To paraphrase pastor and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Racism is a manifestation of stupidity.
To directly quote comedian George Carlin: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that!”
I’m generally not a quote person, but in this case, they put it better than I do - and Carlin was doubtlessly influenced by Bonhoeffer.
Both the comedian and the pastor understood that stupidity isn’t the result of individuals, but the results of people in numbers. Social media gives the opportunity for all kinds of stupidity to clump up and grow like a cancerous tumour: racism, flat earthers, anti-vaccination sorts, creationists, nationalists, and so on. Ironically, they hate intelligent people and experts and simultaneously believe they know better than intelligent people and experts.
Now to quote Bill Murray about another feature of stupid people: “It’s hard to win an argument against a smart person, but damn near impossible to win one against a stupid person.”
So how do you get a stupid person to smarten up? The what is as simple as separating them from their group. The how is more complex because different environments require different strategies. Just like your kids, arguing with them isn’t going to work once they hit a certain age when one of them gets too involved with a group of stupid kids and starts acting stupidly themselves to fit in; instead, you figure out how to separate them from the source/group and the stupidity goes away rather quickly.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
