I could have said ‘of Evil’, but hell, I didn’t want to get all religious sounding. Stupid people are the bread and butter of badness because they feed its appetite for blind obedience. What do I mean by ‘stupid people’? All those who unquestioningly accept stuff without proper investigation and verification. I trained as a historian and we learn to check everything for sources. Historians look for primary sources like first person accounts. We don’t take things on trust. We don’t act on hearsay. Gossip is not always truth. We live during an era of media manipulation, where bad actors are deliberately misediting information to produce stories that promote their narratives.
Who Are The Stupid People?
Stupid people are all those who use the internet without comprehending how it actually works. Those folk who get on social media but have no idea how social media works in the technical sense. If you use anything without a basic understanding of what makes it tick you are vulnerable to manipulation and disinformation campaigns. Stupid people are all those who read stuff online and in newspapers but don’t know who owns the site or media organisation producing the material. If you don’t know the politics and vested interests behind what you are consuming you are foolish. Always ask yourself why! Why is this person writing this stuff? Is it a person or a bot? Do you know how to spot the difference?
Bad Actors & Organisations Feed on Fools
Stupid people are the bread and butter of badness because they provide the dumb acceptance it requires to thrive. The truth is getting harder to find because there is more intentional misdirection and misinformation out there than ever before. Bad actors with axes to grind are stoking the fires of division and downright confusion in the public space. Social media is full of BS and wild exaggeration. Manipulators of this medium are deliberately taking discussions to the extreme edges of debate to foment divisive behaviour within our communities.
One strategy employed by people like Donald Trump and his minions is to go on the pre-emptive attack. Trump accuses those on the other side of the very things he is doing. Fake news, for instance, is more often produced by extreme right wing individuals and groups. Voter fraud is another example, where Trump accused people of this even before the 2020 federal election. After he lost the election and refused to accept the result with a loud campaign of accusations of voter fraud these were investigated by officials across the country and the only voter fraud they found were on the GOP side. Mud sticks if you throw it, however. A well known fascist strategy is to create chaos and confusion by overstating and exaggerating problems in the media. Smokescreens of possible threats to law and order play into their hands. A community worried about their security turn to more extreme solutions like hardline fascist parties. We saw in this in Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Putin did it in Russia with the Chechen terrorism bombings, which were actually false flag operations by him. Autocratic regimes come to power on the back of fears around the disintegration of social cohesion. Stupid people buy into these things because they unquestioningly accept these narratives. This is why stupid people are so dangerous to the rest of us.
You owe it to yourself to thoroughly investigate information that comes your way. Do not take anything on trust. Teach yourself to look behind the curtain to see what is there. Drill down into those posts and tweets you read online and find out the real source of the information they purport to present. Take the time to become informed. Historians are not always looking back in time. Indeed, much more of our time is spent scrutinising the present. Find the primary source. Find the truth. Stop being gullible and naïve. The world wide web is an amazing storehouse of data – so use it. Pull your finger out and get motivated to get to the bottom of things. Don’t be one of the many stupid people threatening the survival of our planet.
Robert Sudha Hamilton
©House Therapy