Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest

Let’s ditch MAGA for MASA — Make America Smart Again

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece advocating that we should dump the whole MAGA thing because, well, America is and always has been great, despite our occasional fits and starts. Instead, I suggested that we needed to launch a new movement — MASA, or Make America Smart Again. That was around the time that Joe Biden claimed in a debate that “we beat Medicare” and then a couple of months later Nancy Pelosi suggested that he deserved to be added to Mt. Rushmore. It was clear that we were getting dumber.

Now it’s clear that we’ve passed dumb; we’ve hit dumber and are heading to dumbest.

Our dumbness seems to be boundless. Apparently, we’re having a national debate over the need to show some form of ID in order to vote. Clearly, that’s a dumb debate; 80 to 85 percent of Americans support some sort of voter ID. Not some of our Democratic leaders, including Gavin Newsom and Bernie Sanders, who view the requirement to show ID a form of voter suppression. Why? Because apparently it’s hard for some folks — especially poor people and minorities — to obtain the proper ID. Here’s Gavin complaining that even he — governor of the fourth-largest economy in the world — doesn’t know how to access his birth certificate. Here’s Bernie making the same complaint. Puzzled, I went online and ordered a copy of my birth certificate in two minutes. Guys, I hope you’re reading this. You too can have a copy of your birth certificate for $20 and a few dozen keystrokes.

At least Gavin is transparent about his dumbness. At an event this week in Atlanta to promote his new book, Gavin addressed a predominantly Black audience by saying he was “like you” and “no better than you” because he scored only 960 on the SAT and he “cannot read a speech.” That was dumb both literally and figuratively, and reminiscent of Joe Biden’s comment that “poor kids are just as smart as white kids.”

Bernie’s sidekick, AOC, offered a flagrant display of dumbness at the Munich Security Conference recently when asked about the U.S. position on Taiwan’s sovereignty.

“Would and should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move?” she was asked. Her reply: “You know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, this is, of course, a very long-standing policy of the United States. And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.”

Dumb, obviously. Even dumber: this late-night rant from Brooklyn’s favorite former bartender on her constituents complaining about this week’s blizzard. “I’m starting to wonder how many of you know how snow works,” she says, “and know like at what temperature snow melts.” This is dumb pandering to dumber.

Lest you think I’m piling on to Democrats, we only have to turn our gaze to Donald Trump, who recently claimed that the noise from wind turbines can cause cancer, that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were on a cat-eating spree, and that Arnold Palmer’s genitalia was larger than average (that may be so, but our President musing about it in public is just plain dumb). Or Mitch McConnell’s recent response when he was asked if he was considering running again. His answer was not only literally dumb (he couldn’t speak), but also sad. However, it raised a higher-level question about how dumb we are, which is why can’t we recognize the need for age or term limits in Congress?

But just to get back to ground-level dumb, let’s consider Katie Porter, the foul-mouthed former congresswoman running for California governor. Her campaign platform is free universal childcare, single-payer healthcare, “less expensive” housing, free tuition at all UC and state university campuses, and no state income tax on people earning less than $100,000. Do the math. If we can make it add up, we’re dumber than we thought.

But wait, what about the next generation? Surely, Gen Z will wise up and get us back on track toward a more informed and curious public dialogue. Or maybe not. Check out the knowledge base of these young Zoomers at Cal State Fullerton. Or these Zoomers demonstrating full command of the English language.

But then again, maybe being dumb has become irrelevant. After all, with AI we’ll all become PhD equivalents, or so we’re told. How else would I know that the National Institutes of Health predict that by 2030, the average IQ in America will be at ~100? IQ, of course, is an imperfect and incomplete measure of intelligence. There are other measures that matter, like emotional intelligence, creativity, and practical skills, which are all components of comprehensive intelligence. And then there’s aggregate intelligence, the so-called “wisdom of the crowds,” which has proven to be remarkably smart, accurate and predictive.

Still, even with those caveats, watching Newsom, Trump, Sanders, Porter, et al can be disheartening. We’re smarter than that, I’m pretty sure. What temperature does snow melt at again?