"Everything is Getting Stupider"
A post from the Writer Molly John Fast is the perfect description of 2025 America
168 is a newsletter emailed on an unscheduled basis in which I share my thoughts on various topics for discussion. Archived newsletters can be found at www.1hundredsixty8.substack.com. Please add your comments by clicking the REPLY button at the end of this piece.
Dieter Bonfoffer, a German Luther pastor and anti-Nazi dissident, was imprisoned by the Nazis and executed weeks before Germany surrendered to the Allies in World War II. While in prison, he carried on correspondence with family and friends. This statement is taken from one of those letters:1
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
It appears that the enemy of the good is running rampant in these United States of Absurdity. Recent examples of viral stupidity abound. Here in the Free State of Florida, the Department of Health is moving to eliminate mandated childhood vaccinations. Four vaccines (for varicella, or chickenpox; Hepatitis B; Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib; and Pneumococcal conjugate, or PCV15/20) will no longer be required for school attendance. The Department of Health can eliminate these mandates without the approval of the Legislature or the Governor. Also mandated are vaccinations for polio, measles, and tetanus are, but they can only be changed through legislative action. However, there is a large loophole in the mandate regime: Parents can opt out by citing a “religious exemption”2, and the Department of Health is considering an exemption to allow people to cite ”personally held beliefs” as a reason for not getting their child vaccinated.
If this seems stupid, it is probably because it’s all in line with the stated intention of Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s plan to eliminate all vaccination mandates, which he terms “slavery”.3 A public health official who doesn’t believe in public health? It leads one has to wonder in what field of study the good doctor obtained his degree.
Public health vs. “medical freedom” is the type of issue the Founders anticipated, and is why they included words the promotion of the general Welfare, and the securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity among the Constitution’s goals in the Preamble. Society in general, and government in particular, is based upon a social contract, trade-offs between individual rights and liberties, and government’s authority and responsibility. Think about why we paint lines on our roads and streets to designate traffic lanes? Makeingpublic health optional defeats its purpose and is frankly stupid.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, is a vaccine-skeptic with no background in medical science. In less than a year in office, he has managed to undermine public trust in vaccines, stifling the voices of the nation’s top health experts and sharing dozens of questionable statements about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines. 4 The result has been declining rates of vaccination and the resurgence of diseases we thought had been eliminated. Cases of measles are increasing, ocurring mosly amg the unvaccinated. States like Texas, Arizona, Utah, and now Sputh Carolina are experiencing a growth in measles cases.
This is stupidity.
To be petty is to be stupid
Last week, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, the country’s top diplomat, decreed that “diplomats around the world switch from Calibri to Times New Roman 14-point font in all official documents”. The change to Calibri occurred in 2023 during the Biden Administration. The purpose was to make State Department documents easier to read on both screens and paper documents, especially for those with disabilities such as impaired vision or dyslexia. Rubio, who obviously has no pressing business to deal with these days, decided that the font was another instance of a DEI policy (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and needed to be purged.5 Like most ideological approaches, this qualifies as extremely stupid.
The Stupidity Challenge
For those of you reading this, I have a challenge for you: If there is something in our social or politcal culture you think is stupid, please enter it in a reply to this piece. You have lots to chose from: the actions of the President, for example, or the impotence of Congress. You are not limited to the political arena; perhaps you have concerns about the tech industry’s rush to get AI widely accepted. Or, maybe you are concerned about how America has forfeited moral standards for materialism and greed. Whatever it is that you find stupid, and recognize, as Bonhoeffer did, thaat stupid is more dangerous to the good than evil, please share it here.
Identifying a problem clearly is the first step in solving it.
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Letters and Papers from Prison was originally published in 1951. A number of revised editions have since been published. It is available on Amazon Kindle.
As far as I know, vaccines are not mentioned in the Bible, which is the predominant text for most Western religions.
Tampa Bay Times, December 12, 2025
Sourced from NPR.org. The article also pointed out that Calibri is a sans-serif font, meaning it doesn’t have the decorative tops and tails at the ends of letters that serif fonts like Times New Roman do. Microsoft made Calibri the default font for Word in 2007, ironically repacing Times New Roman. In 2023, Microsoft replaced Calibri with a newer sans-serif font, Aptos.
I can attest first hand as a former teacher and administrator that much of the population from adolescents to the aged are stupid. Few schools and fewer agencies are designed to inculcate or teach critical thinking skills in the past 2 generations. And the problem is becoming more acute with the passage of time--and the MAGA efforts to alter and minimize schooling from public preK-12 through graduate schools and curriculums. Facts, logic, reality and scientific methods are steadily being replaced by personal theology and organized religious beliefs in the private family sector and anti-expert, nonconformist, individualistic performance everywhere. Call it stupid.
Alvin Toeffler, writing in his Third Wave book (following his futurist texts series, Future Shock being the first) predicted family and individual isolation in the face of overwhelming concepts coming from information technology, which now means social media, independent radio and charter alternative schools that have no basis in reality and little or no accountability to public norms and understanding and practices. That isolation is most evident in the rule of the wealthy, obviously isolated appointed officials who have no knowledge or sympathy or connection to ordinary middle and working classes American living and thinking. RFK Jr. by his family elitism, ergo isolation from middle America, adopted his anti-vax notions free of facts and history regarding the positive effects of vaccination. But it's not new, as the John Birch Society centered in Southern California's Knotts Berry Farm, opposed fluoridation of public drinking water the past 65 years or so. Water was fluoridated by wiser heads everywhere, but the sentiment and its adherents survived all these years. But those adherents are now in power via MAGA efforts and election of President Trump. Call them stupid.
The same applies in education with Wrestling guru McMahon presiding over dissemblage of the Education Department; Marco Rubio minimizing the Department of State expertise; Attorney Bondi redirecting the Justice Department and FBI toward attacking political opponents, they call 'enemies' of Donald Trump; and so forth throughout the current cabinet and security/economic advisory agencies in the White House. Whether millionaires or not, it's stupid.
So what's the solution, aside from electing rational thinking public servants? Any answer to this question involves curing stupid, which many organizations consider to be somewhat limited. Republicans opposing MAGA brand Republicans beholden to populists like Trump and VP Vance and their sycophantic members of Congress and the Supreme Court are backing the Lincoln Project aimed at restoring the eminence of the nation's foundations in Declaration of Independence, Federalist Paper thinking underlying the Constitution (notably not Articles of Confederation around 1783). Include those valuing founding fathers' actions favoring democracy instead of dictatorship--praise George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and dozens more. Follow education's leadership at Harvard always and precepts of Horace Mann and John Dewey in free, public schools; American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP Legal and Defense Fund, Common Cause, Democratic Governors Association, Southern Poverty Law Center, and other right thinking organizations.
Instead of a new Constitutional Convention which could be dominated by retro-thinkers in sheer volume, the Democratic Party could institute the Republican equal of ALEC aimed at formulating democratic-aiming policies at all government levels ready at a moments notice for access by local, state and national candidates for office and focused on the myriad local election districts and areas plus state-wide venues for campaigning and lawmaking when in office to redress the loopholes revealed by MAGA. Plus, Democratic officials everywhere can compile lists of compatible thinking future candidates who can form shadow cabinets taking local Republican and MAGA notions, bills and acts or laws and formulate policies and legal statements for those already in office who need to correct the stupidity of Trump, MAGA and Tea Party anti-democratic policies and laws and extend the benefits of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for the future. We need officials in office who believe in and work toward insuring the 'truths that are self-evident'. I believe that people are mostly rational, if inactive politically, and want America to continue striving to provide the common defense and promote the general welfare of everyone.