The Root Cause is Darwinism

A satire piece I'm working on for a small newspaper. I put it here so the staff can review it and make suggestions.

The Root Cause is Darwinism

All of the nation's problems can be traced to a phenomena some call “Reverse Darwinism”.

As an example, imagine a bright and capable high school junior in a dead end little rural town. Even if dirt poor, this kid will figure out a way to go to college, e.g., loans, scholarships, the military, etc. And after he completes his degree, he will leave town and migrate to a place where he can found a career, probably in a blue state city on one of the coasts.

Meanwhile, a second high school junior, who is both dumb and unambitious, will hang out with their buddies, drink beer, smoke, dip Skoal and perhaps even graduate from high school. But after graduation, this kid will hang around town, get married early, work at the truck stop and breed another batch of dead end kids. Probably a large batch.

Imagine the son of a rancher near Laramie Wyoming in 1905. And suppose this son is very gifted and capable. He will most likely remain in the area and, like his father, become a rancher. But because he is gifted, he will probably also become a pillar in the community, and perhaps the mayor or a city council member. He may also write books, music or poetry. He may influence and enlighten others and thereby improve the community. But he will remain a rancher in Laramie Wyoming. And his gifted children will also remain, and probably enrich the community as well.

Today, the same gifted son might start out at the University of Wyoming where he would do very well. He will then leverage this into admission into a graduate program at a prestigious university where he earns degrees in law and finance. He will then become an investment banker in New York or San Francisco, and his children will remain there and follow in his footsteps.

And remember that in the modern world, the intelligent still do well, but the stupid are no longer bound for the intestinal tract of a saber toothed cat. So there is is little evolutionary pressure here.

The examples above, taken alone, would affect nothing, but this has been going on in America since at least 1918 and the end of the First World War, And the same pattern, taking place over five or six generations, and involving millions of people, does have an effect. The sleepy little rural towns of America have acted as a type of sorting center, packing the bright,ambitious and capable off to the blue state cities, and leaving the not so bright, the unambitious and otherwise problem kids (think drugs and alcohol) to remain, breed and repopulate the town.

And, while we are told that there is more to intelligence than simple genetics, simple genetics do play a huge roll. And while there are exceptions, the children of professionals also tend to become professionals while children of dishwashers gravitate to restaurant work, or some other low wage occupation. And, while intelligence does always seem to cluster about a mean, this active sorting process may be shifting the mean, i.e., moving the entire Bell Curve for the local area to the left on the axis.

And this dumbing down of the rural population makes them extremely susceptible to transparent Fox News propaganda, superstition and class and racial hatred. They hate those pointy headed liberals, who make a lot of money working in the city, and who drive cars made in this century, about as much as they hate black and brown people. In fact they hate the liberals more because they have good reason to hate them, i.e., the liberals cheated and now have it made while the rural folk still have to bust tires down at the truck stop for twelve bucks an hour. (They mostly hate black and brown people because it's just a tradition for them.)

So we see that the reasons cited for the mess we are in generally miss the mark. The constant barrage of right wing propaganda does play a role, as does social media and unaddressed racial friction. But the root cause is this dumbing down of the rural population, which makes them susceptible to loony right wing propaganda on Fox News, AM radio and social media. And one thing the loony right wing propaganda does is stoke racial hatred and play into the white, rural population's feeling of victimhood. (Ah dropped outa school to work an' buy a fancy pickup, an' then Betty Lou got pregnant, so now ah cain't make no two hundred grand a year, but them affirmative action types shore do.)

Joe Bageant makes an excellent supporting point in his book “Deer Hunting With Jesus”. He notes that while a large percentage of the rural population in question can read, they can't read well enough to puzzle out an entire New York Times or Washington Post article. (Which explains why most Breitbart and News Max articles consist of a picture followed by two or three short paragraphs.) And a great many can do no more than puzzle out a headline. (Which explains why so many News Max articles have nothing to do with the lurid headline, e.g., “Adam Schiff Eats Dead Baby �" He Later States That it Tasted Like Chicken”.)

Their main, and often only, sources of news consist of Fox, which tells them everyone else is lying, AM radio, which tells them everyone but Fox and AM radio is lying and youTube, which tells them that Hillary Clinton keeps child sex slaves on Mars.

And lets not forget QAnon, the newest star in the constellation of right wing hick hustling outfits. An organization hinting that because the word “Tampon” can be constructed from the letters in Donald Trump's name, Nancy Pelosi must be up to some nefarious scheme.

So we see that the real problem is that there are just a lot of dumb people in America, and they are getting dumber and more numerous with each passing generation. And this would probably be OK were there not a billion dollar right wing propaganda industry riling them up and making them sullen and looking for a way to lash out.

And lash out they do. And this explains why Trump's 38% base is so stable and enduring. These chuckle heads don't particularly like Trump, and they know he's a lying New York con artist who has nothing in common with them, and they know he's destroying the nation, but they're OK with that because he pisses off what they see as the affirmative action crowd and the liberals who work in the city. And they are willing to give up their access to healthcare, their children's access to education, their Social Security and their Medicare to see some urban dentist downgrade from a Mercedes to a Chevy. (Recall that these guys are not the brightest bulbs out there in the cornfield.)

Right now, I can see only three solutions to this problem: (1) A bloody and protracted trench war, coupled with a draft, and with deferments for skilled workers (dangerous for the rest of us and inadvisable), (2) The shuttering of the right wing propaganda machine (probably impossible under our Constitution), (3) Mass sterilization (again, impossible under our laws) and (4) Secession from the red states.

Secession is the only viable option. The productive blues states need to buck up and kick out the dumb, nonproductive red states. And not only will this save the blue states the money they now spent to subsidize the red states, it will allow the people in the rural red states to continue on their current path and devolve into a separate species, e.g., Homo Hannity.

Reserves can then be established for this new species, complete with trees and vines for them to swing on. They can be equipped with radio collars, tracked and studied, and feeding stations can be established where blue state tourists can toss them peanuts and cheeseburgers.

And the nation will heal.

Reviews

[Robert Trakofler]

I am laughing hysterically but deep down i'm crying because this is so true. I have long been championing the cause of reintroducing critical thinking into the curriculum of our collective education systems classrooms but upon reflection of your article this would in fact be folly:/ for if you take a stupid person and try to teach them how to think critically he will only wait for the answer. As I watched with great embarrassment the very large mass of people assemble unmasked at a political rally here in pittsburgh yesterday the thought occurred to me... good all of the stupid people will die and we will have an accelerated darwinian mass extinction event. But unfortunately they will intermingle with smart people as well and we all know that stupid people have huge constitutions and many would survive:(

[barleygirl]

This is so eye-opening, I had to share it with a couple of my most trusted & stark-raving-mad liberal friends via private message (I'm not posting you publicly). I both love & hate this. I hate how the dummies write stuff like this off as classist liberal leanings, reinforcing their grievance politics. When I first started reading your various profiles, the hair on the back of my neck stood up becuz it sounded so biased (even if recognizably true). But then as you go on, your arguments become more & more undeniable. I've never seen anyone with the nerve to suggest that the blue states are supporting the red states while the red states denigrate the blue states for being socialist instead of capitalist. This is such a bizarre twist on how these arguments are usually presented. I love everything you say & how you say it especially (without venom or vindictiveness, just stating things matter-of-fact). But the whole damn mess just gives me the heebie-jeebies! -- and I was pretty jaded when I came to this page! (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie