Stupidity
expands exponentially. What is happening in Florida, and during the
entire election for that matter, proves this axiom.
During the Presidential campaign, the media spent an enormous amount
of time devoted to the "undecided voter." This irritated me.
For the most part, these undecideds were people who knew little about
the candidates and even less about the issues. These are the same
people that Jay Leno and the newsmagazine Dateline were doing 'man on
the street' interviews with to see if people could even identify the
candidates and the party to which party they belonged. Of course, many couldn't.
Are these people dumb? I don't know. I do know that they can name
every Beatles album chronologically. I do know that they not only know
who Pamela Andersen Lee is, but they know that she had breast
implants, had them taken out and then had them put back in again. What
affect these things have on these people's lives is beyond me. The
government can influence their day-to-day life, and they don't seem to
care. But if Catherine Zeta Jones marries a dusty old
bag, they can't wait to shell out a buck eighty to find out about it.
The tragedy here is that these people get a vote.
I, on the other hand, took the time to learn about the candidates. I
became well versed on policy and on which stances the candidates took
on issues and why. I also got a vote.
Is it fair? No. Life is never fair. I learned that early.
I also learned that for a ballot to be valid, you can only pick one
candidate per race. I learned that you must look to see where you
are punching the hole to be sure you select correctly. I learned that
the punch must go all the way through the paper ballot for the vote to
be tallied. It wasn't that hard.
Unlike our electoral college, our votes are not weighted. You could
stumble out of a bar and write in 'Zippy the Pinhead' and your vote
counts. You could cast your vote for Al Gore based only on the fact
that he kissed his wife on the TV and your vote counts. You can vote
for George Bush only because you like his Dad and your vote counts. As
Al Gore likes to say, "every vote should count." Should
they?
The crux of the Florida situation is that people are too dimwitted to
use the ballot correctly. This is how it works in America - nothing
gets done until we discover the will of the stupid.
The stupid have been running this country for decades. I would guess
that 90% of all laws on the books are there because one ignoramus did
something stupid. Our elected officials spend an inordinate amount of
time protecting the stupid. At any given time, some legislature is
debating on a law because someone, somewhere thought that using a
moving city bus to open a can of beans was a good idea.
When I hear that some mental midget decided to drive his snowmobile on
a lake in April and plummets through the thin ice to his demise, I
believe it to be God's way of weeding out the stupid. Meanwhile city
and State Legislators decide to outlaw all snowmobiles on the lake.
There was a time when disclaimers on products were put there after
someone did something stupid. If someone decided to eat the silicon
packet in a vitamin bottle, they would begin printing DO NOT EAT on
the packet . These days, if you are a manufacturer of any
product you will have to divine what kinds of stupid things that
stupid people will do with your product and write a disclaimer
accordingly. This is why most disclaimers are two pages long.
The reward for stupidity used to be a hard lesson learned. Now it's a
jury trial with 12 other stupid people and a multimillion dollar
jackpot. Any time you mix litigators with incompetents you know
someone is getting rich.
Any species in the wild allows the stupid and weak of the pack to be
eaten by hyenas. We, being humans, are the only species that
understands the concept of compassion for the stupid. It may be our
biggest fault.
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