Why is Everyone so F*G Stupid?

Jacob Chansley (with The Horns) Got 41 Months in Prison

Totally Repudiated Q-Anon Etc

It is a total mystery why some people refuse to get vaccinated or why an entire political party seems to be living in an alternate reality. As I write, thousands of health care workers in New York have refused to get the first jab in order to go back to work. And the "audits" keep coming. What the f*k is going on?

To understand human behavior, you must stand back. Compassion must always be the starting point. There, but for the grace of God, go I. Through long effort, I reduced my own FI (f*g idiot) score from 9 (MAGA hat) to 5 (seriously confused). Along the way, I have had bizarre ideas about "reality" and acted on them. Sometimes with tragic results. Anti-vaxxers don't have a monopoly on stupidity.

When I was about 5 years old, I grew skeptical of the stories everyone seemed to believe about some fat guy at the North Pole delivering presents for all the children of the world in one night. More than this: he made all these presents in his workshop. And he kept a list of who has been naughty and who's being nice.

I busted my parents by marking all the oranges in the house, then finding marked oranges in my stocking on Christmas morning. They immediately "fessed up" but warned me not to share the secret with my little brother. Along with millions of kids the same age, I was being invited to join the conspiracy.

It turned out that grownups are in on conspiracies on a grand scale. The next one I was confronted with went something like this:

• There is an old man in the sky-a kind of Super-Santa called "God".
• The naughty/nice list still applied but the "nice" people would live forever.
• Super-Santa created the entire Universe and was responsible for everything that happened. You could get Super-Santa to bend things your way by praying.
• And so on ...

If you can believe this, you can believe anything. 90% of Americans actually believe some version of this story. This makes Trump's "big lie" look like an innocent fib. Let's call it the HUGE lie. It's not really about God - it's about casting off from the world of evidence into the rough waters of human imagination. There they be monsters.

How do we get from Santa to Trump? My own experience illustrates the process.  Having determined that not only my parents but just about everyone was lying to me about Santa, I went on my merry way trusting people to tell me the truth about important stuff. The "God" idea was so commonly accepted that it didn't occur to my young mind that it was Santa for grown-ups. I admit to serious confusion. For example, when the teacher in Sunday School asked us to reply "present" I was upset that there were to be no presents. This silly experience illustrates how young and tender-minded I was when they started shoveling the HUGE Lie into my brain. This time, there was nobody to "clue me in". As I was to discover over the years, there seemed to be no way to test the idea. Everyone seemed to believe it. But I was skeptical. In Grade 12, I encountered Bertrand Russel's "Why I am Not A Christian", which theoretically blew up the whole hoax. However, I found that virtually nobody was interested in discussing the issue. I became a lone "agnostic". I was also trapped in the false dichotomy that ensnares many who start by questioning the HUGE lie. You eject all the spooky stuff but you are left with a "God-shaped hole". NOT believing in God does not satisfy the needs that fantasy provides. You become vulnerable to other craziness.  Many people manage to believe both the HUGE lie and a basket of completely unrelated garbage such as Alien abduction. There is never enough.

My skepticism continued for many years, but almost accidentally, I became actively interested in "Christian" teachings and the life of Jesus, but, again, nobody seemed to share my interest. Eventually, I encountered the "charismatic" flavor of Christianity - people who were very much "interested". It was a world full of magic and wonder. Faith healing. Daily communion with Jesus. And, at last community.

How do we get from a kid confused about "presents" to me being a candidate for the Ministry of the United Church? There are many forces at work but it seems to me that the main thing was finding people who actually gave a shit about deeply important matters. It was the end of my lonely search.

I must note that, once one rubs elbows with the "guys up front" - the teachers in Theology School, the priests, and ministers - nobody believes in the "official" story. The HUGE lie is a myth, supposedly valuable for "ordinary" folks. I remember one of our fantastic instructors expressing his frustration that everything he taught us would never reach the "folks in the pew". We would go on about our business "as if" the HUGE lie were true ("as if" were the exact words of the very senior minister who was my mentor).

My education for the Ministry was cut short, but that's another story. Having been "up front", I could no longer occupy a pew with a straight face. I wandered away.

So finally, in my late 20's I find that there is "no there there". Thanks to my "professional" education, I come away with a decent understanding of how these stories capture the imagination - how "myth" weaves its way into the culture to the point where few of us realize where myth ends and "reality" begins. 

Throughout history, it seems that people were unaware of any difference between the world they inhabited and the magic-filled world of myth. Since virtually all of "scripture" was written in cultures that were completely enveloped in myth, it makes no sense to ask, for example, if Jesus actually died on the cross, or even if Jesus actually existed. 

Of course, such ideas would outrage most "Bible-believing" Christians, although they are totally in line with the official education I received toward a Master of Theology. The "pros" don't talk about these things since they would quickly become unemployed if they did so. 

So, by age 30, my FI score has nudged down to maybe 6. I was no longer "agnostic", but regarding the entire sweep of Christianity (and all other religions) as a mixture of myth and outright fraud. I had the good fortune to travel the world and visit "Eastern" religions on their home turf. I was not impressed.

But still, it took me another 34 years to "connect the dots" to really understand what kind of society we wind up with if 90% of citizens believe a preposterous lie even though it actually makes almost no impact on their actual behavior. A professional geologist I met illustrates this point. On the one hand, he believed the world was created in 7 days. On the other hand, his profession required him to understand how rocks were created over millions of years Well, God just made the whole thing (fossil dinosaurs and all) in 7 days. Why not?  My case was not very different. Belief in God or not made no real difference in my life. I could think about the issue once or twice a year and, finding nobody interested, put it back on the shelf while I attended to the business of living.

But for many, the "real world" doesn't satisfy their need for excitement. Nor does the hypocritical, boring, confusing, self-contradictory world of organized religion. They need UFOs. They need conspiracy theories. They need to be under constant threat of cosmic significance. For many, this "itch" can be satisfied by fantasy. For others, brought up in a world already shot through with secret influences, the need is for stronger stuff. Such as Q-Anon. Such as microchips in vaccinations. Such as cannibal Democrats.

The road from Santa in the Sky to Donald Trump is sketched in CBC's excellent podcast, "The Flamethrowers". Way back in the birth of radio, stations needed cheap content and Bible Thumping preachers needed a way to reach more people (and pockets). We saw this in Alberta, in William Aberhart. Everywhere we see a pivot from hardcore, fundamentalist religion to politics or something spicier than "old-fashioned religion". Conspiracies fit the bill. In Aberhart's case, the call of fantasy economics was irresistible.

If you can believe in God - even a little bit - you can believe anything. In the words of Rachel Maddow, you have moved to Earth 2.

But why America? What is it about America that makes it such a fertile ground for outright denial of reality?

America was founded by half a dozen sects who simultaneously claimed their beliefs were the only correct ones and that others were mistaken. Bound for Hell even. This combination of rabid focus on made-up doctrine along with the tendency to endlessly split into more and more factions is the founding feature of Protestantism (it's in the very name). It is in the American tradition to cling proudly to one's own version of the HUGE lie and shun others - sometimes to the point of violence.

This sets the stage for charlatans of all stripes to round up "true believers" and convince them of something even nuttier than what they already believe. There is something WE know and YOU don't. What's more - you need to demonstrate your belief. You need to act. Shoot an abortion provider. Invade the Capital. It's a habit of mind.

This produces the phenomenon I call the "skunk at the dinner party". Skunks want to be more and more offensive to rule out any serious possibility of communication. If you are sufficiently counter-factual in your announcements, people simply walk away. This is not a mere difference of opinion. An encounter with one of these skunks can make you sick for days.

This is the road to mass stupidity.