This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

You can’t fix stupid.

That phrase came back to mind this morning for two reasons: 

• First, it strikes me as exactly the right description for those who refuse a Covid vaccine.  By declining, they risk their own lives, as well as ours.  Call it what it is – stupid and selfish.
• Second, Wall Street Journal essayist Lance Morrow wrote a piece for this morning’s on-line edition that caught my attention.  Igt appeared under this headline:

“You Are Living in the Golden Age of Stupidity”

“The convergence of many seemingly unrelated elements has produced an explosion of brainlessness.”

Here are a couple excerpts from his piece:

“’Stupidity,’ Jean Cocteau remarked, “’s always amazing, no matter how used to it you become.”’

“We live in a golden age of stupidity.  It is everywhere.  President Biden’s conduct of the withdrawal from Afghanistan will be remembered as a defining stupidity of our time—one of many.  The refusal of tens of millions of people to be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus will be analyzed as a textbook case of stupidity en masse.  Stupid is as stupid does, or, in the case of vaccination, as it doesn’t do.  Stupidity and irresponsibility are evil twins.

“The slow-motion zombies’ assault on the Capitol on January 6 was a fittingly stupid finale to the Trump years, which offered dueling stupidities:  Buy one, get one free.  The political parties became locked in a four-year drama of hysteria and mutually demeaning abuse.  Every buffoonery of the president and his people was answered by an idiocy from the other side, which in its own style was just as sinister and just as clownish.

“Cable news provided the Greek chorus.  American government and politics became cartoons. The Democrats, all unknowing, played Wile E. Coyote to Mr. Trump’s Road Runner.  Twice, the Democrats’ Acme Impeachment Committee rigged up the big bomb (heh heh), lit the fuse and held its ears.  Both times, the Road Runner sped away. Beep beep!”

So back to the basic phrase – you can’t fix stupid.