Just when I'd begun to think you couldn't measure IQ in negative numbers....

No matter how hard I try- and believe me, I have- I can’t manage to wrap my head around the idea that anyone with as much as two brain cells to rub together could believe this crap. “Stupid” seems so inadequate to the task of describing an allegedly lucid individual who seriously believes the President doesn’t love America AND that America is a Muslim nation.

I wish someone could explain to me how someone could believe something so patently untrue and mind-numbingly ignorant. Does Tea Party Nation (and the Tea Party generally) stand for rampant ignorance in the service of the the Far Right? How do people come to believe this sort of madness if not through propaganda, and the manipulation of the mental fear centers of those low information voters unable (or unwilling) to think for themselves?

Part of the reason I’d like to understand this line of “thinking” is that a member of my own family is a member of this anti-intellectual (anything but) “elite.” He believes that Ted Nugent is just this side of a prophet, and he’s convinced Barack Obama is a Muslim. For the life of me, I can’t understand how someone I’ve loved and respected can seriously believe such unadulterated and vile bullshit.

This strain of thinking would be disturbing enough if it was a small minority of crackpots who could safely be ignored. The problem, though, is that there are MILLIONS of Americans who think like this. They’ve elected Congressmen and women who think just like they do. Their reality is Sharia, black helicopters, and conspiracy theorists. (Didja know that 9/11 was a false flag operation by the U.S. Government? And that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary was hoax staged by the FBI??)

I find it difficult not to fear for the future of our Republic when there are people who think like that on Capitol Hill, voted into office by those who, like them, can’t be bothered to think critically when it’s so much easier to react.

If someone can explain the triumph of ignorance and reaction and how we got to this place, I’m willing to listen…because I sure as Hell can’t make sense of it. Seriously, when people like this believe they have ANYTHING of value to add, we’ve reached a place that feels too bizarre for mere words to capture.

Greetings from our new idiocracy.