Disclaimer: I am not supporting or endorsing either Presidential candidates in this article. If you are looking for an article on how I feel about the candidates and the general state of the election, that can be found here. The original version of this article can be found here.
I often wonder if things could get much worse when it seems that various aspects of life seem to be at their lowest. I usually ask this question rhetorically because often times I can safely assume that things won't get worse. However, it seems that lately the American people have decided to see how far they can push just how bad things can get.
In the first version of this article, I talked about how the American voters were uneducated because they had no idea what the policies they claimed to support meant, or what the candidate they supported was even talking about (I would also like to point out that the article was published less than a month ago). The evidence behind that article was a segment done by "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" at a Trump rally.
And it scares me to say that "The Daily Show" is back with yet another segment highlighting the incompetency of the American voters. Again the segment is filmed at another Trump rally where Trump supporters (this could have just as easily been a Clinton rally with Clinton supporters) are asked various questions about certain political topics, theories and conspiracies and are asked to support their answers. Some of the answers are so uneducated and mind-blowing that I'm going to break down each question and answer.
The first question asked of two supporters is in regards to Hillary Clinton's health, which has recently been in the news. Our first guy interviewee tells us that he believes that her illness is worse than pneumonia, so much worse that he believes she has contracted AIDS from her husband, who contracted it from retired basketball player, Magic Johnson, who was diagnosed with HIV. According to this man, Hillary Clinton is sick because of AIDS she got from her husband, who got the disease from a gay affair, is the natural conclusion. The second interviewee is a lady who believes Clinton has Parkinson's disease or MS. Again, these are obvious, logical, natural conclusions that are not in the slightest bit dramatic.
But wait, there's more.
The next woman we encounter tells us that there is a body double for Hillary Clinton that we see and an older man agrees with her on this, saying that "anything's possible." So, to put this theory to the test Jordan Klepper, the host of the segment, printed out two identical pictures of Clinton to see if our older gentleman could spot the body double. Not shockingly enough, he immediately points out the "body double" saying that he can see a difference in her cheeks, neck lines and that she looks younger. He then goes on to agree that if you are paranoid about finding a difference, your mind will make some up. Funny how that works, isn't it?
There's even more, except this time about our current President Barack Obama.
The next lady we meet proudly announces that she believes, "Barack Obama is a Muslim, he's a terrorist. Nobody will ever tell me different." She gets support from another older gentleman who says that no one is even sure if President Obama is a citizen (even though Trump, the candidate this man supports, attests to the fact that the President was born in this country, but I digress). This man then also agrees that if you don't look at the birth certificate that the President has released, it is almost like there is no evidence that he is in fact a citizen of this country. Truly amazing logic.
Still on the topic of President Obama's birth place, another woman is asked if there's anything the President could do to prove that he was born here. She says she would want to hear from witnesses that saw his birth, but not his mother of course because she has the reasoning to lie about that. However, she then says that she trusts Trump's birth certificate "...because he's been here forever" and when ask what her proof is, she answers "his parents." The very same person who said we couldn't trust President Obama's parents apparently get very confused when their own logic is used against them. I'm sensing a double standard.
This is then followed by a man who claims that he knows that President Obama is a Muslim based on the way he talks, and how the President wears jewelry and his wedding ring. However, we can only apply these rules to President Obama being a Muslim, not anyone else or any other religion. However, this brings us back to the first guy we met, and I'll just let his statement speak for itself.
The reality of this segment once again is that as a society we are wildly uneducated. If this was us looking in on any country, we would wonder how people could be so blind to literally basic facts. It is no surprise to me that other countries think we are a joke right now, because look at us. It is legitimately laughable how dumb an overwhelmingly large segment of our society is. For God's sake, we have people who don't even know who our president was during 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack in United States history.
I am literally begging the American people to please just educate yourselves on what you think you know, don't know, support, don't support, anything and everything. Whether you're 18, 80 or somewhere in between we all need to continue to educate ourselves because there are some grown adults out there that are less educated than my 13-year-old brother, as perfectly illustrated by the segment that inspired this article. So, I beg of you one more time: please educate yourself because you can never learn too much.
