Years ago, back in the 1970s, I remember being appalled whilst watching a debate between the current president, Gerald Ford and a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter, when President Ford informed America that he did not think that Eastern Europe was dominated by the Soviet Union.
Just a few years prior to Mr. Ford saying this, the Soviets had invaded Czechoslovakia in the most recent example of the Soviets keeping an iron thumb on the communist satellites the Soviets occupied after World II.
How could an American president say something this stupid I sat and wondered?
Mr. Ford lost the election.
During the 2008 election campaign, at one point during the campaigning, a tornado struck a town, where in the Midwest this occurred I no longer remember. This was a killer tornado, causing multiple deaths. Barack Obama repeated, multiple times, in multiple venues, that over 10,000 had died in this tornado. I remember being appalled and thinking how can a man, running for president, not intuitively know that over 10,000 people dying in a tornado would be the worst natural disaster in American history, and not intuitively know that the over 10,000 had to be a mistake?
This gaffe never became a big deal.
Barack Obama won the election.
Before he dropped out of the 2012 campaign for the Republican nomination, at one point Herman Cain said that we can not allow communist China to acquire nuclear weapons. How can someone running for president not know that China has had nuclear weapons since the 1960s?
Recently the 2012 Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, made clear he did not know that passenger jets had pressurized cabins, and windows rolling down is not possible.
And then you have Romney stupidly making the non-point that America has fewer ships in the Navy than it did in 1916.
And he would fix that.
That bonehead whopper should have been a sufficiently bad enough gaffe to have the man on the fast track to being laughed out of the race, in my opinion. How could a man running for president not understand that America's navy now has these things called aircraft carriers, that the era of naval powers having big flotillas of boats is long gone?
Methinks someone who thinks he is qualified to run for president should have a fairly well developed knowledge of geography. Particularly if that someone is going to participate in a debate about foreign affairs.
How could Mitt Romney be so geographically ignorant that he could assert, in a debate about foreign policy, that we can not allow an Iran dominated Syria, because that would give Iran a direct path to the sea?
How could Mitt Romney not know that Iraq is between Iran and Syria?
How could Mitt Romney not know that Iran already has a path to the sea, since Iran is situated on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and on Iran's northern border is the Caspian Sea, though landlocked, this is the largest landlocked body of water on the planet?
In elections in years gone by I think a candidate saying as many embarrassing things as what have come out of Mitt Romney's mouth would not have a chance of America taking a chance on such a potential buffoon.
Then again, I sort of think collectively us Americans have dumbed down and have collectively lost a lot of our critical reasoning ability. What other explanation is there for much of the Republican nonsense being taken seriously by anyone?
The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are not even remotely distant memories, the bungling, the Intel failures, the misinformation, the bad strategy. And now we have this relatively minor incident in Libya, with some Republicans, led by their Top Boob, Rush Limbaugh, making claims that the Obama administration's handling of the Benghazi incident is worse than Watergate.
Worse than Watergate?
Have I mentioned I think some of these people are ignorant morons? Rush Limbaugh is very glib, and can be amusing, but his education ended at high school. Education is important. As is the result of a lack of education.
