I frequently wonder how we ever became the apex species on planet Earth.
Maybe we're not. In The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Douglas Adams posits that mice are actually the predominant species here and we are their lab rats.
But I digress.
This is my third use of the "Too Stupid To Live" title, and the fifth (I think) post about American stupidity. That in itself says something about the wealth of material to be found on the topic.
At the top of my stupid list today are anti-vaxxers, those who refuse any kind of vaccination for themselves and their children. They might truly be too stupid to live, because they're setting themselves up for infection, and some of the newer strains of COVID-19 that are appearing are more deadly than the original.
These people believe that vaccines are another part of the great world conspiracy that's out to get them. They believe that vaccines contain actual disease, or tracking chips, or a virus to turn them into aliens, or . . . you get the idea. They've either fallen into one or more bizarre conspiracy theories or have watched way too many episodes of The X-files.
I group anti-vaxxers with flat-earthers and others who neither believe nor respect science. I've never understood that attitude. Perhaps they don't or can't or won't try to understand science and therefore dislike and mistrust it. Well, I was lousy in sciences in school, but that hasn't hampered my respect of science generally or of the people who work in it.
Maybe they resent scientists because they feel somehow inferior to them. Whatever the reason, it is unreasonable not to take all necessary steps to protect one's family's health. To withhold potentially life-saving medication from a child is the starkest form of cruelty and should be criminalized as a type of abuse.
Even Donald Trump spoke in favor of vaccines, although he did next to nothing to have them developed and had no plan to distribute them. He even had himself vaccinated early on, albeit in secret.
I put anti-vaxxers at the top of the stupid list because their behavior is hazardous to children and could endanger public health. But it was a toss-up between first and second.
Second goes to those behind the latest attacks on Asian-Americans.
Since the first Chinese immigrants arrived in America they've had problems. They were feared and persecuted for their style of clothing, their language that few round-eyes could understand, their clannish society, and their food.
Beginning in the 1850s large numbers of young Chinese men were recruited for work on America's growing railway system, in mines, and in other industries. Unrest began to mount with the fear that foreigners were taking American jobs, and in 1882 Congress passed a law that DJTrump would have been proud to call his own: The Chinese Exclusion Act, which severely limited Chinese immigration and naturalization. The exclusion spread to other Asian ethnicities, and it was not until 1952 that Asians regained the right to immigrate and become citizens.
During WWII as many as 120,000 Japanese-Americans were detained in internment camps in the American West. They and many others lost homes and property, and were profoundly traumatized by this treatment by what they thought of as their government.
Now once again Asians are being targeted by ignoramuses who think they bear some kind of responsibility for spreading COVID-19. And once again the blame for igniting the violence falls to the former Ignoramus-in-Chief, Donald Trump, who stupidly continues to call COVID-19 the "Chinese virus."
Throughout history plagues and diseases have sprung from southwestern China due to some still unknown natural cause. Many, if not most, including COVID-19, are zoonotic diseases that spread from animals to humans.
Again because of Trump's lies, his followers believe the virus was made in China then spread by Chinese. The recent attacks, however, have irrationally and indiscriminately harmed Asians of all ethnicities, including many who were born here. These are cowardly crimes, often targeting elderly or other vulnerable people. The violence is not simply sinophobia; it is rooted in America's long history of racism and the xenophobia preached by Trump.
Unless and until COVID-19 is proven to have been manufactured, we can only understand it in terms of other pandemics. Call it a freak of nature or an act of God, but there is presently no evidence that humans had a hand in making it.
Finally we get to the plain dumb anti-maskers whose tribal customs include dancing around a fire made of face masks.
In the 1960s women burned a variety of things including bras that they felt were imposed on them by a male-dominated world. Denouncing "enforced femininity" they also discarded high heels, mascara, and other items that made them look the way men liked them to look.
Those of us on the male side burned our draft cards in protest of being made to participate and maybe die in a war we believed to be unjust and illegal.
People who burn masks are just whining. All sorts of ridiculous reasons are given for not wearing masks, none of which stand up to rational evaluation. My favorite is that being made to wear a mask violates their constitutional rights.
Sorry, folks. The Constitution does not give you a right to disobey a valid order to wear a mask. If the president or a governor or even a mayor says you must wear a mask for public health reasons and backs it up with a fine, you better do it or face the costs.
We're still in a public health crisis and need to respect and protect one another. That means keeping your breath to yourself within a mask.
Wise up, shake off idiocy and join the rest of us.
--- Diogenes, 3/23/2021