Stanford-Binet has long produced exams to test intelligence but I have long proposed that there should be a “stupidity test” as well. From what I am seeing lately in the editorial columns in my locality I think it can safely be said that the criteria for this is being set by the ones who should be taking the exam. Suffice it to say that the old adage, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt” is very sound advice for the writers of these exercises in tomfoolery. I refer to the sudden rash of people complaining about how the town snowplows should go around and clear away the snow from each driveway that the trucks plow in during their road clearing activities. Others also complain that the snowplows and their drivers are creating potholes and this too should be rectified. Such utter drivel should not even be entertained but not only do the media enable their public revelry in their own idiocy but the superintendent of highways made a gross mistake by answering them. I coined an adage that is appropriate in this instance which is, "There is nothing more dangerous than a tenacious idiot with a pen." I therefore submit that they shouldn't be encouraged but ignored.
It is also true that these folks are taxpayers and are entitled to speak up, but that is not to say that if someone embraces a theory that Martians are responsible for causing cancer that the New England Journal of Medicine has a journalistic responsibility to print it.
On first point, do they actually think that the town has the responsibility to clear snow away from the apron of every driveway in town? Apparently they do. I would ask them that being as the town removes all leaves left at curbside in town, do they further believe the town should visit every yard and rake them up as well? Then there’s the lunacy about trucks creating potholes and this could be prevented by getting better drivers and firing the ones now on payroll. I have to point out by again asking a begged question, should the snowplows be lined with pillows to cushion the blow of the hard steel plows hitting the roads? These same characters have oft cursed the pages of the press to complain about the deer eating and soiling all over their lawns. When they moved into suburbia they moved to get out of the dirty, noisy confines of the city. Yes, this type loves nature as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them. I dare say that if they moved into an apartment over a bowling alley they’d complain about the noise. This kind also complains about nonsense such as train whistles scaring their children and grandchildren. Well, didn’t they know the railroad tracks they moved next to just might have trains running on them? It would come of no surprise to me if these same people allow their children to watch those slasher movies without a thought of that being scary to them.
Yes folks, we are living in an age of complete foolishness and folly and it is of no surprise that our government is such a miserable embarrassment because these very same people voted them in. The preponderance of the banking and insurance system being run into the ground must at least in part be due to this as well. I know greed is being blamed for this but believe me, to explain the complete incompetence it took to make such heretofore insane business decision, greed alone can only explain just so much of it. I am sure that someone out there is now thinking to themselves, “Oh, these are just isolated instances of stupidity.” I am here to tell you they are not and may exemplify the norm. As evidence I will produce indicators of how widespread and common this has become. There is a website simply named, “Things People Said” which is an ongoing compilation of park rangers across North America and some of the bizarre things visitors say and think in their experiences of dealing with the public. One said the people complain that they should eradicate the animals in the park because the nocturnal noise they make disturbs their sleep. Others wonder if the Grand Canyon is natural or man made. Some would like the mule train that you take to the bottom of the Grand Canyon to be air conditioned. When a deer steals their sandwich they expect the National Park Service to reimburse them for the loss. Others still want escalators installed on uphill sections of hiking trails. There is much more with some far more bizarre than even these.
I am retired from a career in parks which spanned four decades and I can report that these attitudes are not peculiar to the national parks nor are they rare but occur throughout the day everyday. Some of the ones I experienced are people asking, “How did you build the mountains?” Lots of people complained that there weren’t any baby changing stations along the hiking trails. Many more were angry that there were no telephones along the trails. One guy once complained that I should do something to stop airplanes from flying over the park. Over the years a lot of people were disappointed that the trails weren’t paved. As I often led hikes I was amazed at how many people became angry because, “I didn’t know there would be rocks and hills!” One day an angry man came over to me frothing at the mouth because he was irate that the Japanese were allowed to paint their flag on the trees all over the park and that this was an indicator they were planning to buy the park and build a golf course. Totally flummoxed and dumbfounded I asked him to please show me what flag he was talking about and he directed me to a series of red and white trail markers that had been there for over fifty years. I explained that it was a very well established hiking trail that used the red and white blaze as its symbol, but he would have none of it. On one hot summer day a group asked me if I could arrange for one of the West Point helicopters to pick them up and return them to their bus some miles away. I too could go on and on with an endless litany of stupidity but as bad as they might be after a while the impact is lost.
The late great Steve Allen spent his final years writing and complaining about how he had noticed a distinct decline in the intelligence and competence in America over the last fifty years. I am here to corroborate his findings and add to it that it is a phenomenon well beyond an epidemic and one that is as deeply entrenched as baseball and apple pie as institutions. But when you have the media entertaining what should be considered the ravings of lunatics and enabling their imbecilic spectacle by granting them valuable print space and then elected officials feel the need to further give them credence by answering them, then there is no hope left. We have asked for it and here it is.