T.S. Eliot wrote that the world ends “not with a bang but a whimper,” but I fear our great nation is careening toward a third manner of demise: descent into lip-blubbering, self-destructive idiocy.
How did we become, in such alarming measure, so dumb? Why is the news dominated by ridiculous controversies that should not be controversial at all? When did so many of our fellow citizens become full-blown nihilists who deny even the concept of objective reality? And how must this look to the rest of the world?
Our elected representatives in the U.S. Senate, which laughably calls itself “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” agreed Thursday not to wreck our economy and trigger a global recession — at least for a few weeks. Republicans had refused to raise the federal debt ceiling, or even to let Democrats do so quickly by simple majority vote. They relented only after needlessly unsettling an international financial system based on the U.S. dollar.
Mr. Robinson brings up a recent event involving Sen. Lindsey Graham speaking to Republicans at a country club in South Carolina. Graham, who has had COVID, had the audacity to suggest, “If you haven’t had the vaccine, you ought to think about getting it because if you’re my age — ”, he was shouted down. Robinson wants to know how not protecting their health and saving their own lives is “anything but just plain stupid?
He brings up “critical race theory” that state legislatures are trying to stop in public schools. He suggests that it’s not really “critical race theory” that is being taught and “squelched, but American history, that includes slavery, Jim Crow repression and structural racism.
Robinson ends with the “stolen election” farce”, that led to Jan.6., when every recount, every court case, and every verifiable fact all lead to the inescapable conclusion that Biden beat Trump.
He ends his opinion piece by asking and stating:
“How dumb can a nation get and still survive? Idiotically, we seem determined to find out.”
Parts of the article may be read at The Hill Reporter, and Alternet, and in the first 1:46 of the video the column is partly recited.
