Only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil - incapable of seeing that it is evil. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and is abused in his very being. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us from the fact that he is not independent. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up an autonomous position. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, such as intellect, suddenly fail. Almost as if this is a sociological-psychological law where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. People who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals in groups. ![]() The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or rather, they allow this to happen to them. ![]() There are human beings who are remarkably agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but stupid. This much is certain, stupidity is in essence not an intellectual defect but a moral one. If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. In all this the stupid person, is self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. Reasons fall on deaf ears.” Facts that contradict a stupid person’s prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplishes anything here. In his famous letters from prison, Bonhoeffer argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while “one may protest against evil it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenseless. Eventually he concluded that the root of the problem was not malice, but stupidity. In prison, Bonhoeffer began to reflect on how his country of poets and thinkers had turned into a collective of cowards, crooks and criminals. After years of trying to change people's minds, Bonhoeffer came home one evening and his own father had to tell him that two men were waiting in his room to take him away. The entire platform for the Republican party is essentially "Don't believe your own eyes!" aka "Don't look up!".In the darkest chapter of German history, during a time when incited mobs threw stones into the windows of innocent shop owners and women and children were cruelly humiliated in the open Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young pastor, began to speak publicly against the atrocities. "Don't Look Up!" is exactly what right wing conservative media has been chanting for years now, everything but what they are feeding you is "fake news", climate change isn't real, Trump didn't really get help from the Russians, Trump didn't actually extort Ukraine for dirt on Biden, Trump didn't really cheat on his taxes or pay porn stars to shut them up during the campaign, Trump wasn't really for abortion before he was against it, trickle down economics isn't really broken, Christmas and Christians really are under attack regardless of the lack of evidence, and there really is a 'Deep State' because if there wasn't you'd be able to trust your own eyes, but there is so you can't so believe us instead. It was mocking the right wing conservative Republican demand to not believe your own eyes. While phonetically it matched up to the "Lock her up" chant, the message was clearly different. ![]() The "don't look up" chant at the rally was just a little too close to "lock her up"
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