Trying to fix stupid

It's risky to talk about IQ or innate mental ability these days. People are so afraid of recognizing differences between people that we really can't talk about it and have to pretend that intelligence is free of any genetic cause, which is of course, utterly impossible. So anyway, I won't say much about it either, save to say that far beyond the silly bickering that some people do over two or three or even 10 point differences and about whether it's nature or nurture, the latter does not explain why some people score 150 and about an equal number score at 50. We also like to pretend that big differences mean little, which is an attitude that goes away fast when you have some experience with people over 3 standard deviations below the middle. It's easier to pretend that the really gifted are something other than smarter than us and that their ideas don't tend to be more insightful and yes, indeed, correct. It's easiest to just get all Republican and call them names.

But I'm not talking about or really interested in the gifted, I'm talking about idiots and even though we're not allowed to call people stupid except in the political arena, a large percentage of us are, statistically speaking, not so bright. What I'm here to talk about is my suspicion that the people most zealous about codifying behavior, making laws and protecting us from evil, fall into the category of just plain stupid.

Take for instance, the lawmakers of Iowa. I'm not going to tell you they're brighter than the lawmakers of Florida who force sexual offenders to sleep under bridges by forbidding them to live almost anywhere else. I am going to tell you they're stupid. In their zeal to ever widen the category of child abuse they're trying to make the parent whose 14 year old discovers the Playboy hidden under the mattress a "child abuser" which of course is a lifetime stigma that can force one to live under a bridge, have one's children taken away to be raised by the kind of stupid people who make such laws, and other life changing experiences.

Your son's friend comes over with his laptop to do homework and they discover Youporn? You're a sex criminal and branded for life, dude. Yes, it's hard to believe it, but the crusading idiots have found another way to ruin lives and break up families in the name of morality and protecting the children. Maybe it's not so hard to believe it. You see, by the logic of stupidity, since pornography plays a part in child abuse, you're a criminally negligent child abuser if your teen finds a naked picture or manages to sneak into the living room at night when you're watching HBO. At worst, since pornography plays a part in abuse, or so they say, and since pornography of any sort or degree is rape, you're a rapist!

Unless this proposed bill is an attempt at preventing people from reproducing for fear of living under bridges, I suggest it's just another way the idiots can make criminals out of innocent people and make up crimes for the sake of punishment.

“We have to have it.” said Kathy Lowenberg, director of Counseling for Growth & Healing in Iowa City. Lowenberg said she’s treated more than 100 children who have been sexually assaulted and that, in most cases, pornography played "a pivotal role" in the abuse. From there to blaming pederasty on Playboy or Showtime requires Logic Abuse - that's where the stupid part comes in, growth and healing notwithstanding.

State Representative Kurt Swaim, a Democrat no less, said he will do everything he can to get the bill passed this year and that it would only be used in the most serious cases, even though as written it's so broad it could almost be used in any case, depending on the mood or personality or prejudice or ambition or rank stupidity of the Iowa Department of Justice. I'm sure we can trust them with our children and our lives and our freedom though - they're politicians.

No, you can't fix stupid and that you can even vote it down is questionable at best. Perhaps voting against the bill will be deemed child molestation too, who knows? All I can hope for is that enough stupid people will put enough other stupid people in jail that the birth rate of idiots will plummet and allow the rest of us to evolve in time into creatures just a little bit smarter than we are now.