The Celebration Of Stupidity

There is stupidly celebrating and there’s the celebration of stupidity. I suppose that on occasion the two can overlap and become one in the same. Chanting lock her up for instance, is stupidly celebrating at an event that celebrates stupidity.

But for the most part the two are distinguishable. In fact a person can understand the concept of celebrating stupidly. The very act of celebration suggests a joyful event and we have a tendency to allow some discretion in our judgement of people that are blowing off steam in honor of an achievement. Even if the achievement is simply making it alive to another January first.

The celebration of stupidity is another matter altogether.

I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the people who celebrate stupidity are in fact celebrating themselves. They’re revelling in the freedom of feeling like they’ve finally found their long lost family and they can let their hair down, dispense with any attempts at grammar and not feel any shame for believing that mustard and ketchup are continents.

So, how the hell have we managed to get to the point where enough stupid people exist in enough volume to form a voting bloc? Vaccines, antibiotics and clean water are the likely culprits, but there are other factors at play here.

I mentioned one of those factors a moment ago. We’ve lowered the shame bar considerably and in some cases even managed to turn the tables so that the person pointing out the obvious is the one who’s shamed. A shame the shamers scenario so to speak.

I’ll elaborate.

I was waiting for a table in a rib place with a group of golf friends. There was a line-up and the wait was fairly lengthy. Finally, a table came open and we were led through a maze of tables by the harried hostess to our seats. Turns out that all the tables were taken and we got a booth instead. One of the gentlemen in our group was four hundred pounds and after a couple of tries it was determined that he couldn’t fit.

On a side note.

While we were waiting to see if he could successfully wedge himself into this booth, I was looking around. I was looking around because I really didn’t want to witness the struggle of a man trying to fit four hundred pounds into a two hundred fifty pound space. Also, I was curious to see if the other diners were enjoying the show and I was checking the other booths to see if anyone approximately his size had succeeded in this quest.

I don’t go to rib places very often so maybe they’re all like this one and so there was really nothing of significance to notice. But, I was new to the place and made a couple of observations. Firstly there was no shortage of people with body mass similar to our struggling friend. They had all avoided the booth’s though.

Secondly, there are two types of rib eaters on a Friday night when a full rack is the same price as a half rack. Some of the ingestion was occurring with an honest attempt at appearing civilized. These people were using their utensils. Then there were the people who had just said fuck it, I’m going in. This second group were eating with their hands and for sake of convenience were eating their fries with their hands as well. This group also appeared to favor sticking their napkin into their shirt neckline and they didn’t stress over having rib sauce slathered all over their faces.

Anyway, I had a point prior to my digression.

The friend in question was unsuccessful in his seat quest and there were no other tables available and so we left and went somewhere else. Some of the guys really wanted ribs and they were pissed off. Some of the guys were embarrassed that we had to leave and that we were a bit of a spectacle. But the extra large golf buddy was pissed off at the restaurant. His argument was that he should be accommodated. That skinnier people should be made to sit in the booths or the spacing in those booths should be expanded. He felt as if Tony Roma had fat shamed him.

I felt like his argument needed to be explored a bit. The shaming he spoke of was rooted in the fact he felt unaccommodated, discriminated against perhaps? He agreed. So, I asked him what level of accommodation he felt he deserved. He replied that he expected equal access. I replied that he had equal access, he just didn’t fit. It would be like if he called an Uber and the driver showed up in a Prius. I felt that maybe if he calls for a cab or makes a dinner reservation then it’s incumbent on him to mention that he’s fucking huge and he’ll need to avoid a booth and beckon a Buick.

He disagreed and got mad at me. Never mind the trail of sweaty mangled furniture he’d left in his wake. Never mind the bottoming out of shocks on golf carts and Accords. I was out of line for suggesting he had primary responsibility for his mass management.

And so we trend toward being accused of shaming an individual or a group if we point out or in any way acknowledge if they’re below average physically or mentally.

Because it’s rude.

So, instead of being on guard to prevent stupidity we’ve decide to accept stupid as normal. We’ve given up on educating to improve and instead have created entertainment, politics and social media to accommodate stupid people.

Facebook provides a forum for the mentally infirm that allows them to avoid face to face scrutiny for their latest conspiracy theory laden inanity rant. Reality television provides endless examples of Honey Boo Boo fucking lunacy and Fox News tells you which colored people to be afraid of so you don’t actually have to read.

If you need a better example of this embrace of stupid then consider that after two years of record setting stupidity, that the current American president is still degrading the white house, while simultaneously eliminating every vestige of honor, truth and respect associated with the presidency.

This man can’t manage to string together a thought that even borders on coherent. He can’t spell and he can’t tell the truth even if it doesn’t matter. Yet his base still supports him and that support is mystifying. The support isn’t even self serving. Only one MAGA hat wearing fuck got a tax break and it wasn’t anyone in the rally crowd. Only one MAGA hat wearing fuck got the rules relaxed on tax breaks for real estate developers and yet the deplorables are still sticking with their man.

Seems awfully stupid to me.

But still the red hats flock to the rallies to hear him and celebrate their red hattedness and their loyalty to this fraternity of fools. It seems to me that if Mr. Trump has in fact accomplished anything it would be a wholesale celebratory embrace of stupidity.

What the fuck happened to us that we decided that it’s a good idea to select the dumbest guy in the room and put him in charge? His selection was so perfectly insane that it doesn’t matter which room he’s in or how many other people are in the room with him. Somehow the man seems to elevate his game to make certain that he’s always the dumbest person there.

And apparently pointing that out is disrespectful.

I would call the condition our condition is in a celebratory embrace of stupidity.