One of the chief consolations of age is that the crap you're going through isn't that different than the crap you've already been through. It's just as enduring too, hence the fascination in those Seven Deadly Sins we keep trying to zortch away. For example, fashions change and the hair is a little different, but the same pig ignorance endures. Take that pix of the young dope in today's post. Different, yes, from the dopes of the 50's and 60's, but by the 70's, except for the cargo shorts, he would be as comfortable being stupid in that decade as in this one. In fact, during the 70's, when dopes started looking exactly like him, I decided to quit hitchhiking.
Taking a peek at this dope's sign, I'm reminded of my days teaching both morans and dummies. As an art teacher, I taught one of the two classes the special ed kids took. Into my classroom, full of fun and sharp tools, poured kids whose IQ's averaged about 55, depending. For the most part, my special ed kids were a weird delight, since they had a pretty good sense of how the world viewed them, and their creativity absorbed and reflected that skew. Also, their retardation was caused by a variety of ills, from Down's Syndrome, to brain tumors, to lack of oxygen at birth. As a result, they weren't limited in the same way, didn't act the same way, didn't talk the same way. But the dopes I taught were identically dopey.
When I went on to teach college, I discovered the same dummies, usually arrayed in the back of the room, lightly sketching penises in their notebooks before skipping out early. But I was still a young teacher then, encumbered by the saddlebags of hip-pedagogical-thought, which promoted the idea that there were no dummies, only unmotivated, emotionally-limited teachers. And so, wondering if this was true, I began my Save-the-Dope Campaign. This took the form of reaching out to them and attempting to really communicate, for it was another hippie tenet that no one could withstand the force of honest sharing. So I snatched them back as they tried to scurry off for a cigarette, sat them down, stared into their dull eyes, encouraged the shit out of them, and listened to their responses, which consisted of a defensive So?
They had no business in college, of course, but we were just venturing into one of America's Bright Ideas, which postulated that universities, especially third-tier crap universities, could be a money-making proposition. All you had to do was accept anyone with a pulse. Of course I got exactly nowhere with my Save-the-Dope Campaign, and decided that, like the poor, dopes are always with us. Still, what I took away from the experience is confirmed in these troubled times. Lest I be accused of heartlessness, I want to say that my use of the words dope, dummie, and stoopid mf is precise. I'm referring to a being who is placidly convinced they are always right, is willfully ignorant, does not know the difference between fantasy and reality, has a simple faith only in rich people and the people who beat them up.
And so, it doesn't help to get our bowels in an uproar over the dummies who are currently loving Sarah Palin, who is a better-looking dope than most, and who probably appears rich compared to your average dullard.
Let the stoopid mfs rage and holler. Just pray they forget to vote.
But we need to vote. We surely do.
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