Today in willful ignorance...

How will we choose? I don't know, maybe
a lottery or whoever can eat the most ribs?

So were you living every day secure in the assumption that presidential politics have gotten as stupid as they were ever going to get? Like somehow between Rand 'Liberty Never Sleeps' Paul and Jim Webb's near-aneurism during the Democratic debates that we, as a nation, should have just taken the hint and appointed a king or something. Well then you were a fool. We were all fools. It can always, always get more stupider. Now we are arguing about the pyramids.

sigh...It's an alien space portal that leads
to distant worlds populated by Canadians.

The Egyptian goddamned pyramids which GOP presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson thinks were for storing grain because of the Bible and the middle ages. Yeah, I know, stay with me. According to this, there's some Old Testament story about the Egyptians storing grain during a famine. Europeans in the middle ages figured they must have been using the pyramids as granaries because that's all they, like an alarming number of us, knew about Egypt. That and Stargate. What an idiot, right?

I'm also not an egyptologist, but I do play
a lot of Civ IV and if it's taught me anything it's
that it's usually just easier to build a granary

Well yes, but I don't want to jump on the 'let's all jump on Ben Carson for the pyramid thing' thing. While he sticks by this ridiculous, medieval theory in the face of the entire field of professional egyptology, he did say it like 17 years ago and an understanding of ancient burial structures is not necessarily a prerequisite for being president. Neither is being a homophobic blowhard who compares abortion to slavery, but hey, one thing at a time. Anyway, I mentioned that things could always get stupider and I wasn't kidding.

Pictured: actual egyptologists.
They've got the hats and everything.

Donald Trump is joining the debate and bringing his decades of real-estate mogul-ing and all the archeological credibility that comes with it:

"Well, I think it's a ridiculous situation. I mean, he's talking about the pyramids were made for grain. And if you look at the pyramids, they're solid I mean you know there's-they're solid other than...the pyramids were not..."

-Donald Trump noted

non-archologosist

Wanna see for yourself? Here, it's around the 12:55 mark. Yup, that's a reality show host giving a neurosurgeon shit about the construction and purpose of the ancient Egyptian Pyramids. Our political system is now officially broken forever.

Remember when Ben Carson didn't call Trump out on the vaccine thing?
Even when Jake Tapper teed it up for him? Way to return the favor dick...

"Pfft...that's easy. Doric, Ionian and
Corinthian. Next question Roberts..."

Ok, of course the pyramids aren't solid and maybe before he trailed off on a screed against immigrants or Obamacare or something Trump was going to mention the tomb chambers, internal ramps used during construction and that room they sealed Joan Collins up in. Fine, but why are we talking about the pyramids in the first place? It's great that egyptology has been in the headlines for a few days, but it's not, by itself, really relevant to the campaign. Unless we instituted some kind of inaugural ancient architecture quiz as part of the oath of office, which I'm all for.

Anyway, what is totally relevant is the willful ignorance. Why doesn't Dr. Carson do a Google search on pyramid interiors or look them up on Wikipedia or something? There's like five or six documentaries on Netflix right now about the pyramids and not one of them takes the grain thing seriously and now he's even got Donald 'vaccines cause autism' Trump making fun of him. You'd think he'd be better at picking his battles...

When Brendan Fraser movies know more than you
about a subject, it's probably good advice to shut up about it.