You know, once upon a time, long, long ago, when I was very young and very, very stupid (yes, even more stupid than I am now), I subscribed to the aphorism that there are no stupid questions.
Time, experience and some sometimes very painful lessons have proven the stupidity of that aphorism.
And so, I have come to realize that some questions, especially some posed archly by those who suppose they have answers to offer, are stupid questions.
“Why was Stonehenge built?”–offered by yet another dumbass supposing they have discovered “the” answer, is one such stupid question.
Look, the only way we can know why Stonehenge was built is to ask the people who built it, because no one left us any written statement of purpose for the place. We may infer certain hypotheses from whatever information is there, but absent a clear, unequivocal statement from the builders, any supposition about why it was built is simply that: supposition.
So, go back in time and ask the builders. Oh, while you are traveling back in time to ask, be sure to travel back in space to where the Earth was at the time, since it’s moving away from its present position in our galaxy (along with the sun, the moon and all the stars we can see in their respective places) at an enormous rate of speed. (One of the problems with “time travel” as posited in science fiction is suspending disbelief in order to read/watch the stuff when time travel is mentioned, cos even if the position in time problem is solved, the position in space problem is almost never dealt with in any way, shape, fashion of form.)
And “Why was Stonehenge built?” is only one of numerous stupid questions asked–and that’s just in the class of “Stupid questions that cannot be answered” class. Another obvious class of stupid questions is the political class, containing such questions as, “Why do politicians feel the need to assuage the feelings of and otherwise pander to criminals?” Why is that a stupid question you ask? ( Now THAT’S a stupid question! :-)) Because the answer’s so obvious, of course. Politicians *spit* pandering to criminals has two very, very obvious reasons:
1. Most politicians *spit* are simply a subclass of criminal and
2. Law-abiding citizens strike no fear into political poltroons, whereas other fellow-members of the criminal class are indeed often powers to fear, because another aphorism of my youth is true: there is no honor among thieves (though there may be a cameraderie of like minds, of a sort, e.g., a congresscriter’s disingenuous reference to an “opponent” as “My esteemed colleague… ” instead of the more honest, “My partner in crime… “).
So, BOLO for stupid questions and their even stupider answers. You can most easily filter for stupid questions by asking yourself who is posing it. For example, stupid questions are most often posed by
politicians *spit*
Mass Media Podpeople
Academia Nut Fruitcakes
And other pompous gasbags.
This has been a public service announcement from America’s Third World County.
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