Why Are Conservatives Stupid?

by Armadillo Joe

Or should I ask "why are stupid people so conservative"?

Because my formulation of the GOP membership as "The Stupid, The Deluded and The Corrupt" remains intact and reinforced every single day. In today's edition, the educational braintrust in the Great State (and future Republic) of Texas directing the book-learnin' of the supple young minds in their care have concluded that too much "fact" and not enough "fiction" can be damaging to young minds with regards to, um, science and hard data. Instead of being able to dismiss these drooling Jebus-freaks as yet another bunch of banjo-pickin' toothless-goobers determined to keep themselves and their offspring mired in the intellectual and sociological poverty of 13th Century thinking -- and cheering on their defeat after defeat in court rooms across the land from the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 to the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision in Pennsylvania in 2005 to their electoral defeat in Kansas a year later -- we actually have to pay attention to this particular group of self-righteous religious kooks because when it comes to high school textbooks in America, Texas is the 800-lb gorilla. Texas buys so many textbooks that textbook publishers generally tailor their entire line of books to Texas state standards, forcing the other 49 to comply simply by narrowing the field of alternatives.

It's scary. From Salon.com:

Textbook publishers demonstrated as recently as last year that they're not immune to pressures to pander to one of their biggest markets. In 2002, in an effort to appease Texas, references to the Ice Age as occurring "millions of years ago" in a history textbook were changed to read "in the distant past" so it wouldn't conflict with literal interpretations of the Bible. In 2001, the board rejected an environmental science book as "anti-free enterprise" and "anti-Christian" for its coverage of global warming.

Just because Barack Obama is our president doesn't mean these people have been vanquished. Not by a long shot. If "Scopes" (and "Inherit the Wind") didn't shame them into forever hiding under a rock (or, I dunno, becoming smart), they know no shame and nothing will ever drive them into permanent hiding. They must be fought at every turn as the mindless, unthinking and (in this specific case) brain-eating zombies they are.

Their relationship with the truth of the modern world is best described by this quote from The Terminator:

"It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

So, to answer the question posed in the title of this here post: because they choose to be. And they will not rest until they force everyone else to join them in the intellectual sewer.

God help the children of Texas.