Can't cure stupid

When I was in high school, significant exams tended to be clustered in similar time frames. So did telephoned bomb threats, which disrupted the schedule of some of the exams. It was clear to wiser and simpler heads alike that someone in the student body benefited.

What was curious that a similar pattern prevailed when many of us moved on to the state university. The difference over time was that the university began to blow off bomb threats during mid-terms and finals, which meant whoever benefited ceased to benefit. And yet the threats continued. They didn't stop until someone from my high school, someone I knew well, dropped out. He had candidly said that his main reason for attending college was to dodge the draft. Finally, we became seniors, and he became married. Evidently it occurred to him that marriage was  almost as good a draft dodge as college.

This memory comes to me often when stupid people do stupid things that are not only stupid per se, but wildly out of proportion to the stimulus and hysterically counterproductive.

Think, for instance, of the maroons who react to almost any person with whom they disagree by sending them a death threat. Today, think no further than the genius who has advanced the agenda of the NRA by sending letters laced with low-grade ricin to New York Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama. In case there was any doubt about the chip on the perp's shoulder, the letters rant on about taking his guns from his cold, dead fingers, or words to that effect. This is extraordinarily helpful to the NRA's objective of showing how helpful it is to arm all sane and responsible citizens. Guns aren't enough: let's enable the citizens to deploy chemical weapons.

Sorry, Wayne Lapierre: with friends like that, you don't need enemies.