One good thing that has come from Gov. Palin’s resignation, is I’ve been able to beef up my inventory of opinions it seems find support from a clear majority, even though they’re just plain dumbass opinions. They come to be because a lot of everyday folks feel socially obliged to feel opinionated about things, but haven’t had the time, energy, inclination or incentive to form opinions the way we all know opinions should be formed. So a lot of them take the easy-out. They say whatever sounds good, and from then on they get an ego-investment in this arbitrarily-selected opinion, that ends up being a dumbass opinion much more often than not.

It is how we use the democratic process to make our worst decisions.

It is the best evidence we have that we need to make the voting process more difficult, and not easier.

These are opinions that derogate the person who gives them ink, a voice, or an otherwise good name. There is a lot more going on with these opinions than just me disagreeing with them. For example — I don’t think we should legalize prostitution or drugs; I don’t think we should even be seriously discussing it. But I understand why well-informed, intelligent, good people think we should. I understand why people think women should be allowed to abort, and even have their abortions publicly funded, although I disagree with that too. These opinions go well beyond those. These opinions, and their popularity, are ugly remnants of this mindset we’ve been nurturing that all passionate things must be respected. It isn’t so. If you hold these opinions, you are a problem. You are uninformed. They are cries for help. They are shorthand notation for “I desperately require some way of forming an inflamed opinion but I don’t know how to get ahold of the information I need to form it responsibly.”

They are the opinion equivalent of driving several miles down the highway with your blinker on.

30. Together, we can take on global warming and we can win. Save the planet. Together we can do this.
29. We’ve got to get some more money into the education system, because our children are worth it.
28. Seventy languages in use in a school district is a sign that it is a rich tapestry of diversity, and that is good for everybody.
27. Any statement that qualifies “tax cuts” as an expenditure, such as comparing the “Bush tax cuts” with real spending plans.
26. We’re going to need a bigger stimulus.
25. The trouble with our justice system is that the people who decide the cases don’t have enough empathy.
24. We’ve got to do something to help the unemployed, like taxing the snot out of the businesses that just might hire them.
23. It’s going to take Barack Obama a long, long time to fix all this stuff, and He is trying His best.
22. If women were in charge of the world there wouldn’t be any wars.
21. FOX News tells lots of lies, but I can’t come up with any examples.
20. You know what we really need to change? If a guy has lots of sex he’s a stud, if a woman does the same thing she’s a slut. SO unfair!
19. Everything that needs inventing has been invented. Men, drop out of school, learn to rap and do your crunches.
18. We’ve got to change our policies because our (unnamed) allies in Europe don’t like us.
17. I can’t approve of Barack Obama’s policies. But I still like Him personally, and that’s what really matters.
16. We must all be forced to call gay people “married.” It’s a civil rights issue. For them. Not for anyone else. Just for them.
15. We have to raise the tax rate on the rich, because that makes us all a better people.
14. The Earth is sure to be doomed if I use traditional sandwich baggies. But it’s got a fighting chance if I use these ones that are 25% lighter.
13. Sarah Palin isn’t a real woman; she’s a Republican.
12. I know exactly what my thousand dollar car needs: Three thousand dollar rims.
11. If we drill, we won’t see a single drop of oil for x years. Besides, adorable polar bears, penguins, pristine environment blah blah blah.
10. We should not have attacked Iraq because Iraq didn’t attack us.
9. I wanna watch American Idol!
8. Hooters? Isn’t that a strip bar or something?
7. The second amendment is out of date because all them founders couldn’t have envisioned nukular weapons and what-not
6. Those illegal aliens are just trying to make a better life for their kids so we should coddle them all and make them citizens.
5. Vote for Obama! Hope! Change!
4. If your kid doesn’t feel like paying attention it’s a learning disability. Medicate him.
3. No one’s going to be safe until we get rid of all these guns we have lying around.
2. Culottes and clamdiggers. That’s what hip fashionable hot looking women should wear this summer. Who wants to see a gorgeous woman’s bare thigh anyway.
1. Palin quit because of a scandal. Yup. After all that digging, months and months, the entire Fourth Estate…they left one hidden. Boy, do they feel foolish.

James Lewis writing in the American Thinker: When Did The Lowbrows Take Over?

I’ve been trying to grasp for a truth that is so obvious that all of us know it. But it’s not a polite truth, so we don’t talk about it. Yet I think it’s important to say it out loud, because it is a truth that haunts our national discourse.

As a nation we are under the thumb of idiots. Not just indoctrinated, or wrong-thinking, or power-hungry, or manipulative, or even malevolent people. No, I mean real lowbrows, people who constantly fall for really stupid ideas.
:
The Federal EPA is about to officially declare carbon dioxide to be a pollutant. That’s not just false and unscientific; it’s not just an excuse for taxing everything in sight, including breathing. It’s not merely wrong. It’s idiotic.
:
Or look at Obama’s unbelievable spending spree. No sane and sensible taxpayer could possibly believe that spending trillions and trillions of dollars on blue-sky fantasies makes any sense at all; the only reason Americans aren’t in open rebellion yet is that half of them can’t believe it’s happening, and the other half are idiots.
:
Obama’s 22 White House czars. That’s really stupid. As well as a violation of the Constitution. But it’s a Chinese laugh line. It’s so obviously wrong and power-mad that it’s not worth debating.

Legalizing drugs. That’s really stupid.

Obama’s power-grab over the medical sector of the economy? It’s profoundly stupid. We can insure all the uninsured people in the country for a tiny fraction of all that money.
:
The rise to power and fame of the real lowbrows explains a lot. It even points to an answer of sorts. Because we’ve all been intimidated by the Cult of Nice not to contradict anybody who comes out with a really stupid, destructive idea. We can no longer call a really stupid idea what it is. I know that I censor myself all the time. We have been taught to keep our mouths shut when a word in time might make a real difference. We have allowed the national conversation to be dumbed down. [Italicized emphasis Lewis’; bold emphasis mine]

As excellent as the writing is, and the thinking behind it, and the fact-gathering that supports the thinking, Lewis has missed something. There’s a certain McCarthy logic going on here. I’m not saying by “McCarthy logic” that we should be interrogating people in front of the Senate and demanding to know are they now, or have they ever been, a member of something. I’m referring to McCarthy’s scathing insult against General George C. Marshall — something about if the General was merely stupid, the laws of probability dictate that his ideas would work out half the time.

Pass on the question of whether that applied to Gen. Marshall or if it was legitimate to accuse him of treason. McCarthy logic applies here: If the problem was that we were nationally stupid, or under the nation-wide thumb of a ruling class of idiots, the laws of probability dictate that we would become enamored of sensible ideas half the time. The stopped clock must be right twice a day.

It isn’t happening.

What is happening is that we are profoundly bored — and therefore there is a certain allure to the words of anyone who proposes for our review, that maybe two plus two equals five. This is why I apply the McCarthy logic. If we were simply stupid, we’d land on four every now and then by random chance.

The problem taking place here, is that the name of the game isn’t to be right; nothing depends on that anymore. All our trappings in life, our fancy iced coffee drinks, our stale reality teevee shows, our football games, we get ’em whether we’re right about everything or wrong about everything. In generations past, being wrong could getcha killed. But not here and not now, so we don’t care. No, the point to an idea, now, is to get attention from others. End result? An idea that gets you attention, and is wrong, is worth something — an idea that is right, but gets you no attention, is a waste of breath.

Presto. Two and two are five. And two-and-two cannot be four. THAT, there, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem. That’s why we are wrong so often; we are trying to be.

Hat tip to Rick.

Groan. The future is in good hands, I see.

Hat tip to Sports By Brooks, via FARK.

So I’m getting some static about items #23 and #24 on my list of what might possibly be putting the Big Reveal on you being a stupid idiot…

#23. Watching reality television.

#24. Talking about what you saw on reality television.

As you might expect, I’m getting the static from people who consider themselves reasonably smart, but watch reality television and then talk about what they saw on reality television.

Let’s recap what “reality television is,” okay?

1. Set the stage for something that is about to happen (30 seconds).

2. Something happens (15 seconds).

3. Someone is interviewed about how the thing made them feel when it happened (just over 8 minutes).

4. Commercial break of somewhere around a good five minutes.

5. Go back to Step 1, and repeat this four times. Then roll credits.

Now here’s the part that I find really entertaining. What do people say right before an episode of reality TV is about to pop up on the idjit box, hmmm? What’s that thing they say? What’s the last thing they say at work when they talk about the episode they’re about to race home to watch?

I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen. Right?

Well, here’s what’s going to happen. Four minor things — more likely just three. And lots…and lots…and lots of talking about how people felt when those things happened. With breathy woodwind background music.

One more little thing. I conservatively estimate that corporate America could save about $50 billion every single year, if we could all agree on some number. Let’s say 37, just for grins. Let’s all just agree that Code 37 is an acceptable substitute for “Last night so-and-so was voted off, and this was contrary to my expectations, OMIGAW!!” If people could just say “Code 37 on Marko” or “Code 37 on Angela” or whatever, they’d be spending a couple seconds on these inane conversations instead of the better portion of an hour, our nation’s lost productivity would be trimmed off overnight, people would get much more done, and maybe we could save the economy.

It’s bound to work better than that stupid stimulus — which, just for the record, is Item #40.

How it is understood that your brain is a moped engine powering a Humvee — and so quickly, with such certainty, by so many. Where exactly is that “I’m a moron” sign located? You’ve checked and checked, it doesn’t seem to be written on your forehead, but people around you act as if it is. What’s clueing them in?

There are more folks wondering about this than we know. Gonna add to this list as I think of more…

…but at the moment, the only one truly worthy of comment is the one at the very bottom.

1. Walking around with your fly open.

2. Using “y’know,” “totally” or “basically” more than three times within five sentences.

3. Unplugging your cell phone and your coffee pot…to help SAVE the PLANET.

4. (Men) Wearing a football jersey three sizes too big for you.

5. Medicating your son for his “abnormal” behavior, that is, in fact, quite normal behavior for a boy.

6. Pursuing a conversation with someone fifty feet away across a parking lot for more than a minute.

7. Speaking of a tax cut as something that “costs” money.

8. Taking a picture with the lens cap on.

9. (Men) Wearing a baseball cap backwards.

10. Calling someone greedy for simply wanting to keep something that belongs to them.

11. (Women) Speaking of the demands you make on men, and your refusal to ever be satisfied with their attempts to meet them, as if that’s an endearing quality.

12. (Men) Marrying a woman who brings nothing to the table except her incessant demands.

13. Ordering a fancy coffee drink with whipped cream on top…taking special care that it is made with NON FAT MILK…

14. …and then bitching away about your household budget while you slurp a morning-beverage that costs four bucks.

15. Hitting Reply-All button, “I Agree!” and Send, when you get a message specifically requesting people not to use Reply-All all the time.

16. Wishing aloud that politicians “of both parties” would find a way to “work together” and “get more done” without exploring what exactly would get done.

17. Wishing aloud that our country would “sit down and talk with our enemies” and “stop offending our allies,” without elaborating on what agreements should & shouldn’t be made, which allies these are supposed to be, or how exactly they’ve been offended.

18. Using the words “strip bar” to describe the Hooters restaurant chain.

19. Chastising someone else for being stupid, for simply disagreeing with you, while making third-grade mistakes with homonyms like “your” and “you’re,” “our” and “hour,” “their,” “there” and “they’re,” and “one” and “won.”

20. Using the word “majority” to legitimize an opinion, as if you wouldn’t want to be doing that selectively.

21. Three thousand dollar rims on a one thousand dollar car.

22. Hearing of one man’s sad tale of the life he shared with an unscrupulous female, and the wreckage his life became afterward, responding with the timeless non-sequitur “Not all women are like that.”

23. Watching reality television.

24. Talking about what you saw on reality television.

25. Advertising your opinion that Sarah Palin is stupid when you’ve never actually met her.

26. Getting a tattoo on your face…

27. …consisting of images or words you wouldn’t want your grandmother (or your job-interview guy) to see.

28. Using the word “loving” as a euphemism for homosexual.

29. Climbing into the cage to make friends with the wild animal at the zoo.

30. “The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.”

31. Leaving the bathroom with a foot and a half of toilet paper stuck to your shoe.

32. Gun control. You know, to “get rid of all these guns lying around.”

33. Skateboarding in a parking lot.

34. Driving several miles with your blinker on.

35. Extolling the virtues of some country’s “free” education and/or “free” health care.

36. Talking about how you’re overweight because of your “metabolism” or your “genes”…when your mouth is full.

37. “Irregardless.”

38. Beginning any statement about your political views with “Hey hey, ho ho.”

39. Talking about childrens’ “self esteem.”

40. Talking about the “stimulus” as if it is a job-saver, rather than a left-wing giveaway.

Lately…*sigh*…this shit all looks the same to me.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Yup, seems to be genuine.

Cheer away. But, it should be obvious to anyone with a working brain, chuck some footwear at our new hopey changey President and nobody, from anywhere on the political spectrum, from sea to shining sea, will lift a finger to protect you.

You damn sure aren’t getting a monument anywhere.

John Hawkins realized he left some obnoxious quotes off the list of most-obnoxious-quotes.

Therein lies the danger of putting together lists of anything concerned with people acting like assholes. It seems you’re never really quite truly ready to hit the “Publish” button, y’know?

Dr. Helen found an article from the seventies, it seems. Remember back then? Get in touch with your emotions…Alan Alda…Phil Donahue…show your feelings…express yourself…confront. It’s baaaaack —

The end of the holidays, cold weather and economic gloom will make today one of the most stressful days of the year for returning to work.

But experts have come up with an unlikely remedy – throwing a tantrum.

‘Releasing tension through shouting and screaming is a really beneficial way to expel the negative energies caused by stress,’ said body language expert Judi James, the Big Brother psychologist.
:
The advice comes as a survey reveals that people are most likely to be irritated by colleagues eating noisily (28 per cent), sniffing (26 per cent), talking too loudly on the phone (21 per cent) and even singing (5 per cent).

Researchers found only one in ten prefer to sit quietly to combat tension, while more than a third admitted to having tantrums.

Anyone over forty should already know how this goes. People have their outbursts, they feel so special, they go see their shrinks, they feel so special, they talk about how they’re going to their shrinks, they feel so special. Everywhere you go, everywhere you look, someone is confronting someone, usually because their shrink told ’em to. They feel so special.

And then everybody’s doing those things, or at least, knows somebody who is doing those things.

Then they don’t feel special anymore. So people do more and more outlandish things, and after a few years the fuses blow and they’re forced to get into something that better defines their “specialties.” There’s an enormous crash, like a caffeine or energy-drink crash, for those who never had any real talent in the first place. Then it’s on to neon clothing, perms-for-guys and leg warmers.

I wonder what would’ve happened if we didn’t go through that? A computer in every home by 1977? A CD player in every car by 1981? By 1983, we figure out that sunbeams and wind are insufficient for accelerating our cars to freeway speeds every morning? The Governor of Arkansas plays a saxophone on Arsenio Hall and people roll their eyes and go “whatever”…instead of electing him President?

Personal expression does seem to possess an antithetical relationship to progress. My advice is looking more and more astute and sensible as 2009 grinds painfully onward. And it’s less than one week old.