Stupidity Is A Social Solvent

I rant. My inner gorilla stirs at the stupidity of others. I grow irritated with the bloodless shenanigans of asshats.

Why do I let my blood pressure climb over the colossal stupidity of others?

Because I give a fuck, that's why.

One might ask why I give two drips of ball-sweat?

Because if allowed to run rampant, asshattery will underwhelm all things. Stupidity acts on society like a solvent, eroding all reason.

Perhaps a personal example:

The other day I was riding in. As I rode along the on-ramp, a largish chunk of styrofoam blew in my way. I narrowly avoided it. There was no telling what it might do if I tried to ride over it.

A mile down the road, another piece, this one more easily avoided.

Three miles more, another, this one the size of my rather large cranium. Not so easy to avoid, coming as it did from behind a minivan.

Two more miles, a chunk or two more, this time added to by a stretch of cardboard. Ahead, I see a small red pickup truck. Shit is blowing around in the back, cardboard and the like.

I think, perhaps, this is the person who does not know they have a loose load in their bed. Perhaps, I reason, they are unaware that the cover must have slipped back from their load. I shall try and catch up, let them know dangerous and expensive things are falling from the back of his vehicle.

My reasoning that the individual is merely a hapless victim of circumstance begins to erode upon continued observation of their actions. The man, in his fully loaded tiny pickup, is driving well in excess of the speed limit, and I have a hard time catching up, as I have to dodge the shit flying from it. Indeed, it is not until we reach the tunnel and traffic backs up, twenty miles later, that I am able to catch up to the speeding litterer.

I pull up on his right, seeing the large quantity of loose styrene biker-killers barely held in place by two bungee cords crossing the bed. I advance to beside the cabin. I look inside. An Indian male driver with an i-Phone 4 in hand, glasses on, and earbuds jammed in both ears looks back.

I gesture for him to roll down his window. He does.

I yell to him that he has littered a string of styrene land mines along his path, that he needs to pull over and secure his load.

He rolls the window up. My Inner Gorilla body-checks the gates of his prison, nearly making my eyes explode from my head.

We are traveling at a walking pace, a difficult feat of clutch control for a moto rider without a raging Gorilla in his mind.

I bang on his window.

He starts to shuffle through his iPhone.

Had I my service weapon and cuffs, I would have shown him my star and ordered him to the side of the road. No, I was unequipped to take police action, and therefore couldn't safely take him on as anything more than a private citizen.

I bang harder on the window, my Inner Gorilla barely held in check.

He continues to act as if I am not there. Fucking pussy. My Inner Gorilla howls in impotent rage. I curse, swear, and then fall back, wishing I had a cigarette to drop in his bed. He would surely pay attention when his shit caught fire. My Inner Gorilla wishes for a molotov cocktail.

Instead of the contemplated mayhem, I get his plate.

I ride on. I look for some CHP. No dice. I even check their favored duck blind. No love.

Shit.

I go to work, run the plate. It's still registered to the tow yard where the asshat bought it.

So, nothing else I can do.

So. You might be tempted to ask what the above has to do with my point.

Well, here it is:

Never mind that the litter he left across twenty five miles of roadway will take decades to dissolve into the background of shit we are already wading through.

More important to me specifically is that had I been injured or killed by the debris left behind, my family would have lost their primary wage-earner, and because it would have been seen as a single-vehicle accident, most likely would not have seen a pay-out commensurate with what they were denied.

My wife would surely soldier on, but my child would grow up without her father.

The social fabric of my family would be dissolved. Those who like my company would be denied it.

And even thinking within the least extreme extrapolation on what this asshat did; that of what actually followed these events: I am left so impatient with the average asshat that I barely make it through the rest of my day without biting the head from those whose only crime is to be a moron, or late, or just blind.

All because of the stupid asshattery of one fucktard too cowardly to pull over and cover his shit, a process that might have taken five minutes.

Stupid is the solvent that will destroy us all.