it's not getting any smarter out there*

Every once in a while I see a responsive sign.

“no U turns on 1 way bridge”
“stealing is a crime prosecutable by law”

They are usually traffic signs or something of the like. They state the obvious in such a shocking manner that you know, you just KNOW that someone has violated this obvious and implicit rule, leaving the powers that be no choice but to make the implicit explicit.

Today I was reading the guidelines for a grant proposal and there were, that’s right TWO pages on how this humanitarian organization will not fund violence or terrorism.
Well, yes. I assumed that. ANYONE would assume that a grant proposal to an international health disparities program would automatically preclude solicitations for funding for violence or terrorism. But I guess not, because it needed to be made explicit.
Some lawyer found that there was no recourse without this clear and concise established guideline.

These sort of things scare me. I mean, I really do not believe that the majority of people are idiots or anything of the sort. There seems to be a continuum of intelligence that stretches a little longer than I might hope or expect at times. And yes, there are many, who, born with perfectly reasonable intelligence, decide they have better things to do than think clearly or freely. But I can understand that.
But proof of idiocy so powerful that we must have institutionalized coddling for full grown adults makes me uncomfortable. These people are on the streets, walking about, having beers and voting right next to you and me.
And even scarier…apparently it’s not just a simple matter of suspending the license of the lone soul stupid enough to make a U-turn on a one way bridge, or arresting as example the guy who steals. It’s common ENOUGH, and possibly difficult enough to punish, that we must make it clear to everyone that there are certain things we can not abide by. And that has a certain level of scary idiocy about it as well.

*(quote: Frank Zappa)