Every year I post a thread for discussion of Mad Magazine’s annual issue listing the 20 dumbest people, events, and things of the year. In 2015, the stupidity was running thick and fast throughout the year. It was a banner year for idiocy, and there were so many morons running around that picking the winner will be quite difficult. Personally I think that Donald Trump has the inside track. Vote for your choice or suggest others.
I took Trump as well…
A lot of the things on the list are really dumb, but in the grand scheme of things, are pretty trivial, or at least won’t have too much of an impact over the long haul. The deflated football thing is important for a wide variety of reasons, but it shrinks (ha!) in comparison to resurgences of deadly diseases due to willful and malicious ignorance and fear-mongering or a global econmic power potentially going kaput due to some really dumb corporate malfeasance.
But The Donald trumps (ha!) them all. The fact that people would vote for him is terrifying.
Where do the nominees come from? The OP? Or from Mad magazine?
It has to be anti-vax. There’s not much dumber than “Increase your chance of getting nasty communicable diseases Because Conspiracy Theory”
For me, it came down to Ben Carson vs. Volkswagen – perhaps because you would expect a brain surgeon or a German car company to be the very epitome of intelligence.
(I went with Ben).
I voted Other:
Folks who riot, loot, and harm innocents as a form of protest.
mmm
Yeah, this one. Of the options listed, it’s the only one that has actually caused deaths.
My only quibble would be that it’s not limited to just this year - it’s been stupid for quite some time now, and will probably continue to be for years to come.
Gotta go with Trump. Anti-vaxx we always have, but it takes a special kind of stupid to think that Trump is a viable candidate for the White House.
Regards,
Shodan
“…the antivaxxers ye shall always have with you…”
At least till the next big measles epidemic
My first instinct was to say VW, but I went with Kim Davis for creating a constitutional crisis instead of resigning the cushy job she didn’t want to do. Trump ain’t stupid. He’s created an entirely new type of campaign, or at least resurrected George Wallace’s style.
This being an election year there are so to chose from and Trump is an obvious choice, but I am voting for Sen. Ted Cruz and his continual efforts to eliminate Obamacare. His educational background should suggest a fair amount of intelligence but it does not seem evident on this particular issue.
Couldn’t vote for Trump. If the option had been his supporters, that would have been an easy win.
I actually voted for the Ashley Madison folks. Something about trusting anonymous people on the internet with both the fact that you are hoping to cheat on your spouse AND your credit card information just strikes me as being a special level of stupid.
Not that there aren’t lots of other special kinds of stupid on the OP’s list. But the Ashley Madison folks cause me to Nelson Muntz more than any of the others.
Trump at least made the cover of the 20 Dumbest Things issue:
I don’t think Trump is dumb at all. He knows exactly what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.
I agree with this completely. I don’t particularly like Trump, but he’s not a stupid man.
Focusing in on the word ‘dumb’, I also have to go with the anti-vax crowd. Putting children unnecessarily at risk and flying in the face of all scientific evidence - evidence that has been in places for years - verges on the criminally dumb. I vote for them.
Aren’t most antivaxxers themselves vaccinated? It’s their own children, and infants and the immuno-compromised, that they are endangering, not themselves.
You are 100% correct, Dr. Drake. They are endangering only their children, not themselves. Hence my categorization of criminally dumb.
I went with the VW emissions scandal. Because they cheated on a huge scale, even tho it was a given that they’d get caught eventually. Most cars will easily be on the road for a decade or more, and the software is in every diesel-engine vehicle they make; the chances that VW would get away with this were always 0%, or something damn close to it.
Hands down, it’s climate change denial. Yes, deniers are similar to the anti-vaxxers, who are risking their own children and a possible epidemic because they think what they read on the web is more believable than peer-reviewed studies done by experts who have spent their lives studying the field. Climate change deniers do the same thing, but are risking coastal inundation, droughts, killer heatwaves, property destruction, coral reef destruction, crop failures, and the possibilities of mass extinctions and even the collapse of civilization. It’s hard to get dumber than that.
Climate changes, even severe ones, have happened throughout Earth’s history. If you don’t believe the current one is human-caused or human-accelerated, it really doesn’t matter. The facts are in front of us, and he who refuses to accept that and make what preparations may be necessary considering the differences between geologic time and human time, is dumb indeed.