The Penalties of Stupidity Were Once Confined to the Stupid–Tales from Our Past

When I was a small boy, my mother would take me food shopping with her, and I recall very well my first encounters with tabloids like the one shown here.  I couldn’t understand for the life of me how anyone could be entertained by this type of pure stupidity.

Sixty years later things have changed, but not for the better.  Now we have people who actually believe things as improbable as “bat children” or Elvis sightings.  And worse, their beliefs are no longer benign; they have powerfully harmful effects on everyone else on the planet.

For instance:

• We are experiencing a climate crisis, but the massive number of climate deniers are impeding our civilization’s capacity to limit the damage and help guide the planet back onto a sustainable course.

• The world is dealing with a pandemic, and Anthony Fauci, who served as the White House medical advisor to seven presidents suggested, during various phases of dealing with the disease, that we wear masks and get vaccinated. That may have sounded modest at the time, but we live among tens of millions of people who believe masks don’t work and vaccines take more lives than they save.

• In the complete absence of evidence, about one-third of Americans believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump via massive voter fraud.  This appears to be leading to even more aggressive forms of gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression in our future, making fair and free elections a thing of the past.

The penalty for stupidity was once limited to the stupid. That’s as it should be.  Now, however, it’s no longer the case.