Idiocracy and Nuance

Why do we feel the need to dissect every action, every word? Why must we find the motivation behind everything? Why can't we leave things alone? When someone happens to wear a particular shirt that differs from his normal attire, why must we ask why he chose to wear it?

On some level, we're all surgeons well-versed in the art of dissection. We use our scalpels to peel back the layers and probe the minutiae of everyday existence. We parse gestures and phrases. We search for answers. "Seek and you might find," we should have been told. No matter. We seek regardless, and if we find no answers, we contrive our own.

Gossip is the symptom of this sickness—the overwhelming need to speculate, the overarching thirst for confirmation. One day I will parade through the streets with a broom in my right hand. Or maybe I will wear yellow on a Monday. I'm curious to hear the motivation behind a broomstick or the meaning of a random hue.

Moreover, why the need for nuance that drives our words to obscurity? Why can't we just say things? Tonight is the president's State of the Union speech. The television pundits can't wait to devour his words and salivate over every vowel. They will read between the lines, praise his careful choice of words, commend his calculated pragmatism, as they might call it.

In spite of our likely downward spiral into a world only slightly removed from that of Mike Judge's Idiocracy, there is a small tinge of hope in this decline: a retarded species has no need for nuance. It acts on a more basic level, eschewing equivocation for a more direct form of communication. Behold the words of Mr. Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, the president of Mike Judge's world, as he gives his own state of the union speech:

Shut up. Shit. I know shit's bad right now...with all that starvin' bullshit. And the dust storms. And we runnin' out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.

[Machine-gun rounds]

That's what I thought! Now I understand everyone's shit's emotional right now, but listen up. I got a three-point plan to fix everything. Number one: we got this guy, Not Sure. Number two: he's got a higher IQ than any man alive! And number three: he's gonna fix everything. I give you my word as president. He'll fix the problems with all the dead crops. He's gonna make 'em grow again. And that ain't all.

[Singing] I give you my word. He's gonna fix the dust storms too. I give you my word. He's gonna fix the "ecomony." And he's so smart he's gonna do it all in one week...

When President Camacho speaks, you know exactly what he means.

In a Slate.com article from today entitled "Speech Therapy," Christopher Beam writes the following:

"Communications failure" is the phrase being used by the White House and assorted commentators to explain the collapse of health care reform and other parts of President Obama's agenda. According to this reasoning, Obama hasn't pursued the wrong goals. He has simply failed to articulate them. And tonight's State of the Union could somehow change that.

President Obama is quoted in the article concerning his failure to articulate: "What I haven't always been successful at doing is breaking through the noise and speaking directly to the American people in a way that during the campaign you could do."

Mr. Obama is definitely on to something there. Maybe he should take a cue from President Camacho.