdated context of a “well regulated Militia” – in short, it was designed by the Founding Fathers to keep state Militias from being disarmed. But strict constructionism be damned when it doesn’t support what you want the Constitution to say. So in 2008 (over 200 years after the passage of the Second Amendment) our Supreme Court, led by the great strict constructionist Justice Scalia, for the first time officially expanded the law to include a constitutional right to own handguns in one’s home.

But even if you buy the dubious legal proposition that our Founding Fathers intended to support the rights of hunters and/or the right of self-protection, there’s nothing in the Second Amendment that mentions or envisions the prospect of owning assault weapons capable of firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition and killing hundreds in a flash. Naturally, such weapons neither existed nor were even contemplated in 1789!

Nor is there anything in the Amendment that precludes placing reasonable restrictions on the right to bear arms, like ensuring that the people that get them are not felons, mentally unstable or have threatened to kill others on social media and the like; restricting the number of weapons a person can own (Israel, for example, only allows one per person and after an extensive background check) or the age that you can buy one (it’s somehow ok to prevent teenagers from drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes but not buying an assault rifle?); and/or requiring that gun owners obtain licenses and demonstrate proficiency and safety like we require of everyone seeking to operate a vehicle that can cause serious harm.

Worse, the folks who complain so vigorously about these minor intrusions and who fight vehemently against any restriction whatsoever on gun ownership don’t even represent the majority of folks. Yet they are able to win the day because of our ridiculous government structure which places disproportionate power in a Senate dominated by people from sparsely populated rural states (unlike, for example, the government structure of our neighbor to the north and the rest of Western Civilization) and an absurd filibuster rule that allows the minority to routinely exploit the majority. And of course unlimited lobbying money.

The gun-obsessed have explanations for their position that only serves to solidify their idiocracy. The reason for all of these mass shootings, they say, is not the guns, but the people. Really? And how many people would have died in Uvalde, Buffalo, Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando, Newtown, Aurora and the other more than 200 mass killings in the last 10 years if the shooter had walked in without a gun? Or with only one pistol or a single-action shotgun? One can’t logically dispute that the number killed would have been considerably less.

Next, they espouse the absurd fallacy that the solution to this problem and prevent this from happening in the future is to actually have MORE guns – the teachers, students, clergy, pilots, flight attendants, passengers, hotheaded motorists, your neighbors and literally everyone in the country should be armed to the hilt so that every time a shooting breaks out we can have a Wild West gunfight among mostly inexperienced shooters. What a solution! It completely ignores the undeniable fact that the U.S. leads the world in murders and mass killings despite already having the most guns and the largest percentage of gun ownership in the world BY FAR.

And you have to marvel at the audacity and duplicity of the NRA. It held its most recent gleeful gathering of gun-lovers in Texas without pause after yet another mass killing of children in the same state. Attendees were allowed to pack heat throughout the entire conference, with one big exception. When their esteemed leader Donald Trump took the floor to speak all guns were suddenly banned and confiscated – and with no apparent outcries about the Second Amendment. What? If having everyone carry weapons is important to the safety of others, as gun proponents claim, why would they confiscate these protective devices only when Trump was speaking? Why put their hero – indeed the greatest man on earth to many of them – at risk? Was the NRA looking to get their man shot? Of course not. The answer is that Trump (as well as the Secret Service and even NRA organizers) knew all too well that it was far MORE DANGEROUS to him if everyone listening to his horse manure had a weapon with them.

Then there’s the mantra repeated every time a mass shooting occurs (just after the “thoughts and prayers” b.s. and “now is not a good time for politics” line): “gun laws don’t work.” How can they possibly know that? There are few truly meaningful gun laws in the U.S. because the gun advocates have not only blocked them but also legally prevented the government from even doing research about this very proposition- they don’t want to know the results because the answer is obvious. What we do know, however, is that those states with stricter gun laws (like California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts) have a much lower gun-related death rate than those who think that owning an arsenal of guns is an order from God himself (Alabama, Mississippi and , embarrassingly, my home state of Missouri).

I have no illusion that some murders with guns will continue to occur regardless of the restrictions imposed and even if guns were outright banned. But by the same token there is no question that they and certainly mass killings would be REDUCED (and many parents today would not be burying their children) if there were less guns out there and/or if there were meaningful restrictions placed on who could own these guns. And clearly making assault rifles like the AR-15 illegal would be a big life-saver (sure they could still be available on the black market and it will take time to reduce our country’s extensive inventory of them, but anything that impairs supply and makes them harder and more expensive to obtain would undoubtedly save lives).

Then there’s that other highly controversial topic that is at the top of the news – abortion. It’s a far more complicated issue than guns, has serious moral and religious components to it and is so explosive that I may lose friends and followers by even addressing it. Moreover, I am not a woman, a doctor or a religious expert and, thus, I really shouldn’t wade into these inflammatory waters. So I will. Or at least offer some observations for consideration.

I respect the right of a woman to choose what happens within her own body – and it’s a particularly bad look in my view for men to be deciding this issue for women (Indeed, Roe v Wade was decided by 9 men, and the current Court that will likely overturn Roe shortly will also be decided by men; although there are now at least 3 women on the court, only one of them will vote to overturn the decision).

At the same time I respect those who genuinely want to protect another human “life.” Their moral argument is much stronger (it seems to me) once the fetus inside the woman is able to survive on its own – thus giving rise to the whole “viability” concept and the discussion of the three trimesters in Roe vs Wade. But thanks to tremendous advances in medical science a fetus can survive earlier and thus viability is now sooner than in 1973. Therefore, I can understand the views of those who think that the time for a woman to make this decision should potentially be sooner.

That said, it is much harder for me to sympathize with their position when it extends to a time well before a fetus has any ability to survive on its own – to that point it is merely a potential life in my mind. Many in this camp go so far as to demand that the government intervene and ban a woman from aborting from the moment of conception – literally as soon as a human sperm enters an egg. Others would even block the use contraception to prevent a pregnancy from occurring, which carries none of the moral issues associated with a life or even a potential life.

It’s particularly galling to me when often the same folks who so fervently oppose abortion from even Day 1 on the grounds that “all life is sacred” have no such moral dilemma with allowing humans, including troubled teenage men (they are always male), to easily acquire an AR-15 assault rifle when they know that this often results in killing hundreds of actual viable human beings.

It’s also hard to reconcile the moral hypocrisy of those who advocate for a ban on abortions even when the pregnancy has been caused by a horrid criminal act like rape or incest, while simultaneously supporting the death penalty for the perpetration of other heinous crimes.

On a lighter note, there are many other laws enacted by “our” representatives that reflect unbridled stupidity. Not surprisingly, most of these arise in the South. A few of my favorite examples include:

• In Arkansas, there’s a law that makes it illegal to mispronounce the state name (sure seems risky in a state with one of the lowest education rates in the country)

• In Florida, it’s illegal for parents to sell their own children (seems unnecessary to spell that out for folks; but then again this is a state whose citizens elevated Ron DeSantis to its highest position)

• In Idaho, cannibalism without consent is against the law (so I suppose it’s ok to eat people in Boise as long as you obtain permission first?)

• In Kentucky, all public officials are required to swear an oath that they have not dueled with deadly weapons, nor acted as a second in such a duel (apparently Mitch McConnelll had this one put in place to protect himself after watching Hamilton)

• In Mississippi, legislators recently passed a law preventing any local bans on the size or portions of Big Gulps (this nugget from the most obese state in the country)

• And, my favorite, comes from New Jersey whose legislators had the profound wisdom to enact a law making it illegal to wear a bullet proof vest while murdering someone (Just wait until the NRA gets its financial lobbying paws on that one!)