Age of Impenetrable Self-Involvement — we're having a baby, let's set California on fire

08 September 2020

Maybe it's not stupidity, exactly

Just too narrow a focus?

The El Dorado Fire east of Los Angeles that has burned more than 7,000 acres was started by a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device used at a gender reveal party on Saturday morning, according to fire officials.

Law enforcement determined the fire was started by the device ― often used to generate pink or blue smoke to indicate the gender of an expected baby ― just after 10:20 a.m. in the El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in a news release.

The wildfire then spread to the north, and has since prompted the evacuation of more than 3,000 residents. More than 600 firefighters battled the blaze, which remained at 5 percent containment on Sunday night amid extreme weather conditions. No injuries were reported.

If you want a visual — from the fire-fighting perspective

See:

OnSceneTV, Gender Reveal Party Blamed As Cause Of El Dorado Fire As Blaze Continues To Spread On Second Day, YouTube (07 September 2020)

Let's put this particular fire on an Intelligence Quotient timeline

California's been a tinderbox for years. Residents and visitors cannot plead ignorance.

And literally, just before these idiots set off the El Dorado fire in Yucaipa, California experienced its second and third largest-wildfires-ever — the still-burning SCU and LNU Lightning Complexes — a comparatively short way (in this Internet-connected age) north of their town.

Those two huge fires, and another very large one — the CZU Lightning Complex — surrounded the northern California city-town where I live.

We were having to monitor wind directions and plan evacuation routes, so as to be ready to skip out. That escape hopefully to occur between an already extended span of unpredictable PG&E power outages.

Other people were far less lucky. Home losses and deaths were attention-getting.

Yet somehow, these El Dorado Ranch Park gender-reveal boneheads missed all this:

What's millions of acres and possibly hundreds of homes, when the Entire World is excitedly waiting for us to explosively announce our unusually so-very-special baby's sex?

Boom.

There exists a pertinent quotation . . .

. . . from the executed Nazi-resister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945):

Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.

Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.

In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

The moral? — Never underestimate brainless self-centeredness

In the Grand American Scheme, if:

terrorists, Stalinists, Maoists, generic leftists

neo-Nazis and COVID-19

plus

maybe a random Venezuelan or two

and certainly

Putin-ists and PRC-believers —

don't get us first,

there are always the folks

with non-functioning gray matter

and

no sense of community.

Humanity's daily doings make a good case for the vigorous practice of eugenics.

For fairness and political correctness's sake, Artificial Intelligence could make and design the necessary interventions.

Or possibly preferably, we should completely turn the Human Shebang over to AI.

It couldn't get any worse, could it?

Do you smell smoke?

PeteFree.com

Age of Impenetrable Self-Involvement — we're having a baby, let's set California on fire