The Arrogance of Stupidity

We had a mass murder here in Kingston almost a month ago on June 30. A 50 year old woman and three teen aged girls were found dead in a car which was submerged in one of the waterway locks that connects Kingston to the Rideau Canal. The lock in question is at Kingston Mills which is part of a waterway system that eventually unites Kingston with our national capital of Ottawa about 100 miles northeast of us. What is particularly mind-boggling about this murder is that the three family members (father, mother and son) accused of this heinous act, actually thought no one would notice. They must have figured that it would be a crime that would be easily disregarded with some simple-minded explanation of their demise. That might have been the case in their native Afghanistan, but not over here.

Their official story was that sometime after midnight, after driving from Niagara Falls, they stopped at a motel off the 401 highway to spend the night. They didn’t remember which hotel they stayed at, just that it was off the 401. Then sometime after settling into their rooms, the oldest daughter (19 years old) took one of the cars to go out for a drive even though she didn’t have a license. Not happy just going alone, they said she took her two sisters and her aunt (who turns out not to be an aunt after all, but the first wife of the father who is accused of this murder). Then they somehow navigated the car through a park-like setting, between barriers and as a result of a freak accident, ended up in the canal.

The police didn’t need a mind-reader like the Amazing Kreskin to start to see the holes in this story. Even I, whose only experience at cracking murders come from the TV set, could ask questions that would cause a suspect to shift uncomfortably in a chair. But this is not an analysis of the murder, it is more an analysis of how can people be so stupid to think they could get away with it.

We have seen this time and time again from all classes of people and all from all social statuses. From the absolute dumb-ass criminals on shows like the First 48 and Cops to the more intelligent, but no less stupid, politicians. The only rational I can come up with is what can only be called the arrogance of stupidity. These people believe that they are first and foremost, smarter than they think. Which really on the scale of how they measure up against normal people, it turns out that they are still pretty stupid.

I remember a murder case in California in 2004, a kid named Skylar Deleon who passed himself of as a former TV star (actually just a bit part in one episode of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series) murdered Tom and Jackie Hawks who owned a 55 foot yacht. The couple had the boat for sale and Skylar, in his own little world, believed he could kill the couple and take their boat by claiming he paid them cash for the boat and that the couple then subsequently disappeared into Mexico with the money. It should be mentioned that the Hawks had a family and friends. How this kid with a gift of the gab actually thought he might get away with this is beyond the comprehension of the average person. But still he went ahead with his plan and as would be expected, was arrested and has been given the death penalty for the crime. Just to top things off, it was reported he tried to cut his penis off with a razor blade while he was in prison (insert your own joke here).

We have repeatedly seen politicians who, when found with their hand buried so far in the cookie jar, have come up with what they believe are rational explanations for their behavior. I guess in that moment of sheer panic when they get caught, their sense of what is rational must have been severely compromised. American Senator Larry Craig whose homosexual encounter in an airport washroom was uncovered by security personnel, tried explained that he was simply tying his shoelace when he was caught soliciting some non-governmental sanctioned fun under a stall. Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney when caught receiving a couple hundred thousand dollars in cash in an envelope explained that this money was a retainer for legal services he had not yet provided and therefore he didn’t report the income to the Canada Revenue Agency. He apparently felt it was unearned income at the time. If there was ever a case where income was unearned, this would have been it. I mean, besides a few babies born at the local hospital, the majority of us weren’t born yesterday.

It would be easy to go on and on about stories of this level of stupidity. The world is certainly not in short supply of examples. The tougher point to crystallize is why these people think they are smarter than the rest of us when quite evidently they are not. Why do they think that they can get away with something that even to the simplest of people, doesn’t seem remotely feasible. The only common denominator that links the lowest knuckle dragging criminal to the smoothest of smooth political operatives is their own arrogance. It is this arrogance that will bring them down, it always does. As I have said previously, the moment you start to think you are smarter than the other guy, is the moment you start to fail.