As football coaches are fond of saying, "You can't fix stupid." Until very recently I have labored under the presumption that these words are true. I'm only now beginning to question the wisdom of this maxim, and only because I think the very notion of stupidity may need to be examined more closely. Obviously, there is an important difference between ignorance and stupidity, but there may also be a critical distinction between different types of stupidity.
Ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge. Being unaware of something doesn't necessarily indict someone's intellect. I'm not smarter than Stephen Hawking because I know my Aunt Barbara's phone number and Dr. Hawking doesn't. Let's say you can't identify the color puce because it's a shade so esoteric that crayola never even included it in the giant box with the built-in sharpener. (You know you exist on the fringe when you're excluded while Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber get seats at the table). Seeing something puce identified as such will forever eliminate your ignorance. On the other hand, let's say you refuse to accept the idea that limes are green, even though you concede that they're the same color as grass and that grass is green. In that case, we have stupidity rather than ignorance because you have all the required facts but you lack the ability to process them.
Thus, conventional wisdom would argue that ignorance can be very easily erased while stupidity is an intractable problem. I want to challenge this to an extent by suggesting that there are two types of stupidity, one which conforms to this reasoning and one which doesn't. I'll call them Type A and Type B. Someone with Type A stupidity was born that way and pretty much all you can do is put a paper hat on him and wish him well. He's as incapable of sophisticated thought as I am of bench pressing 300 lbs. Type B stupidity is another matter altogether. This phenomenon occurs when fear, rage, hatred or any combination thereof hijacks and paralyzes a well-functioning brain, rendering it as feckless as that of a low-grade moron. This has been occurring lately with disturbing frequency.
Take the example of Sean Hannity and Frank Luntz shortly after President Obama's address to Congress. They talked about how the president called insurance executives bad people (about 4:05 remaining in the video clip for those checking the link) because he said, referring to a series of current problems with insurance, "Insurance executives don't do this because they're bad people; they do it because it's profitable." No one with an IQ above 75 would draw that conclusion from those words unless he or she was stricken with acute Type B stupidity. Unless we can retreat from the brink, this will become more commonplace as people, particularly from the right wing grow increasingly unhinged.
Here's the good news, we'll eventually regain our bearings and settle back into being a country that's not the embarrassment I'm watching on my television night after night. My entire point is that this temporary or Type B stupidity is easily curable. The moment one decides not to give into the madness, the demons are automatically exorcised and the mind regains it's full ability to function. You can fix (some forms of) stupid.
