Support your right to arm bears

"There is, historically and persistently, a belief in us that y'all just can't trust nobody who acts too smart or talks too good - in other words, somebody whose "general persona" indicates they may have once cracked a book or had a thought. Americans tend to believe common sense the exclusive province of humble folks without sheep-skins on the wall or big words in their vocabularies... More to the point, something is wrong when we celebrate mental mediocrity... under the misapprehension that competence or, God forbid, 'intelligence,' makes a person one of those 'elites' - that's a curse word now - lacking authenticity, compassion and common sense... I am tired of being asked to pretend stupid is a virtue."
-Leonard J. Pitts Jr.

I've sat on this quote for a long time, not really knowing what to do with it mostly because it unavoidably leads to a political discussion. A part of me really wants to go sling some mud, and a part of me wants to let the quote speak for itself. But the fact that it accurately describes the general climate of an entire constituency is scary. It's scary that a good half of our country actively promotes attacks on intelligence by supporting a man who's career has been nothing but a string of failures, or a woman who has a history of not commitment issues, or a man who espouses "knowledge" on a bevy of political, economic, and social topics, yet whose higher learning experience was one college class on "Early Christology" (whatever the hell that is). These same people are the people who have made disparaging comments about the "condescending" nature of certain political figures' oratory skills (because apparently forming a coherent sentence is a sign of elitist arrogance) and the fact that all of the supreme justices have Ivy League degrees.

I just don't understand it. This nation stands on the shoulders of men who were markedly more learned than the world they existed in (but wait, let's not forget that one of the brightest of these men has been reduced to an afterthought for an entire state of students). Somewhere along the way, though, common sense and intelligent thought got separated from each other, and now stand in opposition for many people. Intelligence, or perhaps an idea of "over-intelligence," cannot produce common sense, and common sense somehow sidesteps intelligence. So we come at an impasse, where some people would rather have a leader who they could see themselves knocking back a thirty with rather than one who they could sit in a lecture hall and learn from.

This isn't a political stance, per say, though as I mentioned before, it's hard to talk about it without making a political statement because of the culture we exist in today. I don't believe that intelligence only exists on the Left and ignorance only on the Right, but people make it hard to say otherwise sometimes. More so, I don't want to believe we're entering a regressive era, where many intelligent and well-thought-out ideas are rolled back because they are whatever they are to the people rolling them back. But the signs keep showing that perhaps that might be the case (Texas school board agendas, Arizona immigration laws, Rand Paul, ire over nuclear weapons agreements, the anti-climate change people who somehow hate the idea of improving the state of the earth with or without cause). These people exist on both sides of the spectrum, but they're almost exclusively led by a herd of pachyderm.

The quote at the top is an excerpt from an article on how a GOP nomination of Sarah Palin for president in 2012 would be a good gut check for America. I agree, and I believe that it would be a failed bid, but I cannot help but be unnerved at the idea of it blowing up in our faces. For all the myriad reasons as to why I fear this, there is a myriad half-baked but fervently defended retorts. So rather than harp on the obvious, I'll just say that I firmly believe that the way one treats animals is a good indication of his or her character, and any person ruthless enough to find it gratifying to chase and shoot animals from a helicopter is not a stellar choice for the leader of 300 million plus people. That choice would truly be death from above.

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In other news, I could listen to this song every day. I often do, actually. Why try to find joy in complicated, fussy things when it can be found in such simplicity?