Christine O'Donnell is not a Scientist, a Lawyer, or Smarter than a 5th Grader

[vixengrl]

I was at work when this story shot out across the Intertubes, so I wasn't able to see the video. The transcript alone had me kind of amazed: damn, she's uninformed. But the video itself is what's so incredible:

When the law students are laughing, she thinks they are laughing with her, not at her. She thought she made a point! And sadly, I think I know which one.

Religious fundamentalists just don't believe in separation of church and state. You can't make them. They won't hear it. They'll teach the opposite. If you look at guys like Robertson or Falwell and the like and things they have said and written, they go out of their way to disregard anything extraneous any of the Founding Fathers ever said about "separation of church and state", and just concentrate on how that phrase itself isn't in the Constitution. They don't bother to work with the very first line in the First Amendment--sometimes referred to as the establishment clause, which has historically been the basis for court rulings regarding the rejection of prayer in public schools and more recently and germane, the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District decision, which established that ID basically was religion, not science, and had no place in our schools.

As far as many fundamentalists are concerned, such rulings must mean "activist judges". And it isn't sheer ignorance--some of the people who hold this view are folks like former judge Roy Moore, of the Ten Commandments display fame, who seems to reject the First Amendment about as easily as he unwittingly rejected the First Commandment when he made a great big graven image of the Decalogue into the centerpiece of his life. (He's headed to Iowa to try and get some judges unseated for their surprising decision that equal rights for all means just that with respect to marriage equality. He's loonier than a tree full of gaviidae. Which aren't even likely to hang out in trees, which is saying something.)

And she doesn't know what the scientific meaning of "theory" is, and I'm not giving anyone the satisfaction of Wikipedia copy-pasta-ing it, except to say "Dear Christine, there is a 'theory of gravity', too, but you wouldn't jump out a window on the off-chance it's bollocks, would you?" But that's another point of common ignorance. She is not alone in not understanding what a theory is, anymore than she's alone in not understanding the Constitution or history, or the birds and the bees and.....

I know that there are subgeniuses from, say, Regent or Liberty University populating places of some influence in government right now, no better intellectually equipped than Christine O'Donnell, that probably were appointed under the Bush Administration and burrowed in, who we just don't know about and who go along their mentally misshapen way because they have simply never been exposed as totally stupid because they never ran for office before. Or they have run for office and got re-elected because their constituents couldn't tell they were damn-near illiterate regarding the issues (Louie Gohmert! Michele Bachmann!)

It's a big deal to me. It's the same kind of stupid that ruins the climate change debate, too. It affects damn near everything. Give Dick Cheney or David Addington a pop quiz on what "separation of powers" actually means. See what happens; the Bagram-ization of Gitmo, the Gitmo-ization of Abu Ghraib? A relationship to written law as irrelevant and due process as peculiar? A secrecy and a devotion to executive privilege that borders on the occult?

Yeah--this isn't about just "Oh wacky Christine O'Donnell, she doesn't know stuff!"

This pervasiveness of ignorance, and the celebration of it, actually worries me more than Christine O'Donnell does. Now I think I'm re-filling my damn drink.

[TexasObserver]

1. She's aggressively stupid and terribly ignorant.

[Johonny]

4. I think it's what they call folksy

because they believe normal folks are aggressively stupid and terrible ignorant. Republicans have zero respect for the people that vote for them.

[XemaSab]

14. A lot of people are aggressively stupid and terrible ignorant.

How else do you think W ever got into office?

It's not that they love ignorance, it's that they don't trust intellectuals at all, and their politicians speak in simple statements and tell 'em what they want to hear.

I was musing the other day that "Meg" and "Carly" seem to be running as just folks, but I don't want just folks leading the state. I don't want my friends running the state, I want people way the hell smarter and better educated than I am running the state.

Arnold is just folks, and simple platitudes aren't going to fix the mess the state is in.

[pokerfan]

12. Dunning–Kruger effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

or as Bertrand Russell put it: "In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

[Ramulux]

2. I noticed that too

When they start laughing at her she makes this huge grin like she thinks they are laughing with her. If she wasn't such a bitch I would genuinely feel sorry for her, that is extremely embarrassing. The whole debate was a joke, I dont know how Coons kept his cool while she would try these little juvenile accusations, he deserves mad props for staying professional.

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. Celebrating stupidity is what this this country is all about.

[vixengrl]

8. There was a popular cable show called "Jackass" which

involved non-geniuses doing incredibly Darwin-Award things which lead to actual box-office movies. Ever watch day-time tv? Judge shows, where the person at home watching tv during the day for whatever reason can reassure him/herself that he or she at least isn't going to court over a cell phone bill or damage to a Ford Pinto or a misunderstanding regarding who had ownership of the wheels when the common property of the family trailer was divided. We have "Springer" and "Cheaters". We don't just love to look at stupid people, or people broker than ourselves and merely misfortunate so we can point and feel good; we want to see human misery at times. We want to see earrings come off and shoes get thrown and watch someone set someone else's shit on fire.

The problem is, the actual stupidity of people making f'd up life decisions is nothing compared to the stupidity of people not getting politically engaged. People fought for our democracy, people marched and fasted and strove to open up our privilege to vote to the extent that we cherish it as an actual right. And we should!

But so many Americans don't care about issues, don't know history, don't understand geography, don't think about much beyond their day-to-day even though it could be affecting them tomorrow. They remind me of Victoria Jackson from SNL in the 1980's, who is a Teabagger today. She mourned that she spent 40 years of her life not knowing where to vote or how to register or who to vote for.

She did not know about this thing that existed:

It's called a newspaper. A kid on a bike throws it in front of your house and you read it and it tells you everything. And if you ever read a book, like the 2 Obama wrote and are available in free libraries near you courtesy of a government that sort of tries to fix stupid! you know Obama is not a Communist and if you ever rent "UHF", you realize voice lessons would have made your career better. Although that insight is mostly geared to Victoria Jackson, specifically. Who would not read DU, since we are communists with the socialism, and the employed amongst us are all at the DMV with long nails, but whose voice sounds like she did helium whip-its and then she decided to be Edna Kravitz from "Bewitched".

I'm basically beseeching all Americans to be less like Victoria Jackson, more like Dennis Miller before he, too, sucked. But ultimately aspire to be A. Whitney Brown.

I don't like stupid. I have watched too much tv. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive.

[BarryMeNot]

5. K&R

:kick:

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Muricans are damned proud

Of that ignorance. Now you move on with that fancy learning' young man. We don't need that round these parts!

And sadly I am not off.

[RainDog]

7. this is the truth - this religious mindset is destroying the entire planet

and if you think about it - the entire projectory of their religious belief is to celebrate the destruction of the planet - they are willfully creating such a scenario through their refusal to acknowledge the reality of issues like climate change.

[vixengrl]

9. I think the idea of "Armageddon" or some end point of history

is a terribly dangerous idea. What in any normal person's psyche would be rooting for everything to go pear-shaped? Who wants to make Israel a battlefield, and who in their right mind thinks it's okay to let the ecology go to hell on the theory "The Lord will provide"? That's just crazy-ass nonsense, right there.

Take war between Israel and Iran--it seems like a heartbreaking loss lof lives and destruction of wealth that wouldn't actually prove shit or improve either countries' way of life--so who advances that? (Apocalyptos! Heeey!)

That's why I have a major beef with Glenn Beck, who is anti-science and seems to promote sponsors that are Apocalyspe-readiness types, like this nonsense with Food Insurance Inc which is freeze dried MRE's,some stupid thing to do with buying seeds, and some stupider nonsense to do with buying gold, which is really effective in a time when there is a market for the shit? But you can't eat it and it doesn't cure radiation-poisoning, so if humanity really fucked up, gold would just be some pretty shit people wore or maybe traded with unless they had some cases of Slim Jims. Because in an Apocalypse, people wouldn't even dress up anymore. They would eat Slim Jims and wear trainers and track suits, because all the jobs except subsistance farming anything still arable and not getting tortured to death by roving bands of warriors in souped-up jalopies who wore surprising amounts of leather that lived by stealing shit from subsistence farmers, would pretty much be your job choices, thus negating the likelihood of ever needing to wear a business suit or loafers ever again. Which I learned from many movies. Not all of them "Mad Max:. So, um, people would treat cured foods like Slim Jims that were high-calorie and had a rockin' long-ass shelf life way better than they would gold.

Also, too, re: the climate debate--anyone against it miust be either raking petrobucks or too dumb to know you can rake petrobucks off it. We need to get good at calling out companies that greenwash and try to front like they are lowering their carbon footpring, when all it is is fronting. We need to challenge fake environmentalists and pronmote better science recognition and a better understanding of the issues. And maybe account for how it really does happen that most scientists are accepting of the theory of man-made climate change, and how most data has never refuted it so far.

[RainDog]

10. Yes. The Israeli-Palestine issue is another one that the religious right skews

I think it's really sad that the right wing in Israel uses their stupidity and support as a way to avoid the inevitable.

and, yes, Beck could not exist without the religious right.

but, on the positive side - I think we're close to the end of the major influence of the religious right in this nation - the pendulum is moving back toward liberalization after 30 years of this shit.

Even younger people among the evangelicals get the issue of global warming - they are more supportive of civil rights for homosexuals - it's possible for them to elide some of the literalist thinking into sane options - that humans are caretakers of the earth - not masters, that sort of thing.

anyway, Palin, Beck, all this teabagger b.s. - this is the last gasp of this century's religious insanity, I hope. according to a guy who studies this phenomena in the U.S. - we're moving away from their ascendancy. That so many people think Palin is worthless is hopeful.

We're in a transitional time, it seems.

[ladjf]

15. Good post. You have cut right to the heart of our problem. nt

[upi402]

11. Lord loves an idjit

If 'merica were not dumbed-down, we would have kept our Republic. TV news propaganda is the prime evil. All else will never be addressed without major TV news reform.

No valid 4th estate = no restoration of democracy.

Media traitors.

[Caliman73]

13. Excellent post.

I would differ with you on one point though...I think that Cheney and Addington know full well about the separation of powers. Those scumbags just don't care. They were relying on the ignorance, apathy, or fear of the congress and electorate to push their agenda. Cheney has been lurking around Washington enough to understand aspects of government. I would never argue ignorance for him. He is pure ambition with no moral compass.

There has always been tension between intellectualism and ignorance, especially in the United States. The sad thing is that ignorance is now a marketable commodity.

[vixengrl]

16. GGAAAAAHHH! Just saw a Pat Toomey ad

slamming Joe Sestak for wanting to try Khalid Skeik Mohammed in civil court--this is more of the congenital stupid--

We put away more terrorists in civilian courts than we ever do in tribunals! Away! For life! Does this idjit think somehow the case against KSM is too thin to put him away? Does Toomey not understand the idea of due process? But this is the kind of low, ignorant, rah-rah ideological bs that keeps working. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. There's a debate coming up and I wish just being right would help Sestak.