Ignorant and Stupid People Vote, Too

"No, that's ignorant. They just don't know any better."

"I read in the LA Times that last weekend’s poll of Republican voters in Alabama and Mississippi found about half still believe President Obama is a Muslim and about 1 in 4 believes his parents’ interracial marriage should have been illegal.

I usually check my gut response by first reminding myself that polls, like statistics, can be used to show practically anything and  second, that the movie, Nurse Betty, makes a good, albeit rather violent, point about the difference between ignorance and stupidity.

Ignorant is not knowing any better; stupid is...well, stupid.

The world’s changed enough that I don’t worry too much any more about the interracial marriage issue. When I first moved to the back woods in the early ‘70s, Esther Borg used to refer to me as the “guy married to the white woman.” Esther’s dead now; my children are ‘mixed’ and my grandchildren even more ‘mixed.’  Long live miscegenation.

I’m not so sure about the religion issue.  I like when people get spiritual to bring us together, I don’t like when it’s used as some kind of credential to determine who’s in and who’s out.

As far as I’m concerned, the public good is not defined by Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu scripture— not in this country, my country.

Seems to me if someone says being a Mormon won’t determine how he will govern if elected or if someone says he is a Christian, then that should be good enough. So, now you know and to think otherwise would be...well, stupid.

But we also know it’s not what we know as much as what we believe that determines what we think and do. Ignorant and stupid people vote, too.

I might not like it but I wouldn’t have it any other way, not in this country, my country.

--Mike Sato