LETTER

Your editorial and dumbness

 

Loved your editorial on the Cult of Stupidity (read it online). We have too much of this down here, too. We're all way too tolerant.

Sure, it's anyone’s right to say whatever they want no matter how stupid or hateful, but is it a good idea? It's anyone’s right to be an idiot but idiocy, once loosed upon the general public, is another matter. They don't have the moral right to make other people suffer because they’re stupid. Life is about more than what we have a right to do, but what we should or shouldn't do within the context of civilized society – which, I submit, we should be aiming for. Civilization seems a worthy goal.

I can’t speak for Canada, but America should be ashamed of producing so many stupid people. Virtually every one of whom has or had the potential to shine, and it was just never realized because we as a society are neglectful, especially of the poor and working classes. We do not have universal education any more than we have universal health care. In many cases, the poor just have a pipeline to prison.

I think virtually every human has the innate capacity to rise above such cultural backwardness. I think they have Ferrari brains like everyone else, they just never learn to shift gears. No one teaches them. They spend their whole lives and never get it out of first gear, dumbassery.

Two people are dead and one wounded because a bunch of dumbass macho yahoos down in Texas (who could have been so much more) thought it'd be cute to have a 'draw the prophet' contest...to prove they weren't afraid of Sharia law.  “We ain't afraid of no durned Muslims and we ain't ashamed of being dumber than dirt. It's our RIGHT!”

We produce them through our neglect, which we romanticize as a culture of rugged individualism, when what is truly meant is every man for himself. 

The shooters were also at fault. Their actions, however predictable, were not remotely justified. But 

really, how smart is it to poke a grizzly bear with a stick just because you have the right to do so? We need to import some shame from somewhere. Maybe some sense of honour, too.  Can we get a pipeline for that?

K. Opol

From cyberspace, USA