A long time ago I had a boss my family referred to as “Bad Eric”. (I later had a boss named “Good Eric”). Anyway, Bad Eric thought he was a really smart guy. I’m not talking about any of those esoteric views of intelligence, he thought his actual, tested, IQ was higher than anyone else’s in the company, especially mine. This was a big deal to him. He liked to say hello to me in the following way “Good Morning, you dumb b***h”, although in fairness, he sometimes used the “c” word in lieu of the “b” word.
Working for Bad Eric was no picnic, but I did end up learning the difference between “idiot” and “moron”. It turns out that “moron” used to have a technical meaning in DSM classifications of someone with an IQ of 80 or below. (100 is average on a Bell Curve.) And so, when I talk about the stupid things that voters do, I no longer refer to them as morons, I use the strictly pejorative term “idiot”. And today, I’m going to rant about idiots. Feel free to skip to the end to find out what happened when Bad Eric and I went head to head in the quest for who was smarter.
In the past few days, a number of media outlets have gone out and interviewed Trumpkin voters who will now be affected by changes to the ACA. Their overall response is that while they do understand that they will no longer be able to afford insurance, and thus cancer treatments, insulin and other necessary medical care, they believe that #TheAngryPumpkin will actually save them because he’ll negotiate with Paul Ryan and let them keep, basically, the ACA as it is. I kid you not. Idiots.
Rachel Maddow spent most of last night talking about the connection between the Administration and the Russians. If you haven’t seen it, watch it here. You’ll need to sign in to MSNBC, but it will be an hour that you won’t regret. It’s a lot of proof and the timeline. The end segments are an interview with ex-Ambassador Fried, who explains what is really going on with the State Department purge. Be smart, understand what’s at stake.
I receive a lot of communications — emails, texts, messages…and some of them make me really angry. I’m going to share a few of things I hope to never see again. First, and this is so far the ultimate winner for 2017. Paraphrased: “My issue is the Pacific Garbage Dump. When are you going to fix that?”. It really is going to be hard to top that. If you know me personally, you are well aware of the answer I wanted to send back. Idiot.
The Indivisible team with which I work is concerned about reaching out to people of color in our county. We are planning on attending some trainings, and working to come up with a plan. I interact with a man who refers to himself as “melanic” (and I had to look it up – it means someone with a lot of melanin in his/her skin.) I offered to meet with him, invited him to a number of functions, and his response was to send me an article entitled “Your Calls for Unity are Divisive as F**k” (Source) which linked to a second article where the first line was “I don’t like white women”. (Source) No one here is an idiot, but this is not a way to win friends and influence people. I want to work together, he wants to insult me. Truly a sad situation, but at least he’s stopped calling and yelling at me.
People like to complain to me that I’m personally not doing enough to solve their problems. These “problems” involve impeaching #TrumptyDumpty, stopping the Muslim Ban, saving the ACA, making the DNC over so that it’s a progressive organization, and you get the idea. Don’t get me wrong, I get a lot of communications from people who want to work on these, and other issues, and want support and guidance. My objection is to the people who believe any one person can actually fix these things. I am unclear whether this can be attributed to laziness, or frustration, or abject terror. But I don’t have time to find out.
I’m working with five candidates running locally this year. Am providing tangible support in the form of advice, strategy planning, money, and am hoping that I’ll be able to find people who will help knock doors. Because this is the start of how we stop the bleeding of the government. We are a representative democracy, and the only way to move the needle is to elect local people this year, and state and Federal people next year. We do that by knocking doors and giving money until it hurts. I hope you will join me; there are elections in every state, city and town this year, next up being the jungle primary in Georgia. Here in Pennsylvania, the ballots will be announced over the next week, and then the canvassing starts. To anyone who contacts me, my answer from here on out is “are you knocking doors?” and if he/she says no, I’m done. Writing postcards and letters, and calling reps is good as far as it goes, but those people need to be replaced. It’s easier to canvass for a local person, so if you’re new, consider this year practice. And a huge YAY!!! to every person who is running for office this year. It matters in every way imaginable.
So circling back to Bad Eric. He wanted to us to take online IQ tests and see who got the higher score. I told him that we should do it the real way: he could take the Mensa test and compare his score to the one I’d gotten. A real contest. Let’s just say that I stayed a Mensa officer, he didn’t get into Mensa, and I ended up taking the job working for Good Eric at another company.
End of rant — message me if you’re ready to start canvassing, and I’ll cut your turf for your neighborhood, give you a script and training and you too can help save the world.
