When stupid has wings
Let’s see here, John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive. He faked his own death all those years ago so that he could make a dramatic comeback at a propitious moment in Dealey Plaza. That propitious moment was to be at 12:29 pm on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021, the precise hour his father was killed there on November 22nd 1963, but not the precise day of the month, for some reason.
But never mind that. JFK Jr. was going to come riding down the street in an open limo and announce to the world that Trump is still president of the United States and that he, JFK Jr., would be his Vice President. Oh yes, and his 104 year old father JFK Sr. would be along any minute as a sideshow. Oh, and Robin Williams and Michael Jackson are also part of this somehow and they had stopped by earlier. Got it.
A not inconsequential number of people gathered in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on Monday night and stayed overnight to watch this “miracle” happen in real time. Yes, they really did. I am not making this up.
This is what happens when stupid has wings. This is the Republican Party today. The narrative that this calamitous stupidity was staged and believed by a lunatic fringe of QAnon supporters largely misses the point. The point is no one is really all that surprised by this, and no one in the Republican Party is calling it what it is.
There was a time when I would have thought the reason Republicans aren’t stepping up to microphones and laughing out loud at these idiots was because it’s so contemptible that they didn’t even want to give it the dignity of noticing it. But I’m not so sure that’s it. I think many Republican leaders are glad that such people exist. People like this Dealey Plaza group of loonies are proof that you can get some people to believe literally anything. And you can do it so easily. And those people vote.
It also has the unmistakable stamp of religious adventism. The return of JFK son and father sounds like the first two thirds of a Trinity myth that hasn’t yet come to full flower. I’m not kidding here. Republicanism is transforming into its own religion, complete with miracles and resurrections.
I realize that what happened on Tuesday in Dealey Plaza was representative of a fringe of a fringe, a splinter group of followers of “Q” that are even loonier than the mainstream loonies, if it can be imagined. But that’s how it starts. And there will come a day when people will swear that JFK Jr. really did come back then got “taken up” later. Just give it time.
Meanwhile, many of the disappointed attendees of this flagrant example of human stupidity have now taken to the idea that JFK Jr. will be showing up at a Rolling Stones concert instead. Yes, really. Come to think of it, why not?
This is why logic doesn’t work any more with these people. Republicans are being trained to believe literally anything. That a nontroversy like “critical race theory” being taught in schools when critical race theory is not being taught in schools is a case in point. That it could decide the outcome of the contest for governor of Virginia is just a dress rehearsal. All the stops are out, and there is nothing preventing Republicans from getting outraged at literally anything, including Jewish space lasers starting wildfires.
This is the reality we have been handed. We must fight on in the face of staggering ignorance and zealous stupidity. Don’t waste your time trying to convert these people. It’s a diversion from the real work we have before us, and that work is considerable. We have a planet to save, don’t let idiots distract us with their ever-escalating willingness to believe these ludicrous narratives. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.