Sometimes the reactions of smart and good people to the actions of stupid and bad people infuriate me beyond even what the bad people have done.
Go ahead, ponder it. Scratch your head over why I would write such a thing. After all, I’m on the side of the angels, right? I should be cheering the good people. Well, yes – when they do what good people should do. But when smart people excuse stupid people, saying, “Don’t hold it against them; they don’t know any better,” while good people goggle at the words and deeds of blatantly bad people and mutter “But why are they doing this,” it makes me want to lift each of them, individually, by the lapels and shake them until their brains start working.
The major shortcoming of smart and good people, throughout the history of the West, has been projecting their own mental maps onto others. And it’s still that way today.
There are a number of news items I could cite as examples of what’s on my mind today. I’ll content myself with just one:
WASHINGTON — A Democratic congressman has proposed outlawing “military-style semiautomatic assault weapons” and forcing existing owners to sell their weapons or face prosecution, a major departure from prior gun control proposals that typically exempt existing firearms.
In a USA Today op-ed entitled “Ban assault weapons, buy them back, go after resisters,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., argued Thursday that prior proposals to ban assault weapons “would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.”
Swalwell proposes that the government should offer up to $1,000 for every weapon covered by a new ban, estimating that it would take $15 billion to buy back roughly 15 million weapons — and “criminally prosecute any who choose to defy [the buyback] by keeping their weapons.”
That’s a California Congressman. A man so detached from reality that he can’t envision the consequences of what he proposes:
- Constitutional crisis;
- Nationwide armed resistance;
- Most LEOs unwilling to enforce the law;
- Thousands of deaths among LEOs who do try to enforce the law;
- Inevitably, a march on Washington by tens of thousands of gun owners, with their guns.
A California Congressional district sent that man to Washington to represent them. But wait: there’s more! Have a look at a couple of tweets:
That punches through the stupid/crazy envelope and forges a new trail into hitherto unexplored realms of idiotic lunacy. Eric Swalwell isn’t just criminally insane; he’s so stupid that he thinks he can use weapons of mass destruction to enforce a federal law. More, he doesn’t realize that he’s revealed himself to be criminally insane.
Smart people have a hard time imagining the mental vacuity of stupid people. Good people have a hard time imagining the moral/ethical voids at the core of bad people. Thus, the self-disclosure of an Eric Swalwell baffles them doubly. And what do they say to one another?
“Forgive them; they don’t know any better.”
“He doesn’t really mean it. He can’t.”
But he does – and you put him in Congress.
Allow me a citation from Isaac Asimov:
On the other side of the doors, in a large room strangely simple, behind a large desk strangely angular, sat a small man, almost lost in the immensity.
Mayor Indbur – successively the third of that name – was the grandson of the first Indbur, who had been brutal and capable; and who had exhibited the first quality in spectacular fashion by his manner of seizing power, and the latter by the skill with which he put an end to the last farcical remnants of free election and the even greater skill with which he maintained a relatively peaceful rule.
Mayor Indbur was also the son of the second Indbur, who was the first Mayor of the Foundation to succeed to his post by right of birth – and who was only half his father, for he was merely brutal.
So Mayor Indbur was the third of the name and the second to succeed by right of birth, and he was the least of the three, for he was neither brutal nor capable – but merely an excellent bookkeeper born wrong.
This exemplifies the political deterioration that sets in when a country accepts a ruling elite that perpetuates itself through primogeniture. A ruler who doesn’t have to earn power tends not to be equal to its demands; the longer this process persists, the further short of adequacy the rulers fall. But primogeniture isn’t the only way of experiencing such a deterioration.
Superficially, the political process of the United States appears essentially the same as it was when the nation was founded. Oh, there have been some “adjustments:” the Twelfth and Seventeenth Amendments, and the successive extensions of the franchise to Negroes, women, and persons eighteen years of age. But it looks pretty much the way it’s always been, at least to an untrained eye.
In fact, the American political process of today bears no resemblance to its origins. It’s been hollowed out through conquest by the two major parties. They possess de facto ownership of the process, buttressed by a variety of mechanisms by which they can prevent effective challenges.
The DemRep duopoly over the political process has caused both parties to deteriorate. No longer can they produce effective statesmen. No longer can their elected ones exert effective authority. Instead, they subcontract those trifling details to appointed officials and bureaucrats.
You want to talk about whether there’s a Deep State? Yes, there is, it’s real and very powerful – but there’s a better question to be asked: Why do the elected Powers That Be defend it? The answer is the simplest one imaginable: They need it. It masks their incompetence.
But every so often, an Eric Swalwell pulls the lollipop out of his mouth and reveals it.
It’s worse in California than anywhere else. California, for various reasons, is effectively a one-party state. Democrat candidates hardly have to campaign; the mere fact that they’re Democrats is usually enough to get them elected. Thus, California Democrats are substatially stupider and less sane than Democrats nationally – and considering how stupid and insane are Democrats nationally, that’s saying something.
California produces Kamala Harrises, Dianne Feinsteins, Adam Schiffs, Maxine Waterses, and Eric Swalwells. It sends them to Washington, where they act as anchor men on the Stupid & Insane curve. Then Democrats in other states can campaign on the oh-so-thrilling platform that “at least we’re better than those California idiots and lunatics,” whereupon voters install them in office...only to discover shortly thereafter that the California idiots and lunatics are the vanguard of the Democrat Party and America’s political future: an era in which Congress, desperate to improve the mathematics grades of “minorities” — which always includes women! – decrees that henceforth pi shall be equal to three. (Four shalt thou not count. Neither count thou two, except that thou then proceed to three.)
At this point, California is stuck. Its millions are either too stupid to realize what’s been done to them and how they’ve collaborated in it, or they’re getting paid to support it.
The malady at the core of the thing is smart people making excuses for stupid people, and good people exculpating bad people. Maybe the stupid people are stupid through no fault of their own. Maybe the bad people are bad because they were brought up wrong. It doesn’t matter. They must not be permitted to go on doing what they’ve been doing.
Quite a few stupid people have to be hauled up by the scruff of their necks and placed in confinement – clean, safe, gentle confinement to be sure, with three meals per day, showers, and beds with nice mattresses, but with doors that lock from the outside and without computers, phones or Internet access. Quite a few bad people have to be strung up from lampposts, under the soon-to-be-enacted No More Swalwells law.
And the time to be about it is right BLEEP!ing now.
