Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Mr. Stupidity goes to Washington

It’s a fact that we are able to take advantage of a relatively small part of our brain. I’ve heard 10 percent, but that’s a number from the archives of conventional wisdom. Regardless, there has always been speculation as to how smart we could become, and how much we could accomplish, if we could use 40 or 60 or 80 percent of our brain power.

I wonder sometimes how far we can go in the opposite direction. How little brain power can a person who is not brain damaged choose to engage. Eight percent? Five percent? I ponder this because, when one observes Republican politicians, it seems conceivable that the number could fall into the negative digits.

Today, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) stood on the Senate floor in front of a large photo of his family and declared, “I’m really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we’ve never had a divorce or any kind of homosexual relationship.”

If this thinking doesn’t fall into the minus category, I don’t what would. I’m sorry, I said “thinking.” This is obviously some other activity.

Of what, specifically, is Inhofe proud? Is he proud that he is not like millions of other American families? Is he proud he’s not a member of Dick Cheney’s family? Is he trying to lord over us the purity of his gene pool?

Everyone groans and rolls their eyes at comparisons of Republicans to Nazis, but I have to say, there is something here that smacks of an Arian purity litmus test. “I’m really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we’ve never interbred with a Jew or had any kind of homosexual relationship.”

This is frightening stuff. It couldn’t happen here, but let me be the first to tell you, it has. How can we have fallen so far as to allow this type of homophobic, racist crap to fall from the lips of someone in the Congress of America without retribution? Feingold should beat this idiot with a cane on the Senate floor as a warning to any other representative who dares utter such offensive language.

How much stupidity can we allow to go unchecked?

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