Stupid is as Stupid Does: The Triumph of Moronicity in American Life

The most remarkable thing, perhaps, about contemporary social media is the displays of utter stupidity one finds on it on a daily basis. Take this gem from Facebook today.

A Facebook poster, who frighteningly teaches in the Palmer Independent School District, stated today that George Stephanopoulos, currently the moderator of ABC television's This Morning on Sunday and co-host of ABC's Good Morning America, is a communist. What is remarkable about this statement is its total idiocy. Such a moronic assertion reveals that this poster has no idea what Marxism is and that, most likely, his source for this statement is some cynical or moronic demagogue who manipulates Americans for political and economic gain for a living or who is an idiot him or her self.

As anyone who has taken an introductory sociology or introductory social or cultural anthropology course knows, if they remember anything about their college days other than the partying, is that Marxism is a symbol system in which economics is the key symbol around which all other Marxist symbols revolve. Marxism maintains that economics is central to human life and that economics is the motor of human history. Ironically, I suspect that if one left out the fact that this is a Marxist argument most American neoliberals would agree with this statement.

The notion that a media figure like Stephanopoulos is a communist too is utterly moronic. If Stephanopoulos was a communist it is, first off, unlikely that ABC would hire him. Stephanopoulos may know a bit about Marxism. After all he attended Columbia University in Manhattan and took a degree in political science. I seriously doubt, however, that he would describe himself as a devoted Marxist or that he, like 99% of the American population, spends much time thinking about social theory.

The poster goes on to make another immensely moronic statement, specifically that Dale Hansen, sports anchor at Dallas TV station WFAA, is a communist because he supports NFL players in their ongoing protest and recognised those protests for what they are, a protest against racial inequality and the police killings of unarmed Blacks in contemporary America. That far too many believe such tripe proves once again the truth of Giles's statement that the earth is doomed...

The Attack of the Five Minute Monster From the Deep

Apparently Prager "U"s (brought to us by radio talk show host Dennis Praeger and his fellow travellers) mantra is give me five minutes and we will give you the intellectual history of the universe. Such a notion is, of course, absurd as anyone who has dealt with reality knows. In fact, demagogues like Jonah Golderg, one of Praeger "U's" many talking heads who have recently been appearing on my Facebook page thanks, no doubt, to weird human algorithms or algorithms become missionaries to heathens like myself, might be seen as latter-day Pauly Shore's starring in their own American sitcom passion plays if they didn't actually appear to believe the demagoguery that comes out of their mouths.

What folks like Goldberg do is what demagogues, apologists, and polemicists have always done and will always do. They create caricatured and stereotyped and, of course, unnuanced straw men to then batter into dust in the liberal/commie/nazi/socialist/anarchist wind with their conservative hammers and sickles. They, for instance, don't interrogate and excavate the history of terms they talk about such as social justice and they really don't engage those who have written about justice from other points of view like Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre. Instead they confine their "analysis" to a caricature and stereotype of whatever they are "analysing" and which they have already demonised. They don't reflect on their sacred statements such as that which asserts that all states, be they monarchical, fascist, corporate, "democratic", or oligarchic, are the same, tyrannical. They confine their "analysis" to a caricature and stereotype of "government" or "states" that they have already demonised in their holy writ, oral and written. They don't see academia as it is. Engineers and physicists are hardly revolutionaries bent on destroying conservative fairy tales. They don't see reality as it is. Like it or not the US, as documents show, aided and abetted the overthrow of Chile's president.

In the end Prager U is yet another fundamentalist theocratic religion. We can actually count the ways that it is in its five-minute presentations and in the comments on the various five minute pontifications on the Prager U Facebook page. There’s the belief amongst many of the faithful that once the priestly authorities have spoken there is no need for further exploration of a topic. There’s the belief amongst many of the faithful in the inerrancy of the sacred texts of the religion. All hail the power of Hayek’s name. There are those five-minute Prager U catechisms that socialise or try to socialise the faithful, new, converts, or old, into how and what true believers should think. There are those ahistorical and anti-historical attitudes of many of the faithful. There’s the belief among many of the faithful that true believers need to mission to the many heretics outside the Prager church. There’s even a willingness among many of the red faced emotional true believing faithful that, should evangelism fail, heretics should symbolically and even perhaps actually be burned at the inquisitorial stake. Prager U is a religion. Prager U is a theocratic religion just like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam before it. Everyone, by now, should expect this inquisition.