I have to admit there is a difference between stupidity and ignornace. Ignorant people may not in fact be actually stupid, and stupid people may not always be ignorant. That said, when people exhibit incredibly, really incredulous ignorance, I tend to call them stupid. If nothing else it’s viscerally fun using the more provocative word. Take the latest ire-inducing Gallup/Harris poll: 37% of Americans can’t identify America when looking at a map of America. So welcome to Stupidoville. “Of the 1,400 residents surveyed, the most common incorrect responses placed the more than 230-year-old territory in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans (19 percent), the space where Mexico would appear were it in fact included on the map (10 percent), and inside the word “America” written just above the northernmost states (6 percent).”
You see, evidently the thinking process went something like this: ” ‘That thing [map of U.S] definitely looked familiar,’ ” said autoworker and father of three Ed McConnell. ” ‘And my gut told me there were probably a whole bunch of Americans there. So I had to go with ‘Iraq’ (yeah, Ed may indeed be stupid). Others thought the land mass to be “Hollywood,” “Palestine,” “The Shire,” and “Club Med Punta Cana.”
But perhaps the stupidist of all is Homeland Security (believe me, this is embarrassing): The Department of Homeland Security “sees the Gallup/Harris poll results as a blessing in disguise. According to Secretary Michael Chertoff, the nation would be better off if these numbers skewed even higher. ‘Personally, I believe if fewer people in this world could spot America on a map, we’d have a much better chance of avoiding national tragedies like 9/11,’ “said Chertoff. ” ‘You can’t attack a country you can’t find.’ “
Welcome to Stupidoville.
Read more here.
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Note: I believe that at sometime in the not too distant future adult Americans will give up keyboards and pens in favor of crayons and coloring books. The government will pay them to go to their jobs to sit at a desk all day to color pictures of flowers and zoo animals, broken only by milk and cookie breaks.
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Note: Is there a definite line where stupidity ascends above ignorance? Yes, well, for starters I think this could be considered a recent example: Two men are facing armed burglary charges after they entered a home in Plant City [S. Florida] and demanded the victim turn over his metal egg beater. Hopefully they will be Darwin Award winners. Story here.
