The War On Stupid People

The War on Stupid People

“We must stop glorifying intelligence and treating our society as a playground for the smart minority.  … Smart people should feel entitled to make the most of their gift.  But they should not be permitted to reshape society so as to instate giftedness as a universal yardstick of human worth.”

This is the conclusion drawn by David H. Freedman in his article in the latest Atlantic (July/August 2016, p. 13-14.)  I happened to see Mr. Freedman on a TV news show yesterday, where the discussion was about “experts” and “elites” who may have unwittingly brought on the recent onslaught by “stupid” people against progressive politics and politicians.  I have said openly that I am terrified of Trump and his followers, as though they were barbarians at the gates of my world, or playground, as Freedman has it.  Suddenly I see that I am one of the elites who consider Brexit and Trump supporters to be unbearably stupid. But wait.  I’m a Zen priest and Bible scholar (see the rest of this essay on sugoisekai.blogspot.com.)

I am convinced that we all are inextricably connected to each other (Buddhist wisdom) and must treat others the way we ourselves want to be treated (Christian wisdom). The pivotal word here is “we”:  who exactly are we?  Zazen and prayer are supposed to turn us into creatures of loving kindness (in very different ways, of course.) Whether someone (including myself) has reached a deep level of perception, or is sinful or sinless, is not my concern. 

But I have considered stupidity to be somehow separate from any of the other things that distinguish us. The last thing I (or any progressive) would do -- as Freedman points out -- is to discriminate against others on the basis of their race, ethnicity, gender, love-life, religion or physical disability.  But their IQ?  How often have I called people stupid?  Many times!  Now as never before, religion and politics have seemed to me to be overrun with stupid people.  Anti-abortion, anti-gay Christians and tea-party Republicans drive me crazy with their stupidity!

You don’t have a university degree?  Or you have one from a Podunk college?  Forget it.  I know what you think and will say (and VOTE on) before you do. As a Japanophile I enjoy telling Americans that in Japan married couples do not have babies unless they can afford them, raise them and send them to college.  Pregnancies that don’t meet that test are aborted.  My listeners (especially Catholics) never quite get over the shock of “are aborted,” so my general point (“look how smart the Japanese are”) is completely missed. That is sad to me.  I’m even left speechless by people who use double-negatives and don’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re” (something that linguistics departments are accepting nowadays, more’s the pity.) 

As my own son, Reg, has said to me (and that I repeat, but only in jest), “Dad, you are a snob!”  The fact of the matter is, I am.  I secretly maintain a deep prejudice against pop music and sports.  “Artists” on rock and country western stages and big-time stars on the basketball court, baseball, football and soccer fields are idolized beyond reason and paid outrageous amounts of money; whereas real (i.e., classical) musicians, singers and dancers (real artists) struggle to make enough money to live on, even before retirement. I am insulted beyond anything I can express in words.    

So what do I do now? I can stop insisting on proper English usage and ignore pop music and sports.  But there are weightier matters here.  A Zen student asked his teacher, “How should a Buddhist regard ISIS?”  (Hello, James Kenney.)  This is the question of our age.  My knee-jerk response (the same one that stupid people have) is, “Kill the bastards!”  That is not the response I as a Zen teacher would let slip.  (As a Christian soldier I might.)  But I do believe that when I feel deep anger I need to be angry.  I need to face anger head-on, just like I need to go into my feelings of hatred, fear, resentment, disappointment or even love when they appear in my heart.

Is the answer then, “Ignore ISIS” or “Let the Muslims sort it out”?  I don’t think so.  We all must do something.  I happened to be in Llasa’s Jokhang square in 1980 when a demonstration by Tibetan nuns was put down by Chinese authorities.  (A documentary of it was made sometime later by Western filmmakers who were there and who interviewed some of the nuns who escaped to Dharamsala, India.) I was proud of the nuns then and still am.  They sacrificed their lives.  Many were tortured and many died.  Tibetan Buddhist priests have generally taken the position that each person can react to such brutality in whatever way they choose.  Many have decided to follow His Holiness the Dalai Llama to India, others have immigrated to the U.S. and Europe.  There may have been no alternative.  I’m sure the Chinese were ready to annihilate the entire clergy if they had actually staged a revolution.  They have done a good job of wiping out Buddhism in Tibet as things stand today anyway.

For me there is, in fact, no answer to what should be done today about the Chinese Communists -- who now feel religion can be practiced but only under tight surveillance -- or about ISIS, which considers its interpretation of Islam to be the only correct one and that other Muslims (and any unbelievers in any part of the world) deserve to be killed. I saw public executions in Beijing in 1970.  We all have seen beheadings and stonings by ISIS zealots on TV.  I draw the line at killing.  Any killing.  But for any reason?  I’m not sure. 

The latest ISIS bombing in Istanbul may be a frantic act of a group of people under attack by other people, including us. Should we have gotten involved in Kuwait and Iraq in the first place?  No.  But what is happening now, as a result of that incursion or not, is happening.  Careful, skillful, shrewd political maneuvering is necessary to prevent a mass killing on a scale to which not even Hiroshima and Nagasaki can compare.  It is a global issue.  We ARE the world, even if xenophobes in this country think we are not.  Or that global warming is not real.

My understanding of reality, my perception of it, can be liberating enough to me that nothing actually matters.  And nothing, no one thing, not even everything, does.  We all die eventually.  But there is something called “skillful means” that all of us can use.  Real skill comes out of deep meditation (samadhi). Let’s work together.  This is an existential crisis.  We don’t have to exist.  But we can, at least temporarily.  Shall we?    

Elizabeth Warren Flap: Indian Identity

Spoiler alert!  I was born in Oklahoma to parents who worked for the government as teachers and caseworkers in the Ft. Sill Indian School in the 1930s.  Indian children from all over the U.S. were separated from their parents and sent to Ft. Sill to learn how to be “American”.  But my father was subversive, in that he wrote down their various languages and tribal stories so they would never forget them.  As a toddler my closest playmates and teachers were Comanches.  Descendants of Quanah Parker were my neighbors in Medicine Park. Until my 5th birthday I had two horses that I took care of and rode -- bareback.  For all intents and purposes my heart was Indian. But I am of European stock.  So I sympathize with Sen. Warren.   

Many years ago Sen. Elizabeth Warren made references to her American Indian heritage. That has recently come back to haunt her.  The public wants to know if (1) she can prove her identity as part Cherokee, and (2) if she used that identity to help her academically and professionally.  The Atlantic ran an article (May 20, 2012) that has contributed to all the fuss, but makes it clear that the answer to the first question above is “No” and the answer to the second is also “No”.  Photo-shopped pictures of her in cigar-store Indian headdress and war paint have flooded the media.  Donald Trump ridiculed her as “Pocahontas” in one of his childish rants.  In June 2016 the Republican Party of Massachusetts ran an anti-Warren TV ad in response to Donald Trump.  A few Cherokee Nation people expressed outrage in the ad, saying that Warren was not a Cherokee and that she had lied and insulted Indians by claiming to be part Cherokee.  Like many white Oklahomans who claim to be part Indian, she admitted that she had no proof, but had heard this from her parents all her life.  Below are the facts, with quotes from the Atlantic.

Elizabeth Warren was born June 22, 1949, in Oklahoma City, OK, and graduated from the University of Houston in 1970.  She took her Law Degree in 1976 from Rutgers University (where she declined the school’s offer to take advantage of affirmative action policies.) Her distinguished teaching career began at the Universities of Texas and Pennsylvania, where she taught law. (Both schools listed her on their websites as a minority professor, probably to make the universities look good for accreditation purposes.

In 1995 Senator Warren joined the Law Faculty at Harvard.  From the Atlantic: “Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan, sat on the appointing committee that recommended Warren for hire … said [Warren’s] Native American heritage … [never came] up during the hiring process. It simply played no role in [her appointment].”  In 2008 Elizabeth Warren was named Chair of Congressional Oversight Panel, and in 2010 she served as Special Advisor to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  She was elected Democratic U. S. Senator from Massachusetts in 2013

To quote from the writer of the Atlantic article: “The Democratic Senate candidate [now Senator from Massachusetts] can’t back up family lore that she is part Indian – but neither is there any evidence that she benefited professionally from these stories. … Based on the public evidence so far, she doesn’t appear to have used her claim of Native American ancestry to gain access to anything much more significant than a cookbook; in 1984 she contributed five recipes to the Pow Wow Chow cookbook published by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, OK.  [She was listed as,] ‘Elizabeth Warren – Cherokee’.”

I’m not sure where the photos of Sen. Warren in cigar-store Indian headdress and war paint came from, or who might have made them, but the slightest scrutiny of them shows they are photo-shopped.  They first appeared on billboards set up by the owner of a motorcycle shop in Hanson, MA, who supports Republican Senator Scott Brown.  That same shop owner also is known for putting up revoltingly crude billboards attacking Pres. Obama.  For me, this sort of twisting of free speech is unconscionable.  Unfortunately, some people will believe anything.