THE IGNOS: "The Invasion of

THE IGNOS: “The Invasion of the Duh People” was a very, very funny Florence King essay. (“What did you say your name was?” “King.” “How do you spell that?”) She followed it up with “The Invasion of the Ignos“, who are basically “duh people” with a college degree:

There’s nothing wrong with their gray matter, it’s just that it remains virgin soil. They sow it not, and neither do they reap it. It just lies there undisturbed, as fallow as the day it was born, until at last, like other overdue virginities, it loses all capacity for response and you can’t do a thing with it.

Ignos are the chief crop of Diversity Ed, what sprouts when Western Civ’s Dead White Males are eliminated from college curricula and replaced with African oral historians, Aztec vivisectionists, and the diaries of Ana?s Nin.

Columnists have made hay with dumbed-down curricula. I’ve written my share of polemics, but I made the mistake of confining myself to arguments against multiculturalism per se. The narrower but more intriguing subject of Igno psychology is one that I left unexplored until two recent incidents convinced me that we are witnessing the spread of a new kind of stupidity that developed nations have never before had to deal with.

The first incident came about when I had to correct a public record involving my Social Security number. I dealt with an administrative assistant, a cordial, seemingly competent woman in her early thirties. She assured me that my problem was all straightened out, but given my natural pessimism, I automatically said, “I can see the handwriting on the wall.” That’s when she looked at the wall. Turned around and gave it the old up-and-down once-over. Looked back at me with eyes as big as saucers. “It’s just a figure of speech,” I mumbled.

If you’ve ever felt like there was a forcefield when you spoke to someone you thought should have been a like-minded peer, read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Cassandra has an encounter with ignos armed with PhDs.