Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard: 8/4/2023
Fifth Place: Asa Hutchinson
As Asa Hutchinson continues his Presidential run, the writing on the wall--which was always against him--has become so clear that the only person who doesn't think he should just drop out is, well, Asa Hutchinson. However, another reminder of his failure of a campaign can be found on The Hill, which today ran the headline "Hutchinson says he’s ‘close to halfway there’ in reaching GOP presidential debate threshold." If he is in a race for the presidency or a race against Spongebob is currently unclear.
Fourth Place: John McWhorter
His New York Times column "One Sentence Does Not Define a Curriculum" goes after the critics of Ron DeSantis's recently approved educational standards in Florida, noting that much of this complaining is about a single sentence.
However, from the tone of coverage of this passage, one might suppose that it was a central plank in the curriculum. Instead, it was but one passage amid hundreds of others, which constitute an almost exhaustive coverage of the gruesomeness of slavery in the United States. Taken together, they are such an informed recitation of our racist past that it is almost surprising DeSantis would approve them.
This is an amazing rebuttal of the people who believe that sentence is the only thing in the entire curriculum, although given I have yet to see anybody make that claim I would call this nothing more than strawmanning. Unless something about the wider context of that statement changes its meaning, bringing up that most of the document is fine (as if we'd accept an A for effort regarding how children are taught about history) is just nonsensical. To put it another way: Although he is right that this one sentence being bad does not make the entire curriculum racist (something which nobody is claiming), that does not make said one sentence any less racist.
McWhorter also makes this note:
It’s important also to note that the principal purported gaslighter was himself Black. The person responsible for the infamous passage, according to fellow group members, was William Allen. He is an academic and also a Republican, but, as challenging as it can be to perceive this in our times, that party affiliation does not automatically render him suspect on matters of race.
Although it is true that Allen's political party does not make his statements on race any less correct by default, the mention of him being black seems to come with the implication that his race adds validity to his statements, which is equally untrue. People of color can have stupid, uninformed, and bigoted opinions on issues related to racial minorities just as everybody can, because idiocy knows no race.
Speaking of idiotic things said about slavery, Levin made a rather moronic comment about the Trump indictment yesterday:
We were reminded last night by an Israeli, Caroline Glick -- born in America -- who said one of the great legal minds in Israel who she spoke to said, you know, in the United States, the Dred Scott decision, which was decided in 1857 - the impact of that decision took a few years to really settle in. It served as the foundation for the Civil War.
And here I was thinking it had to do with the South--who agreed with Dred Scott v. Sanford--attempting to leave the union after the election of an abolitionist President.
This is one political party trying to destroy another. This is one political party trying to monopolize elections, federal law enforcement, and the entire justice system. And if they get away with it, it's over. It's over.
Of course, nobody is trying to destroy the entire Republican Party, what they are attempting to do is imprison Donald Trump because, you know, he broke the law.
Second Place: Mike Huckabee
Mother Jones has an article out on his recent children's book The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change, and although I will not cover every error they documented, I will show you my personal favorite:
The visuals used in the guide are even more blatantly misleading than its text, [Glenn] Branch [deputy director of the National Center for Science Education] noted. One graph, titled “Thousands of Years of Carbon Dioxide Levels,” spans 400,000 years ago until “present day,” and is summarized with the conclusion, “looking back in time, carbon dioxide levels have always gone up and down.”
But the data the graph labels as “present day”—peaking at a little over 280 parts per million—actually represents levels from 2,300 years ago, around 391 BC, Branch pointed out. The vast majority of the carbon dioxide driving climate change has been emitted only since the Industrial Revolution, with atmospheric CO2 concentrations currently over 420 parts per million, higher than any data point included on the graph, which has a scale that only goes up to 300 parts per million.
This man seriously confused 391 BC with the present day.
Winner: Marjorie Taylor Greene
Regarding the Trump indictment, Greene said this "feels like communism" which is an economic system that has nothing to do with the ability to charge one's political leaders and usually results in authoritarian states where such a thing is impossible.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, you've said the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
