What a stupid time to be alive.
Maybe there was always this much dumb in the world and we just didn’t notice it because the Internet didn’t exist, or maybe it’s new. Whatever the case, the amount of “public stupid” has never been higher.
Since this is a column and not a book, I’m limited in just how much I can cover here, but suffice to say, if stupid were a marinade and society a steak, we’d be penetrated all the way through this week.
So here, in no particular order, is just some of the stupid that happened this week (so far, considering we’re only half way through it).
1. Hillary Clinton was in India this week because, for some reason, there are people there who want to hear what she has to say. While a huge talking point in her campaign, she didn’t seem to have a problem with the massive income inequality there, but she did have a problem with the people of the United States who didn’t vote for her.
She told the wealthy people who aren’t starving who’d gathered to listen to her, “So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward, and his whole campaign ‘Make America Great Again’ was looking backwards. ‘You know, you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs, you don’t want to, you know, see that Indian-Americans are succeeding more than you are — whatever your problem is, I’m going to solve it.”
She’s handling her loss well.
What an awful, dumb, bitter thing to say. Every single time she opens her mouth we are reminded of the bullet we dodged in November of 2016.
Hillary then proceeded to nearly slide down a flight of stairs, which would have been really bad for her had she not been propped up by 2 companions.
2. The editor in chief of National Geographic (yes, it still exists) apologized for the magazine being racist in the way it covered stories in the past.
First off, it’s essentially an anthropology journal. As such, and since it was founded in 1888, there are a lot of things they did back then, and in the ensuing years, they wouldn’t do now. But so what?
Readers of the magazine, back when it was a force in the world, were likely living in the western world. Presumably, that would mean there wouldn’t be much interest in documenting societies like those. That would require NG reporters going to places that were different, significantly.
The professor NG hired to judge their past said, “People of color were often scantily clothed, people of color were usually not seen in cities, people of color were not often surrounded by technologies of automobiles, airplanes or trains or factories.” Doesn’t that make sense? “Here’s a family just like yours, who live in houses just like yours” isn’t going to interest anyone.
Putting aside the idiocy of judging the past by the standards of the present, this sort of liberal self-exorcism is only going to become more common as more people with grievance studies degrees and more student debt than brain cells enter the workforce, or at least try to.
3. Then there is Vice News. Vice likes to think of itself as “edgy” and “progressive,” because admitting it was simply a liberal activist collective probably wouldn’t have as many venture capitalists setting so much of their money on fire to buy a ticket on their Titanic.
Vice published a piece titled, “100 Easy Ways to Make Women's Lives More Bearable.” It’s a great piece of parody, only they meant it. It’s your typical “Women are oppressed” garbage slathered in a social justice sauce and wrapped in a “WOMEN CAN DO ANYTHING” bumper sticker.
It’s a radical feminist’s fever-dream. Women are equal to men, everyone knows this. But there’s not money or power to be gained by admitting that on the left, so they had to put together a list of some of the dumbest liberal tropes ever typed, each of which could be hilariously dissected on their own.
But I just want to highlight one, the 7th one. “Be kind to women in customer service positions. Tip them extra. (But not in a creepy way.)”
You can’t demand women be treated equally while demanding women be treated differently. The author doesn’t seem to realize this because she makes this dumb contradiction throughout the list. I’d expect this from someone likely fresh out of college, but are there no editors at Vice?
Maybe they were too busy sexually harassing female staffers, which has apparently been a problem there, to notice.
But I don’t want to give the impression that everything was dumb this week, though it’d be understandable if you thought that. There was an excellent piece about why liberals are such miserable, joyless people who are so easily triggered by people who won’t conform to their worldview. It skillfully dissects the current state of academia and how these bubblemonsters are bred.
It’s a great palate cleanser for a week bathed in idiocy.