Considering the current state of our country, it’s amazing I can still be surprised. Trump has bathed us in the muddy waters of his bullshit for so long that I’m ashamed to say I’ve begun to rely on little bouts of Apathy to get me through the day. All I have to do is turn on the radio for more than ten minutes and viola! I’m in Bizzaro world.

I can listen to locals talk about how Muslims ain’t gone continue to move into their neighborhoods ’cause they got their guns. The host laughing along with them as if they’re both in 8th grade and telling fart jokes. I can listen to Rick and Bubba talk in Stereotype Chinese voice and make fun of Nagasaki.

The latest Bizarro event happened on February 28th, 2020 during an interview between NPR and the former mayor of Georgetown, SC, Jack Scoville. When asked what he thought of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, he said Pete was too articulate. The anger that began to swell inside me soon dissolved into a low grade, nauseous resignation that ignorance is not only pervasive in our mentally deteriorating country, but is indeed the new status quo as well.

Being articulate means you can fluently and coherently relate information. So in saying this, Scoville is saying he would feel better with someone who can’t clearly relate information. He is saying he would like the next President of the United States of America to be a stuttering, incoherent, and babbling idiot. He belongs on the Right, not the Left. The Right already has someone unintelligible in office, and he takes his job of irrational rambling and disjointed muttering quite seriously.

If you’re the least bit educated, you may not be able to wrap your head around Scoville’s statement. If you listen to Rick and Bubba, you probably understand exactly where he’s coming from. If you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed and you find yourself listening to someone much smarter than you, this usually leads to feelings of inadequacy. Compared to this person, you feel a little dumb. This leads to shame, which finds it must mutate into something else because shame cannot endure. It can turn into an irrational anger, directed at the person who has uttered things you cannot fully grasp. It can manifest as fear, as in fear of the unknown, or the things they know that you don’t. But the easiest state to achieve is doubt. A state of not trusting this person who has all this information and all the right words to go along with it. After all, they’re relating concepts that you haven’t made the time to think about yet. And besides, thinking is hard. You don’t have time for all that. You can leave that up to the morning talk show hosts who seem to have all the answers. They think kinda like you, except, and here’s the rub, they can articulate those fuzzy little thoughts you have. The ones about why people that don’t look like you shouldn’t be allowed in the country. The ones about how everybody should speak the same language you speak. And so on. You latch onto their words because that’s much easier than reflecting on things yourself. And even if you did take the time to think it over and come to some sort of shocking revelation, who would you share it with? You’ve surrounded yourself with people just like you. You’ll only get a side-eye from them. There’s no one with whom you can share epiphanies.

And this is where the propaganda machine reinforces these thoughts. They talk about the Left being elitist. That they’re people who think they’re better than you. This creates more than an intellectual bias. It creates a class distinction. The uppity, know-it-all professor types who think they’ve got it all figured out. And why would you listen to someone who thinks they’re better than you? Who talks better than you? You wouldn’t. There’s no reason to trust the stuck-up and high-and-mighty. Let’s listen to Rick and Bubba instead. They’re just a couple of God-fearin, good ole boys like me. In fact, they’re smarter than me, but not by much so it’s okay.

It’s cute when toddlers fumble over their language while trying to explain why their doggy is the best doggy ever. It’s terrifying when the leader of your country can’t stop gibbering goddamn nonsense to another world leader. Fumbling your words is funny in a college speech class, but not when your diarrhea of the mouth can adversely affect millions of Americans.

We need someone in the White House again who is articulate. If he likes stuttering so much, Jack Scoville can go jerk off to an auctioneer. I’m two years from 50 this year, but I’m going to say something that’s a little ageist. If you are under 30, for the love of God, please fucking vote this year.