Casey+C’s+Final+AmEx+2013+Speech

=Stupid People=

=Text of Speech= I hate people. This is a pretty broad and general statement that could potentially lead to a rant that would by far surpass the limit of time allotted to this class period, so I will specify: I hate stupid people. Of course, hate is a word equal to kill and I truly have no intention of killing anyone, but it is undeniable that I have a strong dislike and annoyance for those who qualify as stupid. Before I go on and on about the extent at which these individuals annoy me, I first would like to clarify what qualifies a person for this title. In the way I perceive people, there is absolutely nothing wrong with those who have learning disabilities or those who simply are not as naturally intellectually gifted as others. Everyone's brain thinks and works differently and that is fine. What makes a person fit into my category of "stupid" is when they have the potential to be smart, but rather they make the conscious decision to be ignorant.

Recently, I have attempted to make an effort to not hate people that exude stupid qualities since according to the Bible you apparently are supposed to “love everyone,” but some human beings jut make it so dang hard. I’m sure that I do not have to remind you about the Miss Teen USA pageant that took place back in 2007 when a contestant from South Carolina was asked about the inability of 1/5 of Americans to locate the United States on a map, yet she hardly understood that South Africa and “the Iraq’s” are in fact, not part of the US. I am not sure what the bigger issue is: that 20% of Americans do not know where the US is or that some Americans do not know that the US does not stretch across multiple continents. This lapse of intelligence is not just seen through beauty pageants, but in our own __American Pageant__ as well. I cannot tell you how many times this year I heard people boast about how they did not read the textbook before one of Geib’s tests (tests that he specifically told us were based on reading comprehension), only to find the same students complaining about the F that they received after the fact. These students seriously cannot complain since they know exactly why they failed. Sorry if this insults a vast majority of you, but honestly the logic behind this escapes me. Unfortunately, human stupidity is not a rare occurrence. Practically every day on my way to school, I have the pure joy of bearing witness to a few Buena students throwing away their lives as they start their day by smoking behind VONS, and most likely are not getting much more out of their day other than being closer to death. All I see when I look at these people is wasted potential. And at this point, you are probably all thinking, “Casey, you are the stupid one if you don’t think kids at Foothill smoke as well,” and I am by no means ignorant of this fact, but I mean, at least we have smart stoners. In the end, it truly does not matter how hard I try, people are always going to continue to prove to me the validity of Albert Einstein’s claim that, “ Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.”

I actually was not going to write this specific speech. Like the many of you, I had a plethora of ideas about various subjects that could possibly influence someone’s life, but then last week I experienced an act of human stupidity that tipped me over the edge. One of the finals for art class this year is a found project, so last week I brought in two found items, put paint primer on them, and set them down on the back counter to dry as they were too small to fit on the drying rack. W hen I came back to Frazier’s room at lunch to pick them up, however, I found one of the objects thrown on the floor and stepped on, and thus rendered unusable. In the end, this was not a huge deal because I still had the second object, but at the time, the first thought that ran through my head was, “I hate people,” and even now I still cannot find a reason why anybody would find this necessary.

So where does this leave us, stuck in a country with an annoyingly large amount of stupid people? Our society is one where education is often taken for granted and it is not uncommon to see people throwing their lives away for something as senseless as drugs. We have come to hail human stupidity through television shows such as Jersey Shore, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and Honey Boo Boo, but this is not the America that I want to see. In the America I want to grow old in, I no longer want reason to say that “I hate stupid people.” I want to see a country where individuals do not choose ignorance such as those kids behind VONS did, but rather of people striving to learn and to be enlightened. I want to see an America that can pinpoint their own country on the map, and maybe even have a general idea of where South Africa and Iraq are located. I want to see an America that strives to reach their full potential, rather than throwing away their lives. I am not asking for everybody to be perfect and to never experience failure, nor am I not asking for an end to spontaneity and doing ridiculous things just for the fun of it, but what I am asking for is people to want to be better, to not be complacent with their current state. I want to see an America that continues to reach for the green light, for improvement, for knowledge. I want to see an America that wants more.

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