Everyone Is Stupid. When Did Everyone Get So Stupid? Has Everyone Always Been This Stupid?

Ray Lewis dresses like a guilty man. Suggested Reading The Best Black TV Shows, Movies on Hulu to Stream Steve Harvey’s Gorgeous $15 Million Once Owned by Tyler Perry Joy Reid: Fascism is Coming, Whether You Voted For it or Not Video will return here when scrolled back into view Trump’s Tariffs Might Stick Around.…

Ray Lewis dresses like a guilty man.

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Trump’s Tariffs Might Stick Around. What Should We Buy Now?

This is what immediately came to mind yesterday as I was reading that the Baltimore Ravens have had to hire extra security for the statue of Lewis outside of M&T Bank Stadium. Lewis, of course, knelt during the national anthem before Baltimoreโ€™s game in Londonโ€”an act that was initially interpreted as support for the valueless NFL โ€œprotestsโ€ Sunday, until he clarified that he wasnโ€™t for the cause; he was just confused and thought he was at church. Unfortunately, this explanation did nothing to satiate the rabid fans thirsty for uppity-NFL-nigger blood, as a petition calling for his statue to be removed now has over 50,000 signatures.

This entire ordeal is a gazpacho of abject idiocy. Thereโ€™s Ray Lewisโ€™ dumb ass kneeling like heโ€™s in a church overflow room with sunglasses on like the deacons wonโ€™t see him if he canโ€™t see them. Thereโ€™s his even dumber explanation for why he was kneeling, as if he didnโ€™t know exactly how it would be interpreted. (But maybe he did?) And then thereโ€™s the 58,000 fucking nincompoops who are:

upset that Lewis did something he clearly and stupidly said he did not do,

targeting their fury at a thing (protesting the flag) that is clearly not the reason for the protest that they are upset about, and

unaware that their rationales for being upset about protesting the flagโ€”which, again, is NOT whatโ€™s being protestedโ€”negate the point of the flag existing.

โ€œWeโ€™re mad that theyโ€™re protesting the flag!โ€

โ€œTheyโ€™re not protesting the flag, though. Just attempting to bring attention to racial injustice with a peaceful public protest. But even if they were protesting the flagโ€”which theyโ€™re notโ€”doesnโ€™t the flag stand for freedom? Like, for instance, the freedom to protest the flag?โ€

โ€œDERRRRRRdbyukfbykterdsenulUNGRATEFUL! WHEREโ€™S MY LIGHTER FLUID SO I CAN BURN THIS FALCONS OVEN MITT IN MY KITCHEN THATโ€™S ALREADY KINDA BURNT CAUSE ITโ€™S AN OVEN MITT BUT AMERICA!!!โ€

Itโ€™s been almost a year now since over 60 million of us decided, consciously and with agency, to elect Donald Trump president of the United States. Since then, thereโ€™s been no shortage of effort and energy spent attempting to explain and contextualize his political ascent and victory. The rightest answers, of course, involve race. Race-based fears and anxieties. Racial animosities. Racist misinformation and dog whistling. Gerrymandering. A gradual devaluing in white peopleโ€™s minds of what itโ€™s supposed to mean to be white. A clear repudiation of Barack Obama. Any answer other than one of these is peripheral; the cranberry sauce on the โ€œHow the fuck did Trumpโ€™s bitch ass get here?โ€ Thanksgiving table.

But I think we need to make space for another dish. There are A LOT of seriously and sincerely stupid-ass motherfuckers in this country. Grown motherfuckers who graduated from high school (and college!) and do not know how facts work or where to even begin to find them. And believe the wildest and stupidest and silliest pseudo facts and conspiracy theories known to man. And exist in bubbles of stupidity, where theyโ€™ve built barricades to keep all the stupidity in and eat food with stupidity-injected nutrients and pay stupidity-guarding sentinels generous salaries to guard the exits, stupidly. Trump isnโ€™t just president of the United States and grand marshal of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Heโ€™s also king of the doofuses, and his kingdom is race-neutral.

Of course, being stupid for stupidโ€™s sake isnโ€™t the worst thing in the world. You can be sweet and stupid, like Forrest Gump. Also, although this platform is called Very Smart Brothas, I am not particularly smart. Just yesterday I accidentally microwaved some lettuce and then attempted to eat said microwaved lettuceโ€”forgetting that Iโ€™d just microwaved itโ€”and burned my tongue. I then attempted to cool said tongue by drinking some cranberry juice. Because, again, I am not smart. We should be called โ€œNot So Very Smart Brothas.โ€ (Because burn!)

But what makes this pervasive and pandemic stupidity so aggravating and depressing is that so many sincerely stupid motherfuckers have the audacity to believe that theyโ€™re smartโ€”and attempt to tease people with this fabricated intellect when they canโ€™t even properly pluralize fucking nouns. I get on the internet and I watch the news and I read comments and I listen to people talk at bars and I feel like Haley Joel Osment. I see stupid motherfuckers walking around like regular people. They donโ€™t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They donโ€™t know theyโ€™re stupid motherfuckers.

And I guess what I want to know is whether theyโ€™ve always been here, and the internet and the lack of barriers to discourse has brought them all out. Like a house thatโ€™s been roach-infested but you didnโ€™t know until you left a cake out one night. Or did we just get this stupid? Have we (collectively) gotten progressively dumber and dumber? And if so, whose fault is that? Our parents? The schools? The government? Pop-Tarts? Itโ€™s the fault of those fuckboy Pop-Tarts, ainโ€™t it? Thot-ass Pop-Tarts in their shiny silver suits dumbing us down at breakfast.

Anyway, in summary, Ray Lewis dresses like heโ€™s guilty of crimes we havenโ€™t even accused him of, and the entire fucking country is one big-ass unapproved comment.

Happy Thursday!

Straight From The Root

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