Sincere Ignorance and Conscientious Stupidity

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

We've known for a long time that a brain-eating virus has taken over the GOP and is consuming it at an alarming rate.  Manifestation of this horrid malady presented itself when the GOP debates offered dimwits like Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain as viable candidates for the POTUS, and  when their supporters cheered wildly when they talked of the state executions of prisoners, guilty or innocent, letting people drop dead who had no access to medical insurance, and booing a gay Iraq war veteran.  We watched in disbelief as debate after debate these candidates embarrassed themselves by trying to outdo one another in their allegiance to ignoranance and stupidity by eagerly jumping on the anti-science, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-tax, anti-government [except, of course, for the government job of POTUS that they so wantonly covet] and the anti-Michelle and Marixist, Kenyan, Socialist, Commie, Baby Killing, America-hating Barry Soetoro wagon and driving themselves off the Cliffs of Sanity into Crazy Gulch.

All of this may win them admiration from the fundamentalist base of the GOP, but the rest of the country is not as welcoming of their kookoo-barley ideas and crackpot positions.  Tom Friedman wrote on this subject on Sunday:

Tom  Friedman, NYTimes, Feb. 12, 2012:

"...when all the Republican candidates last year said they would not accept a deal with Democrats that involved even $1 in tax increases in return for $10 in spending cuts, the G.O.P. cut itself off from reality. It became a radical party, not a conservative one. And for the candidates to wrap themselves in a cartoon version of Ronald Reagan — a real conservative who raised taxes, including the gasoline tax, when he discovered his own cuts had gone too far — is fraudulent. "      

"Until the G.O.P. stops being radical and returns to being conservative, it won’t provide what the country needs most now — competition — competition with Democrats on the issues that will determine whether we thrive in the 21st century. We need to hear conservative fiscal policies, energy policies, immigration policies and public-private partnership concepts — not radical ones. Would somebody please restore our second party? The country is starved for a grown-up debate. "

Grown-up debate?  Here's where extremism has taken the GOP (a random sampling of conservative comments on a conservative blog and what passes as "grown-up debate" on them):

On the subject of FLOTUS, Michelle Obama and her "Let's Move" program:

Lone Ranger said...

I'm trying to imagine Jackie Kennedy doing something like that. Nope, can't do it. I think whomever wins the presidency in November, Callista Gingrich should be the First Lady. She's classy enough to bring a semblance of respectability back to the position after Michelle and Hillary.

February 11, 2012 9:10 AM

Joe said...

To All: MO is all class...all of it low. She is also all dignity, the lack thereof. She garners and diserves no respect for herself or the office of First Lady.

Gloria Stewart said...

I herd[sic] that Michelle is going to star in a new movie.

The remake of Gorilla in the Mist.

February 11, 2012 6:45 PM

Another commented:

By the way, is she proud to be an American yet??

Poor Fat Cakes needs to get over her angry black woman image.

Someone should tell her how ugly she looks before she leaves her dressing room. And that her huge butt is to big for the size dresses she wears. What pisses me off is that we are hammered constantly by the media and people like Shaw Kenawe telling us Michelle is wonderful, smart, beautiful, and strong. Sorry, buy I see no evidence of that whatsoever.

She wouldn't know anything about poise or grace if they jumped up and bit her in her fat behind..

February 11, 2012 6:34 PM

And this bit of ignorance from the same blog:

Joe said...

Craig: "...random mutation and natural selection is probably the most extensively supported scientific theory there is..."

There is not one single piece of scientific evidence to support that idea.

It is nothing more than an idea.

From the time they were discovered, not a single microbe, or any other life-form, has mutated into another species.

Bacteria, for instance, have mutated, but they have never become something other than bacteria, after trillions to the trillionth power of mutations.

Evolution is a belief system, nothing more. It is more akin to faith than to science, and is on a par with flat-earthism.

February 12, 2012 3:46 PM

"Evolution is a belief system, nothing more. It is more akin to faith than to science, and is on a par with flat-earthism."

Why do I bother with this?  Only to gauge how far into a dark slime-hole of ignorance some of the more radical conservatives have sunk as a result of the ceaseless conservative noise machines that feed them lies, distortions, and misinformation.   These comments reflect the underlying racism and ignorance that have overtaken a once proud American political party.

Dave Dubya's Freedom Rants has a post up that explores this same subject.  Go read it HERE.

Infidel753 has a post up on the FAUX NOOZ website and the racist comments posted there on Whitney Houston's death.  The GOP has allowed itself to become a receptacle of rancid racism.  I hear many conservative howl about Liberals pointing fingers and crying RACISM! at every turn.  But just look at the comments I have documented on this blog and then look at the ones on the FAUX NOOZ site and tell me why this isn't true.