Let's face it. People are stupid!

It's all because I'm peeved that I'm telling people They're stupid....and also because they are stupid.

Today has been a different day for me in my posts. I don't usually do this. But every once in a while, it seems necessary. I see a need to call people out for their obvious mistakes. I've been calling them stupid in the biblical sense (Jer. .10:14, 21). There's a reason for this which I will explain below. I don't hate them. They don't disgust me. But there are two major mistakes they have been making.

Trump is my candidate. But he's not always right.

They somehow believe I reflexively support Donald Trump in everything he does. I do not. Don't misunderstand. I strongly support his re-election. But in these particular posts related to the economy, people assumed I supported his growing budgets and deficits. I did not. I opposed them publicly.

Sometimes people are just plain wrong or corrupt in their economic analysis in stupid ways.

It's a constant problem. I show a graph, and people obviously don't know how to read a graph. The visualization is there for all to see. Yet they dispute it anyway. And they rarely explain why.

When people do counter with facts the facts aren't relevant at all. Or they omit facts that are necessary to consider, or conflate correlation with causation. This happened today with a post that attempted to shed a bad light on the Trump tax cuts. The person in question shared four graphs connecting tax cuts with deficits. Seems reasonable right? Well, it's not. They omitted an important datapoints: tax receipts (which are at record highs) and federal spending (which far exceeds record receipts). This is a common but really dumb error. It reveals that person hasn't taken the time to think through the issue fully. It's a human mistake. But it's a bad one.

Yes, you're stupid. But that doesn't make me mad at you.

Now, I'm making a point of calling people stupid. The reason is not immediately recognizable when you don't read the verses in Jeremiah 10:14, 21 or if you're already mad at me (and while feeling that way inferring I'm the stupid one though you won't admit it--gotcha!). The point is this. All humans are finite. We all get things wrong because we don't see everything. But we also convince ourselves we are infinite in our understanding and the other guy is just stupid. This is not a good way to get at answers. And it provides no way to gain real understanding. It is a good way to wreak havoc on our lives and our country. Don't think I'm mad at you when I call you stupid. I'm trying to make you consider how you might be missing relevant details. And I'm also trying to save the country.

Countries rise and fall based on the general wisdom of their leaders and their populace.

And that's the point. We are limited in our understanding and we put up our political and ideological idols which are held out without rigorous examination. That's what Jeremiah is saying in his prophesy:

Jeremiah 10:14 Every man is stupid, devoid of knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols; for his molten images are deceitful, and there is no breath in them.

You must be humble. And you need to stop holding up your political and social idols against facts and reality. Idols are dead and dumb. They have no life in them. and they cannot do anything. We do that with other things in this age. We do it with ideas. We do it with people. We do it with pleasures and desires.

We also do it with our political and cultural leaders to great peril.

Jeremiah 10:21 For the shepherds have become stupid and have not sought the LORD; therefore they have not prospered, and all their flock is scattered.

We need to choose our leaders more wisely. In politics and religion these days, our leaders are largely very weak. There are encouraging examples among them. But the the herd needs to be culled of rancid actors. If they are not taken out of their leadership positions, we will perish. In free societies, we put them in leadership or keep them there willingly. Why? Because we don't take the time to examine their work and compare it with truth.

We need a renewal in the United States. And we need it also around the world. We are in perilous times. But there is hope if we take the lesson from these verses and stop being stupid.