Newly Arrived (Evolved, Or Not)

Charles Pierce—

The world, at the age of 4.5 billion years, more or less, and increasingly depending on whether you're a Republican or not, has spun merrily around the sun one more time, and all of us are still here. We survive, but it's an open question whether or not we evolve.

It's not just the newly quantified stupid inherent in one half of our political system that bothers me, although knowing that an ever-increasing slice of one of our two political parties adheres to the biological principles of 1838 is worrisome. (What, for example, are they teaching their children? What will their children teach their own children? And on and on until half the country is painting in caves again.) It's that it's always been my conclusion that human evolution -- political, cultural, and social -- is tied to the impulse toward cooperation, or, in the case of our politics, the inclination toward commonwealth.

As David Ehrenstein says, "the facts are still being disputed by morons." Ergo, they are fans of.

Of course people fall for the hokiness; of course the wingnut family has political ambitions.

But are these scripted hillbillies themselves real or fake? The overly good teeth are the tip-off.