In driving around our subdivision, it seems as if many of our neighbors have a fascination with rocks, large rocks. Out of 17 driveways, one can see rocks large enough to have been used by Zeus to punish Sisyphus. For those who missed Greek mythology, Sisyphus was king of what became Corinth in Greece, and Zeus punished him for cheating death a couple of times. His punishment was to push a huge rock up a hill, only to have it roll down and Sisyphus had to push it up again and again, for eternity.
But these rocks we see here seem to have no real function other to sit there at the end of a driveway. However, to each his own. It does bring up the subject of rocks through the ages, though. While on a prison work gang, the prisoners were traditionally forced to break large rocks into smaller ones to use in road construction.
But small rocks can also denote a person of great wealth. We have seen countless small rocks polished and set in silver or gold and used as rings or other adornments. Often, when a lass gets engaged, her friends want to see the ‘rock’ her swain gave her. Such valuable stones have been used for ages to fund military ventures, and getting some in African nations gave rise to the phrase, ‘blood diamonds’ for that reason.
There is the Rock of Gibraltar, the symbol of an insurance company. It also was a sign of the stability of the British Empire and its lasting dominance.
A highlight of Jesus’ ministry was his promise to found a church, and He used the phrase to Peter, ‘Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it,’ for a rock is solid and not easily moved. Peter, when writing the first of his epistles, claimed that Christians were ‘living stones’ who made up the church, with Jesus as the chief cornerstone.
In the mid 1950s a new form of music was designated ‘rock-n-roll.’ So named by D.J. Alan Freed in 1951, the term came earlier from the rocking and rolling motion of a ship. This music morphed into hard rock after some soft rock songs made music history.
Some of us know people who have a chair that rocks, and some have derisively called those who are retired on some kind of pension as living on ‘rocking chair’ money. Another use is the phrase ‘rock the boat’ about someone who upsets the status quo. If you count rocks and stones as equal, we hear people claim, ‘don’t throw stones if you live in glass houses’, and ‘sticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never harm me’. And we have heard of the ancient punishment of stoning someone to death by using rocks thrown by a frenzied mob.
But today we want to focus on a use which describes those who hold ideas which are almost unbelievable. Some call people like this, ‘dumber than a box of rocks.’ And politically, we see ideas from people who act as if their IQ is lower than that of a box of rocks.
Take the transgender movement. This subset of Americans, comprising much less than .1 % of the population, believe that men can become women and women can become men. Looks like these have never read of the creation of man and woman by God, with no alternative, nor have they opened a biology or science book. Even our President told these unfortunate few, ‘I have your back,’ in support of this trans “movement.” (If you can call less than .1% of the population a movement!) If that isn’t an example of intelligence lower than these rocks I see in my neighborhood, I don’t know what can be.
To illustrate further, our newest Supreme Court nominee, a black woman, Kentanji Brown Jackson, when asked to define ‘woman’, claimed she couldn’t because she was not a biologist. She is a mother of two, and educated well in addition to years of experience, but that answer is a pretty dumb one, rock-like in its intelligence rating.
But her “intelligence” doesn’t stand alone among Democrats. Inflation is eating up Americans’ wealth: Bloomberg posits that the average family spends $5200 per year more than last year for the same items. What is the answer from our leaders on how to combat this? According to a couple of our Cabinet officials, just eat lentils instead of meat, and buy an electric car so you won’t have to use the gas that has more than doubled in price since Joe Biden became President. With many Americans making far less than the cost of an electric car per year, that answer must have come from some box of rocks!
Even now, with all the evidence that masks do not protect us from the COVID virus, there are those who believe they do provide needed help in warding off the pandemic. One might believe that those who keep pushing for mask mandates have IQs lower than their shoe size, or perhaps take their beliefs from the box of rocks sitting on their kitchen table.
Then, take the border, please! More than a million illegals have crossed our southern border in the first six months of fiscal 2022, following a policy promulgated by our administration. In an effort to welcome those fleeing persecution in the world, it seems our border is nothing more than a line on a map. Many of those who come in are only looking to better their lot in life, being from a poor country, but they also strain our Border Patrol, our social services safety net and overwhelm the communities where many settle. Where did this policy originate? Perhaps that box of rocks in a house in Delaware might be the answer.
Those who founded our Republic thought that the ‘best and brightest’ would always lead the nation. By this 21stcentury, we see that is not the case. With a few exceptions, it seems that our elected representatives have a collective IQ lower that the lowest batting average of the end of the bench shortstop on a rookie league team. It does not bode well for the country to see the quality of our ‘betters’ in Washington, D. C.
We need to select those who have real-life experience to our leadership in federal, state and local offices. Those who get their ideas from a bunch of rocks need to be shipped back whence they came, thrown into their individual boxes and used as paving stones for those who can lead well with intelligent and workable ideas. We have had enough of policy coming out of inanimate place; a box of rocks in the brains of those who currently lead us.