Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Thanks to an excellent public school system and hard-working teachers, there really aren’t many profoundly stupid people in America. What we have far too many of, however, are the willfully ignorant. Persons who don’t read much, don’t think much, and are easily led by slogans, lies and propaganda funded by the wealthy and huge corporations. And they now have enormous influence in Washington.

We’re talking about far right conservatives. The Tea Party and their ilk.

They’re dragging what used to be the Republican Party off a cliff into a science- and reality-denying chasm of ignorance. Stupidity is bi-partisan, make no mistake. But how many times have you heard some right-wing politician decry "those Ivy League elites" … or something like the Texas Board of Education buffoon Don McLeroy, when rewriting Texas history books and informed that his view of history was not held by any serious historians, said "...