THINKING VS. IDIOCRACY

The setting was Mimi’s Cafe on a Friday morning around 10 a.m. when I heard three people discussing politics, the housing market and the president of the United States, Barrack Obama. Their exchange took about 10-15 minutes total but I was ready to puke by minute 3. The woman who initiated their conversation mentioned the president with a sarcastic tone to which one of her friends responded, “Where is he from anyway?” The woman exclaimed, “Saudi Arabia” in half-joking response and I thought and said words to my wife that I won’t repeat here in print.

I was upset and was surprised at how quickly I had arrived there – to a state of rage that is. I was maddened by the continued theorizing that our commander in chief is not a natural-born citizen. He was born in 1961 in the newest of the 50 states, Hawaii, which was added to the union in 1959. Obama’s birth certificate was produced prior to his embarking upon the presidency but I ain’t bloggin’ about that. I’m more interested in what lies beneath, as usual.

I wasn’t just upset enough to holler, “check please” due to the idiocy going on at my 6 o’clock. It was bigger than that. It was the blaming, the scapegoating, the scathing ridicule couched in matter-of-fact language about the nation’s president. It reminded me of the disrespect I witnessed when then president Bill Clinton flew into Monrovia, California via Navy 1 for an “America’s Safest City” celebration. I was covering the event for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune as an intern in the summer of 1996 and while walking toward the auditorium of Monrovia High School I heard some protesters saying, “Republican is the truth.” They had cardboard cutouts of Bill and Hillary in striped jump suits for criminal effigy effect. As I walked past them, a policeman behind me responded to the protesters, “Yes, but you respect the office.”

Fast forward to this morning and it just reminded me of how enamored we can become with ourselves. We are seldom interested in proof or legitimacy whether it’s the president, Kobe Bryant or some other satirized villain. We are lazy intellectually and it doesn’t matter what the seal on your diploma/degree says. We take too much at face value and/or use fraudulent sources of evidence as grounds for deriding and attacking. We might be smart people but we don’t always act like it. Today kind of reminded me that there is much to be said for how emotional idiocy leads to crazy talk.