Stupid

Q: What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?

A: I don't know and I don't care.

Okay, as jokes go, it isn't "laugh out loud" funny. It's more "shaking my head in rueful recognition" funny. Or not funny at all if you don't know the definition of the words ignorance and apathy.

I'm guessing that joke jets at Mach-3 over the heads of many Americans today. Many people. As a nation, we're going to need someone else to take the SATs for us. 

Consider the fight over wearing masks in the midst of a global pandemic. To understand the efficacy of masks you only need to know that COVID-19 is a severe, acute respiratory syndrome. Of course, that means you need to know the definition of the word respiratory. 

I assume about 40% of Americans don't know what that word means.

Because we had someone else take the SAT for us.

I'm not saying everyone in America is stupid. Some Americans are smart enough to realize how easy it is to wrangle the dull herd of the electorate by underfunding public education, by demonizing science and the godless intellectual elite, and assuring the victims of the corporate greed their policies fund that good times will be trickling down like summer rain to wash away their poverty and misfortune any day now. 

Opening public schools while cases of COVID-19 are peaking? Hey, let's not let science get in the way here, people! Our public schools are already abattoirs, anyway. We're making an economic recovery omelet and you know what that means for the eggs.

Global climate change is a hoax. Police brutality is a hoax. Systemic racism is a hoax. The Coronavirus is a hoax.

Facts are a hoax. 

Alternative facts are real. 

To paraphrase Bob Dylan: You don't need to be a game show host to know which way the wind blows.

It blows stupid. It blows stupid like a Category-5 hurricane. 

Think I'm wrong?

In what reality (other than this one) can you imagine the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, the leader of the free world, granting legitimacy to the conspiracy theory lunacy of a former game show host while his administration does everything in its power to discredit one of the leading scientists and recognized leaders in the field of infectious diseases?

And you know who's buying it?

40% of Americans, that's who.