Stupidity Is The Most Powerful Force in the Universe

Roland Barthes said it. "Stupidity is the most powerful force in the universe because there is no answer to it." You create stupidity by taking away the language in which people can carry on reasonable and rational discourse and discussion. This is a prime strategy for dismantling a state, for taking over a state, for the state of civil war.

There has been a concerted war upon rational language and discourse by the right since the days of reagan. It was Reagan's era in which his oval office began changing the meaning of words and re-naming even jobs. By now language usage in this country has become so mal-formed out of rational signification that rationality is nearly irrecoverable, i.e. there is no discourse.

When language itself can no longer be a tool of honest information and discussion because it has been so twisted and so debased, the state itself has become so frayed that it is well on the way to civil war. Their strategies and tactics have been more entrenched every decade since reagan's first bout of administration, and they have workedThese strategies have now worked so well, that as pointed out by Seattle's David Neiwert Seattle's David Neiwert in this article for George Mason University's History News Network, in the minds of the tbaggers&co, 'fascism' means people who stand up to their bullying. As Glenn Beck so infamously declared, the reason the senators were attacked last weekend on Capitol Hill, is because they provoked the crowd by walking through it.

There can be no response that is meaningful to someone uttering that level of stupidity. Today in the NY Times Frank Rich asks:

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call. out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

This, while Frank Rich makes clear, as we know, that what's driving these people is hatred, racial and women hatred. Which is powered by stupidity, the most powerful force in the universe.