Republicans' Beavis and Butt-Head Politics and Justice Alito on the Take?
Women's Summit Encourages No Birth Control, DeSantis Lies About Dodgers, Trump Threatens, Meshell Ndegeocello Plays Cool Jazz
How Beavis and Butt-Head Dominate Republican Politics
When I was a kid, I imagined that adults who voted treated voting as a sacred duty. They read extensively about topics and candidates, listened intently to all sides, then voted based on a reasoned weighing of evidence. Admittedly, that naive youthful attitude was the result of very successful brainwashing in school and in popular culture. I was being taught the ideals of democracy, not the reality. It’s the difference between eating foie gras in a fancy restaurant and watching the cringy process by which it’s made.
When I got older, I realized that people often voted based on nothing more than self-interest and a lack of willingness to understand the issues better. It’s always easier to do what your parents, friends, church, and neighbors do. But I believed if we just got all the facts and information to the people, they would see that there was a greater self-interest in building a safe, vibrant, diverse country than in just filling their own wallets, holding on to destructive traditions, or being afraid of standing out. Certainly, there wouldn’t be any racism, misogyny, or marginalization if people embraced the principles of the U.S. Constitution that they celebrated with fireworks and burgers on July Fourth.
Ironically, the introduction of social media and the smart phone—both of which could have been the Gutenberg Press of our time bringing enlightenment to the masses—has had the opposite effect. They have made a large part of the population arrogant and emboldened in their ignorance because, instead of being ashamed of their lack of knowledge and critical thinking, they have found masses of others who share their intellectual laziness. The smart phone, which gives us access to almost all the knowledge of the world, has the potential to make informed patriotic heroes of us all. Instead, it’s like carrying a set of encyclopedias in a backpack, but never opening them. It’s as if people believe having the ability to look things up is the same as actually looking them up. While I embrace all the quirky fun and entertainment as well as the Yelp reviews that social media and smart phones give us, I don’t think that we should limit ourselves to that. It’s the striving to be better, smarter, more curious is what defines our character.
Which brings me to this unsettling fact: Trump is the leading candidate of the Republican Party. This statement defies all logic and may be a sign of devolution or the zombie apocalypse. It’s certainly a sign of the rejection of reason that the Age of Enlightenment ushered in, promoting almost all our current scientific, cultural, and political advancements. Being found guilty of sexual abuse or being indicted for hiding top secret documents that put our country’s security at risk has not significantly affected his polls. He leads DeSantis by double digits. That inability from Republicans to distinguish facts from crossing their fingers and hoping for the best threatens to hurl us backward in time until we’re all strapped to racks before the Grand Inquisition.
I see Trump supporters as people who got a Beavis and Butt-head tattoo when they were young and now that they are middle-aged have to make a choice: acknowledge it was just a youthful indiscretion that they regret, which makes them feel foolish, or double-down and embrace the Beavis and Butt-head ethos. Rather than admit they were, or ever could be, wrong, they have chosen the latter.
One of the joys of growing older is to be able to see clearly all the times I’ve been wrong and learned from that. I am who I am today because of those mistakes. One thing I believed as a child that wasn’t a mistake: voting is a sacred duty and the survival of democracy depends on us accepting the responsibility of being informed and rational citizens.