What do you we have to lose, but our IDIOCRACY?
Though the wording may soon be changing, the New Mexico Constitution has explicitly barred “idiots” from voting since its adoption in 1912. The provision received little attention until a recent upsurge of pro-idiot publicity this election cycle has triggered some alarm.
Pundits have expressed a concern that enforcement of the constitutional provision against idiots could radically affect voter turnout for both major parties, thus tipping the state’s electoral votes to its former governor, who might then hold the outcome in his hands. But not so fast, say others, as significant problems remain with enforcement–the same ones that have stymied those seeking to apply the provision more broadly in the past.
Apparently, the main stumbling block continues to be lack of agreement on who gets to decide who the idiots are. Members of both major parties have long been convinced only an idiot would believe in the other party, for example–except when joining together to keep “the real idiots” in “minor parties” from things like the debate stage.
According to the experts who ought to know, identifying who the idiots are can be complicated by the fact that “It takes one to know one.” So who’s to say?
To add fuel to the fire, in a series of random tests, political scientists have also found that many people react negatively to being called idiots, especially by idiots trying to keep them from voting. They sometimes even change their votes accordingly. These scientists believe one shouldn’t underestimate the pain candidates can endure “biting their tongues,” to avoid calling the other party’s members idiots while still hoping for some of their votes.
Some observers believe there’s a major risk in provoking the “idiot vote backlash,” for which experienced speechwriters routinely substitute a more favorable label, like “silent majority opinion,” “middle class indignation,” or “oxymoron revolution.” Indeed, POMP, the Psychiatric Office of the Mishugunah Peninsula, conducts post-polling surveys that suggest “a majority of voters secretly believe, feel &/or think themselves idiots, morons, oxymorons, or worse,” and that the % has been growing by leaps & bounds lately
At one time, medical dictionaries may have had more or less precise definitions of (as well as tests to scientifically distinguish) minerals & vegetables from nuts & fruits; idiots & morons from nitwits & imbeciles; shooks, shlemeils & shlamozzles from matzoballs, meatheads & crackers; manic-depressives on downers from full-blown maniacs on anti-depressants; etc. Most of their original criteria have since been debunked, delisted, reformulated, revised & revived under more acceptable terminology &/or pill colors, however. Political correctness now wants the Nw Mexico constitution to catch up.
Not surprisingly, parties & political observers don’t always agree with each other. Some say “Idiots & morons are under-represented in congress,” for example, while others say just the reverse. Which is right depends on which idiot you ask, in other words.
In Triumph of the Id, the founder of anal self-analysis, Sigmoid Freud predicted idiots would take over the world, “where they haven’t already.” Later he called his self-analyst “an idiot for doing so, as well as an ego-it for caring, & a super-egoist for promotional purposes, like book blurbs.” In Civilization & Its DIsh (& Stomach) Contents,” he reminded readers “You are what you eat, as well as what you drink, breathe, read, think, make, do, excrete, secrete, dump & vote for.” Critics say he had a “crappy view of the world, starting with his patients.” (He said it started with his parents.)
Although most historians now agree that the idiots have indeed taken over major portions of the institutional world in & out of official government circles, they do not necessarily agree on just which parts. Those in charge offer the standard denials, successfully blocking all attempts at remedial legislation. “What problem?” they ask. “If we’re the idiots, why are we doing so well, compared to the idiots who criticize us–like you?”
When the wry philosopher Lao-Tzu asked, “Am I the one who’s a misguided fool?” most contemporary pundits responded with a resounding, “YES! You bet!” But Lao himself had already moved on, having foreseen their answer, and now he’s the one considered wise by many “misguided fools” more than two thousand years later, thanks to many translations.
Speaking of which, the New Mexico Supreme Quart has requested a commission to suggest a new wording to replace the now offensive “idiot clause,” preferably one more easily defined & applied, if only to eliminate a small subset of already identified mass murderers & the violently deranged from the eligible voting pool.
The irony is that most idiots don’t bother to vote anyway. Some pro-voting activists have even proposed “not voting” as a defining characteristic of idiocy, & grounds for losing the right as a fit punishment. Others argue that the idiocracy they get is punishment enough. Some avowed oxymorons even remind us that many democracies have voted themselves out of existence, however unwittingly. In a close vote between “voting” & “not voting,” the idiot vote can easily swing the difference, “but so can the morons not voting.”
The self-reference staff & mismanagement here at the Bod Library believe such issues might be clarified with the help of “a new dictionary.” (Since we received that information via the inner ear, it could also have been transcribed “a nude dictionary.”) Whatever we call it, Dick’s Handy Random Pocket Pinhead Dictionary…may provide contemporary guidance, for compariuson.
Our handiest old collegiate dictionary gives idiot’s roots as idios, one’s own, with idea in the background, but heads downhill from there, “someone with a Lack of Intelligence Quotient of 25 or lower,” thus “an obsolescent term, used only by a very foolish or stupid person.” (Sounds like “it takes one to know one–if only to define the class.”)
Freud’s id, on the other hand, has been called the source of his pleasure principle, that part of the person related to “instinctual drives and psychic energies,” often represented by his cigar, which may not sound half-bad until people start calling you an idiot & not letting you vote. A new definition should address deep idiocy more transparently, however nudely. Some think Freud himself must have considered nudity a sign of idiocy, judging from his triple-vested portraits & lack of weiner-tweets.
Many idealists believe just the reverse, that idiocy is humanity’s more enlightened & natural state, a fact which layers of civilized clothing ultimately fails to hide–even from children, as shown by the popularity of “There is a difference” napkins & neo-nudist revivals, from Tanning Buttocks to Burning Man, & back. (People may forget, albeit with some difficulty, that the modern Burning Man started with a couch & a lit cigar.)
We may note in passing that the New Mexico Constitution does not bar nudists from voting, or from bars, though some local ordinances do. Most practicing nudists live in clothing optional jurisdictions, therefore. No members of a Clothing Optional Party have yet managed to get national exposure in a presidential debate, however, except briefly, and that not by a candidate, but a freckled heckler.
Question about state’s rights rarely address states of nudity, idiocy, confusion, indecision, & the general obfuscation of the electorate. Many states never give their own people a say in whether their government should operate as a complex IDIOCRACYor as a simple-minded DEMOCRAPY, to take a basic example.
If they did, you might well ask what differentiates an Idiocracy from a Democrapy in the first place, & vice from versa. A new dictionary-encyclopedia-atlas-directory might clarify that answer–& more. A little “more on this, a little more on that” eventually adds up to a whole lot more than you expected, thanks to simple re-compounding. (Whether the result is a lot more understanding or confusion may remain to be determined.)
Maybe it’s time to find out more on the idiots we have in high places, low places, & on our own level, wherever that may happen to be. The worst outcome for a state or nation might turn out to be an Idiotic Democrapy, though others fear a Democrapic Idiocracy more. Our pocket pinhead digital dictionary, the standard, calls Democraoy “a crappy democracy,” asking, “Is there any other kind?” It calls an idiocracy, “a crazy state ruled by idiots,” explaining that demo-cracy in Greece becomes demo-crazy in speech slippage.
Those interested in more on this topic should watch out for Dick’s 3rd Naked Pinhead Edition of the Handy Random Pocket Dictionary, due out soon. In the meanwhile, why not consider becoming a member of the Bod Library’s More On Club, if you already aren’t. The more ‘More-Ons’ involved, voting, & paying attention, the better chance the nation has to solve the idiot problem & a whole lot more, at least temporarily.
“More Ons” may be more than a movement, though short of a complete revolution of the screwdriver. For one thing, More-Ons are the idiots worst adversaries, continually getting in the way of their “pleasure principles” by introducing broader, more informed perspectives.
Right now, members of the two major parties look like people on opposite sides of a river yelling at each other, “No, YOU’RE on the OTHER side!” More-On-Club members don’t yell, just shake their heads & jump in after a solution, alligators & all. (Whether they meet in the middle or not may depend on the current.) Is it an accident that the More On Club motto, “More On This, More On That,” can be acronym’d as MOT for short, or MOT MOT, for bigger shorts? And is it just a coincidence that the French word mot happens to be the word for word? Or that mo-mo often follows ma-ma in an infant’s first vocabulary?
More on this, more on that, later, gator–
along with more on the fly & more on the bat,
more on the sharp & more on the flat,
more on the club & its welcome mat.
For more on the rat & the rat-a-tat brat,
burned around the edges like the bureaucrap,
more on the id & more on the ought
& more on the wisdom my mo-ma taught,
check back soon & check back later,
be a lover, not a hater,
don’t fall in the molten crater,
take it from an old debater.
~~~~~~~No. Please don’t.
~~~~~”MAKE the country HATE AGAIN!”
~~~~~”Make the country late again.”
~~~~~”Late to the party, late to the war.
~~~~~Late to the pyre & the gravestone store.”
~~~~~”Don’t fall for crap from one no greater
~~~~~than head of the Order of the Golden Tater”
The Moron Club: No Cover. No MInimum.
No Maximum for high-scoring mini-golfers.
Mum’s the word on Mime Radio. Mmmmm.
[A personal P.S. I admit having lived long enough, as well as sufficiently wide & crooked, to have experienced idiocy close to home, even without the help of politicians. Nor have I been entirely without a pleasure principle, sometimes even a vice-principal. Nevertheless, pretty soon the fried chickens come home to roost, & get roasted.
“There’s nothing like a good knight’s roast to remind readers that Otto Correct has added unwanted editing to what was already problematic enough, formerly correct, a designated deconstruction zone, extraordinarily eccliptcal, exoteric & tittilatingly unerotic.
Having said that, however tongue in cheeks, I want to assure my fellow morons (& idiot advocates generally) of my enduring good will, fellowship, & non-financial support of the moronic, the oxymoronic & the idiotic. As a self-identified moron myself, I may hopefully be forgiven for attributing superiority of reasoning capacity to More-Ons generally, especially in comparison to the prospect of idiots running amuck.
Don’t take being called an idiot as necessarily coming from someone who doesn’t know what an idiot is from first hand experience, in other words. On the other hand, I’ll understand you all the more closely if you hold more fond personal affection for the “inner moron,” perhaps the result of early conditioning, brain-washing & rinsing, as with Yours Crudely, growing out of my ‘ears at Mount Moron Academy, in the rain shadow of mighty Mount Moron, one of the dizziest places on the mishugunah earth.
Ra Ra Roll On, Roll On D’ Odorant River.
Moron’s Crew gonna make you shiver.
Give us a slice, we’ll give you back a sliver.
We’ll oar through the ice, & nibble on raw liver.
The Moron’s colors are maroon on maroon,
our fortune cookie’s a broken macaroon.
every senior gets a silver-plated spoon,
a framed diploma & a helium balloon.
[They don’t call it Moron High for nothing.]
Go, Morons! Go, Go, Maroon Maroon!
Hit that line & read that rune,
we’re up the mountain & down the dune,
If we had a bucket, we might carry a tune.
Oh, well, what the hail, the hail can fall quite hard
in the shadow of Mount Moron, on the old school yard,
where Moron boys recite iambs from the bard,
playing lightning blackjack, yelling, “Hit me!” for a card!
“WIth lightning, beans & thunder,
Moron lads discover wonder.”
~~~~~Rev. B. Knot Moody, Founding Head,
~~~~~Mount Moron Academy for Wayward Lads
“With Latin & then Greek,
they learn to turn the other cheek.”
~~~~~Sister Irma Mossy Moody-Bloom, Founding Head MIstress
~~~~~ Miss Misty’s School, “on its own side of the river for good reason”
[As alumni/ae will already know, the two have long since become one, Mount Miss Moron Academy, considered by many one of the top near-elite prep schools in the nation, if not in the area. Or it might be if it were located somewhere else. See The Mounted Moron Guide to Schools of the Mishugunah Peninsula for a complete rundown, rubdown, & run-over.]
Run over, run over,
for a roll in the clover.
You needn’t run far
to earn the name Rover….