Brief Blog - "Just How Stupid Are We?"

While doing a bit of quick research on Amazon.com for a friend, I caught sight of a recommendation for a book. Amazon is famous for this... they analyze your previous purchases and make recommendations for purchases based on this data. I usually just take a quick glance at the texts, see the title or author, check to see if it's Kindle available, then move on to other things. After all, I have a wish list that is over 40 web pages long on Amazon.com alone (not to mention other places and my wish lists there) and so most of the time the recommendations don't mean much to me. 

Then a title caught my eye in a serious way: Just How Stupid Are We?  Now with a title like that, well, I decided a second look was warranted. The author is a historian, a New York - Times best selling author of Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History and a commentator for MSNBC and CNN and has produced programs on history for TLC. He even has his own blog as well. Having glanced at it and digested a few paragraphs, it seems to be aimed at the need for accuracy in the debate of the body politic and he seems to do a good job. On his blog, he states the following:

Dunce Cap Scorecard: It would be stupid to say that the American people are stupid--as stupid as saying the American people are smart. It's impossible to generalize--and silly. But our politics are often stupid. And there are times when no other word, harsh as it is, seems to capture the essence of the turn politics have taken.

But what do we mean by stupid? To help determine whether a debate is stupid or not I have devised a five-part test. Call it the Dunce Cap Scorecard.

On the blog I rank debates by how stupid they get. One or two Dunce Caps is normal for any debate. Five Dunce Caps and you know you're in a deep pile of stupid.

Now this I can appreciate. I have always looked at the topic of "stupid" in a couple of ways. One - the way I have to deal with 8th graders; keep it simple for them and stick with "The Forrest Gump Rule":  Stupid is as Stupid does ( with 'stupid' capitalized for you English snobs and minutiae creeps because I consider it a proper noun in this context). Then, two, that I don't trust democracy as practiced today in America (or for that matter anywhere else on the Earth). I explain this by realizing that the power and effectiveness of democracy lies in the education and reasonableness of the constituent population - and quite frankly I don't trust any of you with my welfare when it comes to being able to reasonably pick representatives to hold public office (the new mayor of the town I live in is a perfect example - oy vay!!).

Well, time to read the book some more and get back to you later... peace and Good Luck.