Levels of Stupidity

Not all stupidity is the same

Mike Meyer
7 min readApr 20, 2024

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We are in a race to the bottom. But how far is it to the bottom? That question keeps getting avoided but needs to be asked.

America and its Empire have struggled to keep the world simple. Greed is our only virtue; bigger is the only definition of better, even if it kills you. And no one really gives a shit and hasn’t for a long time, so it doesn’t matter.

Now that we have that out of the way, reality requires us to continue functioning nationally until combined climate disasters make it impossible to continue.

Sadly, we are in a year of elections in a very tattered tradition of representative government that requires choices to be made. The overall race to the bottom means that those choices if they exist at all, are between dumb and dumber.

While everyone knows this, our system is still in the realm of dyadic thinking. For most people, there are only two options: good and evil. Since our political system is set to ensure only variations of bad and no good choices are available, we are hung. Some people, with no idea of what to do, lurch toward fascist authoritarians who provide easy answers as if they will take responsibility when things go to hell. Authoritarians, of course, historically refuse all responsibility and blame everyone else.

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Mike Meyer

Writer, Educator, Campus CIO (retired) . Essays on our changing reality here, news and more at https://rlandok.substack.com/