Shine a light

The Mittens have got me thinking. That would be Shirley and John A. Mittens, of Brooksville, Fla.:

Shirley Mitten, 64, a volunteer at a pregnancy center and a resident of Brooksville, Fla., ... said she does not know if Mr. Obama is a Muslim. "He says he's not, but we have no way of knowing," Ms. Mitten said.

Her husband, John A. Mitten, 64 ... pointed out that Mr. Obama's father was a Muslim.

The middle name Hussein, he said, added to the suspicion. "I guess Obama was named after Saddam Hussein," he said.

So yes, obviously, John A. and Shirley Mitten of Brooksville, Fla., are both A) bigots and B) really, really dumb. But what, exactly, is the relationship between those two things? What is the nature of the relationship between racism and stupidity?

To the extent I'd thought about this before, I think I may have had it backwards. Let me explain. Here is the data, of sorts, with which I've been dealing:

1. I have never met a bigot* who wasn't also stupid.

2. I have known many, many stupid people who were not bigots.

If we were to draw this relationship as a Venn diagram, bigotry would be a smaller circle entirely inside the larger circle of stupidity. The temptation, then, is to think of racism as a particular subset of stupidity, but I think that leads us astray.

The conclusion I had drawn from thinking about this relationship in this way was that stupidity was a necessary, but not a sufficient, cause of bigotry. I was thinking, in other words, that stupidity was the precondition -- that it was the starting point from which one might go on to become a racist.

That seems like a logically sound explanation for the data above, but I now think it's backwards. I think cause and effect flow in the other direction. I think, instead, that bigotry is a sufficient, but not a necessary, cause of stupidity. In other words, I think that bigotry is the precondition -- that it is a starting point from which one inevitably and inexorably goes on to become stupid.

This, I believe, is the dynamic we are seeing at work in the Mittens and in all those terrifying videos of the angry mobs at Sarah Palin rallies. We are not seeing a crowd of naive simpletons being led astray by demagoguery. We are seeing a crowd of people who have chosen to accept unreal ideas, and who are therefore forced to embrace The Stupid.

Racism, bigotry and xenophobia are immoral, of course, but they are also, just as fundamentally, untrue. They are unreal. They provide a theory and a framework for living in the world that cannot be reconciled with the reality of this world. The person who chooses to accept that unreal framework is thus constantly forced to choose between unreality and reality, between the theory and the facts. To hold onto the unreal framework, they must continuously reject reality. And every time they do that, they get a little bit dumber.**

I don't mean for this to be an entirely abstract discussion. I'm interested in the relationship between stupidity and racism because I want to know which is the root cause. This is a matter of both diagnosis and prescription. And I believe there is a prescription. The Mittens may be stupid, but they do not have to remain so. I believe there is hope for them.

The truth is that unreality is simply unsustainable. Maintaining one's belief in an unreal and untrue theory takes too much work. The vigilant rejection of reality has to be, on some level, exhausting. Even the elaborate support structures provided by Fox News and AM radio cannot wholly shield one from the constant intrusions of the world that is. Denying the existence of that world requires more help than even the voluminous right-wing echo chamber can provide.

This, I think, is part of why we're seeing such desperate vehemence at the Palin rallies. The crowd realizes that the unreality it has chosen cannot long survive if the majority of their fellow citizens and neighbors refuse to play along. As long as the entire crowd is choosing to "see" the emperor's splendid new clothes, then it's relatively easy to go along with that choice. But once the crowd reaches a tipping point, once the majority are choosing reality and the truth, then the emperor's nakedness become impossible to deny. For those who have chosen bigotry, racism and xenophobia, this election represents just such a tipping point. They're watching unreality slip through their fingers and they're trying, desperately, to grasp it even tighter.

After this election, part of our task -- yours, mine and our new president's -- will be to find a way to gently invite and welcome these folks back into the real world. My suspicion, or at least my hope, is that eventually, once they are unburdened by the need to constantly choose unreality and therefore stupidity, they will find this a great relief.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* I'm not here discussing more structural or institutional forms of racism, nor am I talking here about the more general self-justifying mythologies that every privileged people repeats to itself as an apologetic. Set aside here the question of whether or not bigotry is a pervasive, endemic reality in American culture. For the sake of this discussion, let us recalibrate our tools to discount for whatever pre-existing base level of bigotry there may be so that we can here focus on the exceptional bigot -- the sort of person who stands out as more bigoted than the surrounding/underlying culture as a whole.

** At this point you may be suspecting that this post is little more than an elaborate attempt to repackage the argument of the book of 1 John in non-sectarian terms. Well, yeah. Did it work?

Comments

[g]

Surely it actually goes both ways. Stupid people are more likely to be bigots. Being a bigot makes one stupid. And so it goes, in a truly vicious circle.

[J]

*After this election, part of our task -- yours, mine and our new president's -- will be to find a way to gently invite and welcome these folks back into the real world. My suspicion, or at least my hope, is that eventually, once they are unburdened by the need to constantly choose unreality and therefore stupidity, they will find this a great relief.*

"...There's no one to fret, no one to condemn, no one to bless me for being a good girl, no one to punish me for being wicked. Heaven was empty. I didn't know whether God had died, or whether there had never been a God at all. Either way I felt free and I didn't know whether I was happy or unhappy, but something very strange had happened. And all that huge change came about as I had the marzipan in my mouth, before I even swallowed it. A taste--a memory--a landslide . . ."

"In one way it was hard to leave the Church . . . but in another way it was easy, because it made sense. For the first time ever I felt I was doing something with all my nature and not only a part of it."

--Philip Pullman, *The Amber Spyglass*, pp. 398-399

[Brel]

Except when smart people are bigots, e.g. Kipling. Or does that go against what zompist said about not looking at the underlying cultural issues?

[Brel]

Er. Slacktivist. I post on way too many forums for my own good apparently -_-

[Narya]

Ah, but you haven't put fear into the equation/diagram, and MHO suggests that it's often a big part of, possibly an additional cause of, bigotry. And possibly certain kinds of stupidity, as well.

[Lila]

"The trouble with trying to make yourself stupider than you are is that you very often succeed." --C.S. Lewis

I would just like to point out that Barack Obama was 18 years old, and had had his middle name for quite some time, when Saddam Hussein became President of Iraq.

Re Kipling: I also think you have to consider the bigoted individual's surroundings. Nearly all of Kipling's contemporaries believed unquestioningly that white Europeans were superior to all other flavors of human being. Given that, Kipling's own racism actually looks pretty moderate. Sure, we cringe at it now, but in his own day he embraced the startling idea that, for example, a Hindu ascetic could actually be a holy man.

[Drocket]

*I would just like to point out that Barack Obama was 18 years old, and had had his middle name for quite some time, when Saddam Hussein became President of Iraq.*

The stupid will simply claim that you can't prove this because all you have to base it on is Obama's "forged" birth certificate (after all, everyone knows he's not an American citizen!) They'll back this up by pointing out that as a child, he went by Barry, then started using his full name, Barack, as an adult. Hussein probably WAS'T his original middle name - he chose it himself after Saddam came into power, then altered the records of the state of Hawaii to make it look like that was his middle name all the time!

I've been spending a significant amount of time lately arguing with the stupid about this election. I can now predict their arguments before they even make them...

[Pho]

By their own logic, these people were named after children's hand coverings and therefore shouldn't be taken seriously.

[Paul Bagosy]

"He says he's not, but we have no way of knowing"

Ms. Mittens may say she's not a terrorist hell-bent on the destruction of America, but we have no way of knowing. I guess our safest course of action is to ship her off to Gitmo and points beyond!

-pb

[Brad]

This is an awfully unexpected argument for you to make. I say this as a years-long reader who respects you a great deal, but this is how my ex-Evangelical friends describe the entire Evangelical culture: as an ever escalating embrace of stupidity and/or see+hear+speak no evil-ism in defense of the fundamental unrealities of Christian faith. I am curious where you feel the borders of the unreal end: at racism, or are Original Sin and indeed the whole God and Jesus thing possibly in the same territory? What's the distinguishing factor?

[Robb]

this post is little more than an elaborate attempt to repackage the argument of the book of 1 John in non-sectarian terms. Well, yeah. Did it work?

It's worked quite well to at least give pause to my more conservative friends & acquaintences who subtly and not-so-subtly imply (and in some cases, actually believe) that Obama is the Anti-Christ or some other evil. I'm actually disappointed that argument (that Obama is the A.C./Nicky Rocky/Barry Ozark) isn't popping up more, because it's really easy to refute, even against LB reading types.

BTW, hello my fellow slacktavistas - I'm not avoiding you, I just changed jobs/tasks at work, & now most of my browsing/commenting time has been taken up by [ugh] work.

[Alan]

To me, calling such people stupid almost seems too kind, like we're letting them off the hook. True stupidity, i.e. a below average intelligence, is a regrettable fact of biology. Its sister-state, ignorance, represents a lack of education, which is most commonly an accident of birth and which, in rational people, can be corrected.

What we see with the Mittens is something quite different, a deliberate and conscious choice to believe something that no rational person could believe simply because said belief, if it were actually true, would be in some way advantageous to the believer. In this case, if it could be proven that Barack Hussein Obama were secretly a Muslim, despite all evidence to the contrary, even to the point of him having been deliberately named after Saddam Hussein, then this revelation would demonstrate the superior judgment, patriotism and intelligence of the Mittens over their more-liberal fellow citizens. Or to borrow Judith Miller's formulation, they would be "proved fucking right."

Of course, Obama is not a Muslim. And there would be nothing wrong with it if he were. And worst of all for the Mittens, the suggestion that his parents actually named him after Saddam Hussein is ludicrous to any rational person given the complete insignificance of Saddam Hussein in 1961. And by believing these silly things, the Mittens actually reveal themselves to be foolish, bigoted and ignorant. Rather than face this reality and attempt to change, they deliberately choose delusion just to make themselves feel superior.

And that sin -- willful ignorance in support of pride -- is why I can never forgive or respect them.

[Robb]

Convenient coincidence: "Mittens" = willfully ignorant hicks, but also = Mitt Romney followers? Ironic considering even Mitt Romney is uncomfortable with the McCain campaign's tone.

[bellatrys]

It's a special and narrow sort of stupidity: it is the stupidity of very clever, or at least canny, and well-educated people, quite often - and yet these people with multiple advanced degrees from reputable and even Ivy League schools, and jobs in engineering or medicine or accounting at multinational companies, hold things publically that are as daffy as schoolchildren telling each other about how honest-to-God, Hookhand is real, they know this 'cause their big sister's boyfriend's brother was nearly KILLED by him driving home after a party up at the lake--!

--The bigoted stupidity of a George Will or a William F. Buckley or a Charlotte Allen or a Victor Davis Hanson or a [Redacted person I know IRL] or a [Redacted relative of mine] falls under the heading of Willful Ignorance, and is very much akin to expert collectors and museum curators getting sold statues or paintings that in hindsight are obviously fake and which they were warned against by others at the time. They wanted to believe themselves winners, they wanted to be the ones to gain the prize above all others, and wishthink is a terribly powerful force. And so is flattery, which, along with fearmongery, is one of the primary tools of con artists.

But hubris is strongest of them all...

[FITTER HAPPIER]

The middle name Hussein, he said, added to the suspicion. "I guess Obama was named after Saddam Hussein," he said.

Good God, what idiocy. Its stupid on so many different levels, but let's just do a bit of math.

Saddam Hussein was born in 1937. Hussein was virtually unknown until 1968 with the coup that brought the Ba'athists to power. It wasn't till the 70s that Hussein was a major player in Iraqi politics. And he didn't become president of Iraq until 1979.

Barack Obama was born in 1961.

Moron.

[FITTER HAPPIER]

By the way, once again, a great post.

~~~

"The truth is that unreality is simply unsustainable. Maintaining one's belief in an unreal and untrue theory takes too much work. The vigilant rejection of reality has to be, on some level, exhausting."

~~~

This is true. A long time ago, I was involved with the Christian Identity movement, but got out of it within two years. Originally I was in the Church of Christ (which was bad enough) but had bought into the whole "liberal media" schtick, the New World Order, the Illiminati, Jewish bankers, the whole nine yards. But I really had a hard time swallowing it all.

At the time, my main preoccupation was more religious than political. I used to spend hours listening to tapes & reading books and outlining all this stuff. I especially remember after hearing a sermon on tape (by none other than the racist Pete Peters of Colorado) about the "three days" that Jesus was in the grave. He had re-defined what a day was, but the math still didn't add up for me. I spent days just trying to work it all out.

I don't think I was good cult material. LOL I thought too much, asked too many questions, and I wanted to understand things thoroughly for myself. Eventually, for lots of reasons, I got out of it all. I certainly felt less "intellectually constipated."

For the life of me, I don't recall why I felt it was so important to me at the time. I was always in conflict with myself.

[Doctor Science]

I have never met a bigot* who wasn't also stupid.

You're lucky, Fred. I certainly have met some very, very intelligent people (at least along some axis) who were also flaming bigots. bellatrys is right: it's all about wishing yourself to be a winner, the self-glorifying mythology Fred references in his post. But yes, that kind of mythologizing is bigoted -- and yes, it is stupid.

[Chris]

The truth is that unreality is simply unsustainable. Maintaining one's belief in an unreal and untrue theory takes too much work.

I think the evidence is against you here. Regardless of whether there is a true religion (and if so, which one), there are clearly many false religions, which are therefore unreal and untrue. But people maintain their beliefs in them nevertheless, and even propagate them over generations.

In short, you're being too optimistic; the unreality of a belief system does not reliably predict whether or not it will be maintained and propagated. Peer support makes a big difference and when you look at poll numbers from states like Oklahoma and Utah, it's clear that the Mittens have many peers who will continue to support their beliefs.

In a way, this is a dark side of modern communications technology: people with the same weird belief can find each other and "confirm" it, while without that technology they'd probably be swayed by how much the more representative sample of people geographically near them rejected it. Of course, Utah in particular was founded in an attempt to harness the power of geography to reinforce a belief system rejected by most of the wider community, so maybe modern communications aren't so different after all.

I think a lot of the rest of your post is good, but the assumption that reality will triumph is not borne out by, well, reality. (Of course, this won't necessarily stop you, or any other human, from continuing to believe it anyway!)

[Sheila]

The same thing happens within certain elements of the other end of the political spectrum as well, though. Just start talking to a 9/11 conspiracy theorist--any conspiracy theorist, really--and you'll see a similar rejection of facts that don't fit in the given paradigm.

[Jeff]

At this point you may be suspecting that this post is little more than an elaborate attempt to repackage the argument of the book of 1 John in non-sectarian terms. Well, yeah. Did it work?

Not for me, but I wouldn't have recognized 1 John if you'd made it into a pop-up book!

[Bridgett]

This is made all the better by choosing an example of bigot with a diminutive silly last name. If they were the Meyers or the Franklins, this wouldn't be nearly as entertaining as the Mittens. Well done.

[lightning]

Good God, what idiocy. Its stupid on so many different levels, but let's just do a bit of math.

It's even worse. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was named after Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (Duh!) Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was born in 1936. Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was born in 1937. Bit of a disconnect, there.

It's not like Hussein is a particularly uncommon name in that part of the world.

[cjmr's husband]

I had a cat named Mittens (1973-1989). Truly a great cat, but I wonder why these people named themselves after him.

I concur that we aren't dealing with Stupidity here, but rather Willful Ignorance. Consider the discussion I had with my very intelligent, but rather unfortunately Texan, boss last week:

Me: Comment on sign I saw stating that Obama isn't a citizen
Me: Complaint about birth certificate troofers
Boss: Birth certificate is irrelevant, parents aren't citizens.
Me: Native born, and mother was a citizen
Boss: Mother not a citizen, her parents weren't natural born citizens.
Me: O RLY? They're from Kansas...
Boss: Irrelevant

Me, six hours late: Get off my land, paleface.

Here's a guy who married a foreigner, dealt with *her* citizenship; dealt with their kid's dual citizenship; dealt with visa issues for his employees; watched one of our Indians get naturalized; and tries to convince me that Obama isn't a citizen, despite being born in Hawaii, because his *grandparents* weren't born in the U.S.

Thing is, they were both born in Kansas too. In fact, his grandmother, may she rest in peace, was part Native American. You don't get any more native born than this!

[Karen]

Folks, the Mittens could be my parents, and my father has a PhD. He was repeatedly the most popular professor at the college where he taught for 40 years, and which has a large African - American enrollment. My mother won an award from the NAACP, fergawds-bloody-sake, for making business loans to its members. She has a Master's. When it comes down to it, they're still creatures of the Jim Crow south. They led me to Jordan, but couldn't cross into the Promised Land themselves.

[pharoute]

"no way of knowing" Nonsense. There's several ways of knowing;
1) Considering the round the clock campaigning that's been going on surely a reporter would have seen Sen. Obama kneel in prayer toward Mecca at least ONCE by now!
2) Give him a ham sandwich
3) Check his tax returns, has he donated 1/10th of his wealth?
4) Has he ever professed that "There is one God, Allah and Muhammed is his prophet?"
5) Has he made a pilgrimage to Mecca?
Of course the Mittens would probably come back with "he's a secret Muslim" which simply put, can't exist. A major point of Islam, just like Christianity is to witness, to profess your faith. If you are not practicing the requirements of Islam you aren't a Muslim. And like Judaism, Islam is a heavy on the practice religion, "you'll know them by their works" sort of thing.
The most ridiculous part of the Mittens' little write up is that they ever got written up in the first place. You have a right to your opinion, that doesn't mean your opinion is right.

[cyrano]

I had a cat named Mittens (1973-1989). Truly a great cat, but I wonder why these people named themselves after him.

cjmr's husband wins his weight in Internets.

[Dash]

Did it work?

Yes, Fred, it worked, damn you!

So I'm reading along about these stupid, stupid, STUPID Mittens, who are basically a waste of skin and taking up space on God's green earth that could be better occupied by pretty much anyone else, and then you want me to help "gently invite and welcome these [turds] back into the real world" (well, your word was "folks," but I find it weak and insufficiently descriptive). Hah! What they deserve, mind you, is what I'd most enjoy: grabbing each of these fools by the scruff of the neck and banging their wooden heads together.

Then you just so innocently append that little remark from the good apostle about those who hate their brothers. Which, if I'm to take it seriously, suggests I have some serious reconsideration to do on the subject of whose wooden head needs to be banged against what.

I have sat through whole months of sermons with less spiritual effect. Seriously.

[Dennis]

"1. I have never met a bigot* who wasn't also stupid."

I think you are being overly generous by attributing bigotry to stupidity instead of malice. There are tons of people who are otherwise geniuses, but who are racists or sexists anyways. James Watson is a perfect example. But do you really think every Republican involved in the implication of the Southern Strategy over the years has been as dumb as those cited above?

[Turcano]

3) Check his tax returns, has he donated 1/10th of his wealth?

Actually, for Muslims it would be one-fortieth.

[cyrano]

This is gonna be off-topic a little, but I can't stop thinking about it.

The "bigotry->unreality->idiocy" progression that you identified, Fred, is the Central Dogma of Wingnutics, and from it we can derive a critical lemma: for every bigoted political movement, there is a point in time when the collective becomes so unhinged, so disconnected, so breathtakingly stupid that the individual, fearing for her own intelligence, bails out. Bigotry becomes just too costly.

I believe that this is happening in the conservative movement right now. Moderate conservatives like Chris Buckley and Kathleen Parker have become discouraged with the movement and its politics. Right-leaning friends of mine are getting despondent; some have stopped listening to AM radio; others no longer read right-wing weblogs. They'll still vote for McCain out of party loyalty, but they're filling their personal time with hobbies and more profitable pursuits. Meanwhile, the Republican base is hunkering down and getting crazier and crazier.

It is interesting that the fulcrum for this shift was Sarah Palin. She alienated the moderates, chilled the enthusiastic, and stoked to a torrid frenzy the true believers. It's interesting because Palin is not really remarkable in herself. She is no more mendacious than Bush was. Her faux-lksy mannerisms are old-hat for the right wing. Her professed opposition to the media is commonplace for a conservative. So is her superstitious religiosity. So is her aggressive know-nothing doofusism. But for some reason, she was the straw that broke the camel's back. For some reason, the Palin pick, and the subsequent media scrutiny, were that magical step where the threshold was crossed and all the remaining "normal" conservatives jumped ship. Even before the economy went south, I think this was starting to happen - the financial crisis just sped up what would otherwise have taken a few months. So we could call it the "Palin point" - the point at which political bigotry becomes too stupid to exist.

It tickles me immeasurably to think that that could be her legacy.

[FITTER HAPPIER]

The "Palin Point." I love it. Or "Palin's Law." Even stupidity and bigotry has its limits. And she found it.

I doubt it. If the economy had still been going great and the Republican Party had a stronger chance of winning the Presidency and expanding in the Congress, I don't think that so many prominent conservatives would have disavowed the party's ticket even with Palin on board.

It's hard to remember, but Palin is hardly the worst politician ever nominated for the Presidency, and this isn't the first time that a major party has been in crisis mode for a prolonged period of time. It's not Palin's fault; if they had picked Romney, Huckabee, Hagel, Specter, or anyone else, it still wouldn't have mattered because the public blames the Republicans in large part for what's happening now and they will almost certainly not reward them with another Presidential term.

Back to the central point about bigotry; it sometimes works, doesn't it? While bigotry is less common than it was before, there is enough of it spread out that allows some pretty crazy people to take office.

[Jeremy]

Racism and sexism are simply the point at which human generalisations about groups to which we don't belong (if a majority of race x have been brought up in culture y and culture y has this particularly different way of doing z, then, in a situation in which an assessment of another person has to be made quickly, your average person would not be crazy to assume, in the absence of other information, that another person of race x will behave in the manner described by z) are taken into the realm of stupidity because the person holding them forgets that they are just that - assumptions, that are often WRONG. That another individual is no more constrained to react within the bounds of a stereotype than you yourself are.

The first step isn't "stupid" per se, though - it's a very understandable human shortcut that helps us interpret the world with our limited brains, brains which are not capable of researching everyone we meet before we have to decide how best to deal with them.

[El Durazno de la Muerte]

I don't suppose Palin was the tipping point because she's a woman?

I mean, I've read research that suggests that members of our lovable, patriarichal society are more consistently negative in their assessment of the competence or intelligence of females, regardless of any objective measures. Like, even in describing their infant daughters' ability to crawl. It's pretty weird.

So perhaps Palin's standard faux-lksy (love the word!) approach is more grating and obvious to conservatives because of her sex? Is it possible that it took a woman doing exactly the same thing to make them realize how dumb it is?

...I made myself sad.

[Bugmaster]

So perhaps Palin's standard faux-lksy (love the word!) approach is more grating and obvious to conservatives because of her sex?

Yes, it's possible, but a likelier explanation is that she really is just too stupid, even compared to other politicians from her party. :-/

I mean... I have seen stupid politicians before, but they could at least fake some sort of level of understanding, some of the time. Palin can't even fake it convincingly.

[Kristy]

It is weirdly appropriate that this was posted on the same day that my roommate came home, fuming, because of an argument with his manager in which said manager asserted, out loud and on purpose, that not only should non-white people not run for office (yes, for real) - they also shouldn't vote.

Attempts to point out to said manager that he, like my roommate, is at least partially Hispanic and therefore noticeably, well, brown, were ignored.

pharoute, "Give him a ham sandwich" was funny enough to cause a spit-take. Well-played.

[Jason]

Or a BLT! Tasty and pig-based!

And the quickest way to stop someone who's using the "But we only have his word..." is to reply "And I have only your word that you don't molest puppies and children."

[Nenya]

It's possible Palin was the tipping point (if she was) because she was a woman. :( It could also be that she was brand-new, not someone like Huckabee or Romney that we had had on the national stage for a while. I don't know. It sort of seems like it was the perfect storm.

[Dash]

It's possible Palin was the tipping point (if she was) because she was a woman.

And, importantly, because of Hillary Clinton. We've spent months watching a highly intelligent and competent woman politician who had earned the right to be considered for president by her resume and who ran against men on equal terms. (I recall being concerned about Ferraro as Veep candidate, back in 1984, because I thought she wasn't the most competent politician and had been picked largely to get a woman on the ticket.) My suspicion is that conservatives suddenly saw their party leader playing precisely the kind of identity politics they have accused the left of: selecting an unqualified woman/minority over more qualified white guy precisely in order to have female/minority representation.

[bulbul]

Poor ol' king Hussein, no one remembers him...

Of course, Obama is not a Muslim. And there would be nothing wrong with it if he were.
That is a good point, no matter who makes it, be they a repentant Republican or an unrepentant hack on last Real Time. What I find strange is that these people don't get that the problem is that it depends on where you make it. There is indeed nothing wrong with being muslim, black, Jewish or gay. But some people, possibly the very ones Fred is talking about here, see it differently. To us, muslim/black/Jewish/gay is an adjective. To them, it's a reason to hate.

[Elmo]

Bigotry, in my experience, is a special form of ignorance. [Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.] I live in the portion of Pennsyltucky that James Carville once referred to as "Alabama in between". There are very few people in our county who don't have grandparents and great grandparents who were born here and even fewer who are not white. During the civil war, not a few were pulling for the slave states.

When I moved here in 1983, I was amazed at the number of people who repeated and acted on racial stereotypes. Very few of them were mean, and none were stupid. But having had no opportunity to interact with people unlike themselves, they base their actions on the limited information available to them. I call these people naive bigots.

The stupid ones are the ones who let you see their bigotry.

[JayDeeJaye]

Bigotry, in my experience, is a special form of ignorance.

I agree. My grandmother was a bigot, but I never thought she was stupid. Just not wise. She had also suffered a great deal of abuse from her family life, her husband, the system, and the rebellious daughter she raised. She never let go of her hate, and her denial was her safe place. It turned her into a bitter old woman instead of a wiser, gentler matriarch.

Many of the people I know like her aren't stupid. They're trapped. In prisons of their own making.

JDJ: They're trapped. In prisons of their own making.

Well said. And yet again quoting our old buddy John, "...the truth shall set you free."

[JET]

You know the old saying "Ignorance is temporary, stupidity is permanent"? I know from experience that that's not true. I've seen people choose to not be stupid any more (usually young adults shaping up as they startto see consequences of their actions. And many years ago, I formulated this as a replacement; "Ignorance is a state, stupidity is an attitude". Because that's what I've found to be true throughout life; stupidity is in 9 cases out of 10 not a matter of an impairment (except inasmuch as the brain is a muscle), but a chosen path.

I have to note - yet again - that it reads as incredibly weird to me for a Christian of any stripe to be arguing against "a theory and a framework for living in the world that cannot be reconciled with the reality of this world", because that to me describes theism to a t. That's why I find religion - even the most benevolent and groovy variety of it - to be so toxic; it teaches people how to believe in things for which there is no tangible proof whatsoever, and that run counter to a lot of even very early life experience (theodicy).

The choice to be stupid often runs in strong parallel with the choice to be pious, I fear. Inasmuch as there are smart and open-minded theists, I see that as being entirely in spite of their faith.

[cminus]

The Mittens' conjecture that Obama was named after Saddam Hussein reminds me of something I once read, in which someone's little brother, upon being told about the work of Einstein, asked "did they call him Einstein because he was so smart?"

Okay, it's not quite the same thing; not only was the error structurally different (turning "a then b" into "b then a" because you heard b before a, versus turning "a then b" and "a then c" into "b then c"), but it was a good-faith error, amenable to correction, and kind of cute.

[hapax]

Y'know, JET, if I had posted inasmuch as there are moral and charitable atheists, I see that as being entirely in spite of their lack of faith, I would have been not only inundated with counter-examples but also derided as a stupid bigot.

And rightly so.

[Robb]

a likelier explanation is that she really is just too stupid, even compared to other politicians from her party.

Frighteningly, I disagree, sort of: Sarah Palin is a terrifyingly intelligent woman, especially when it comes to political savvy. Just watch her, listen to her: she plays the Right (especially the Religious Right) like Hendrix played the guitar. Partly because of who she is, but mostly because of what she says & how she says it, she knows, beyond intuitively, what needs to be said to sway people that can be swayed by her.

The problem isn't that she's dumb, it's that she's utterly un-educated on almost all of the issues, and therefore defaults to the party position, which she argues fervently. Sometimes (as everyone saw in the Couric interview), she fails at this, but she doesn't care about arguing intelligently to those who might see things differently than her, she just wants to play to her own crowd. Or, as someone said above: she's not stupid, just very un-wise.

That's exactly the problem - she's actively creating & encouraging this sentiment that the Mittens have. Not because she's dumb, but because she's ruthless & fiercely intelligent when it comes to political manipulation. She's the new Rove, but she can run for office.

Frankly, I'm sick of people saying she's dumb. Yeah, she's tremendously ignorant on lots of things, but not only is it simplistic & dismissive to say she's a brainless skirt, it's dangerous. This woman will almost certainly have defacto control of the Republican party before long, and writing her off as stupid is to underestimate a potentially powerful enemy.

Meanwhile. . . Obama landslide, here we come!

[rizzo]

I too live in the "Alabama inbetween" part of PA, and I've got to agree with Elmo. My family moved here from a college town in the mid 80's when I was 7. It wasn't long before I started hearing words like 'nigger' which were completely new to me at that time. The KKK regularly held meetings not 5 miles down the road from our house. Local teachers were well known members.

The racism has gone underground a bit since then, different ethnicities have started moving into the area. Still I find people that I work with who railed against Bush and loved Clinton not talking about who they're voting for this election...I suspect it's because none of them would even think about voting for a black man, yet they still feel bad about it.

The racism that I see here is definitely ingrained in the society...it's not a function of malice or stupidity, but xenophobia and ignorance.

[Jaime]

rizzo: "The KKK regularly held meetings not 5 miles down the road from our house. Local teachers were well known members."

That reminds me. Once I was watching the Beatles' Anthology on my PC while I happened to have an IRC session open. When the documentary went to the part where they described the controversy about Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" comment, I asked an American friend on IRC how come there was somebody interviewing a KKK member who was openly talking about acts of terrorism and said KKK member wasn't afraid of the police. He answered "Of course he wasn't - where do you think the police were?"