God must love the stupid. He made so many of them

If there´s one thing dealing with the public at large for 30 years has taught me, it is the sad fact that too many people out there are dumb, ignorant and full of hate.

Tonight Show host Jay Leno has a running game show parody that features a bunch of Gen-X´ers brought in off the street and asked questions like “When was the War of 1812 fought?” The closest answer was “1776?”

A recent poll asked 1,000 Americans to name the Vice President of the United States. More than 600 could not. More people could name Osama bin Laden as the leader of al Qaeda than knew Dick Cheney was Vice President of the United States.

On Saturday, the last piece of debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia had not hit the ground before idiots everywhere started screaming the accident was (1) a terrorist attack or (2) part of some grand conspiracy by our elected officials to divert money from the space program and into the coming war with Iraq or (3) any other theory just as loony.

Terrorist attack? Yeah, right. A bunch of al Qaedas who live in caves and use box cutters to hijack planes have suddenly come up with the technology to knock something moving at Mach 17, 205,000 feet up, out of the sky. The U.S. has spent billions on “Star Wars” technology and still can´t do it.

John Diaz, editorial page editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, looked over the crackpots who sent letters to his paper after Columbia went down and shook his head. Most of his mail came from crazies.

“Even more startling was the cynical, even hateful, tone of many of the letters.” Diaz said. “The outtakes were considerably harsher and more jaded than the selection we printed.”

One letter writer to the Chronicle said the Columbia accident stemmed from a secret government plot to “sabotage the mission to direct future finances away from NASA to further the military industrial complex.”

“A recurring theme,” Diaz said “was resentment that Bush would somehow exploit the tragedy for political gain.

“One letter speculated that Palestinians would be ‘dancing in the streets´ upon hearing of the deaths of the U.S. and Israeli astronauts. Another wondered why television was showing ‘so much empathy´ for the deaths of agents of two countries who were responsible for ‘uncounted Palestinian deaths, every day´ in the occupied territories.

“A Livermore man actually questioned whether the accident was the result of a shuttle crew that ‘looks like America.´ He suggested the women and minority astronauts were given ‘bonus points´ in the selection process. Never mind the advanced degrees, the years of public service, the uncommon bravery that distinguished these seven astronauts. And never mind that there has been absolutely no suspicion of pilot error.”

We get the same kind of hate-filled, conspiracy-theory-laden letters from the great unwashed masses every day. Most of these expressions of ignorance are filled with misspelling, grammatical errors and other proof of the failings of the public education system.

“Perhaps it is idealistic to assume that a tragedy would prompt us to draw on our common humanity, rather than to trigger unprovoked animus based on racial, national or political differences,” Diaz said. “And these were not anonymous tirades. The above e-mails were sent for publication, with names, addresses and phone numbers.”

No, it is not idealistic to expect a shred of humanity or even a touch of intelligence from the masses.

It´s all too easy to hate. It´s all too easy to mistrust. It´s all too easy to jump to conclusions without a single shred of evidence. Our elected officials do it every day. Any idiot can.

Some blame this ignorant paranoia on 9-11 but these hate mongers, bottom feeders and rumor spreaders have been with us for much longer.

Long before the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, these candidates for the loony bin claimed a missile brought down TWA flight 800 over Long Island Sound, the CIA killed President John F. Kennedy and that Elvis was alive and well and living in Costa Rica.

People like this used to hide their identities under white sheets. Now they run racist computerized bulletin boards and use anonymous “handles” to flood these boards or emails with their own blend of hate, ignorance and paranoia. It´s easy to spread hate from behind a cute screen name but you have to wonder how many of the gutless wonders would step up to the plate if they had to use their real names.

Not many, I suspect, even though John Diaz found a surprising number willing to use their names, addresses and phone numbers on the hate correspondence sent to his newspaper.

But I´d bet most of these hate-spewing idiots would crawl back under their rocks rather than stand up and spread their ignorance under their real name.

Permit me to say that there are different degrees of probability in these scenarios. In all probability, a missile brought down TWA flight 800. It's not certain, but the preponderance of the evidence makes it plausible. I'll pass on the other theories.

I don't put it past the government to do some pretty conspiratorial things--especially when a mobster and felon like clinton inhabits the White House. The question is: is there any evidence for these alleged shuttle plots? Any likelihood? Any plausible motive? In a word, no.

When Ron Brown's plane crashed there were numerous discrepancies, numerous pieces of solid evidence, plausibility, a well-published threat, and a pattern of previous crimes that linked the crash to clinton. In the case of the space shuttle, none of these elements apply.

Yes, there's an abundance of loonies around.

Many hereon seem to think I'm a prime example.

Your post kicked me off on the following rumminations, pontifications . . . thanks for the spring-board.

Given the convoluted mid-stream wrenching of our values in the ongoing culture wars of the last several decades; given the very raging war between God and satan (legally won at Calvary and the empty tomb), there's plenty of room for confusion; blindness; willful blindness; ignorance, willful ignorance; the comfort of sinking into stupidity real and mock; the comfort of going with the lowest-common-denominator-mass-hypnosis-mob-mentality; the deluded comfort of insisting "I know the truth and everyone else is stupid or at best uninformed;" . . .

There's just plenty of room to come off stupid for a variety of reasons.

And, one could add--if my observations on returning after 15 years is any clue--the education system has not been doing real well at teaching thinking, much less critical thinking.

Taipei American school is known as a tough high quality--good college prep school for the industrial, political and cultural elite of the western business/government people as well as Taipei's western business/government people. Yet, a friend of mine graduated with honors--

--and with a 6th grade English vocabulary--as an American missionary kid. He was likeable and great at sports. But sheesh--that was a disservice to the kid. I threw a fit with the head of the English program and she denied any responsibility for the school insisting it was the parents' fault for not reading to him. The point was well taken but I still think the school failed him miserably.

It seems to me the schools here have been doing worse and certainly no better.

God loves the stupid and makes so many of them? He loves the humble. Humility doesn't seem to correlate well with people over-enammoured of their God-given IQ's as though they manufactured their own smarts and bestowed them upon themselves before birth.

But what *IS* SMART?

Is it smart to see an embarrassing extravagance of evidence for design and deny a designer?

Is it smart to see the ages old war between God and satan wind toward the predicted conclusions and pretend life will go on and on as ever with nothing significant happening to one's addictions to pleasure and rebellion?

Is it smart to presume one can outsmart God?

Is it smart to presume that one's exceedingly finite slice of information, of understanding, of wisdom has resulted in a comprehensive unified-field-theory level of understanding of all that is and might be? Oh, people will deny thinking they believe that about themselves. Yet they go on making daily life decisions as though they do.

We are all stupid compared to God.

When God says a given principle or eternal, universal law out ranks a lot of our own personal and finite 'good' ideas and choices--guess who's opinion we rush to flush. All the while congratulating ourselves on our cool smarts and 'with-it' knowledge and understanding.

And, we are all vulnerable to being stupid to most other people IN AT LEAST ONE area of insight, understanding, reality, life and humanness. Indeed, 'Idiot-Savants' do a number of things better than I do with my genius IQ. And children with Downs-Syndrome tend to out-love, out-joy and out-happy all the rest of us.

The reverential AWE over the AWESOMENESS of God is the beginning of wisdom.

Knowledge that avoids starting with IN THE BEGINNING GOD, isn't very significant knowledge--no depth, no breadth, no sufficient 'vision-of-the-whole,' no accurate robust insight into one's own realities.

I was slammed hereon recently for being an "ideologue" --whatever the person thought that meant. I'd be an ignorant, stupid fool to avoid being an ideologue given what I know and have experienced first hand--not to mention the 2nd hand stuff.

Choose this day--Choose Life--especially eternal life. Most choices are in one direction or the other--toward more life or more death--choose life.

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