I am SO Tired of Stupid

I mean seriously, what the fuck is wrong with people?

This morning I was taking my usual route to work, going about five miles an hour over the speed limit in the center lane on the freeway.  All of a sudden I'm being tailgated by some asshole, even though the lanes on both side of me are clear. Even after the center lane became the far right lane, he stayed on my ass. Typical Denver driver, nothing to really spawn a blog post, until… he got off at my exit simply to flip me off, and then got back on the freeway.

Seriously.

I used to think Phoenix drivers were bad. Then I moved to Denver. Years ago I could go days if not weeks without seeing stupidity while on the road. Now I can't go five minutes. The majority of people in this city are either high, not paying attention, or simply DO NOT KNOW where they fuck they're going. "Oh, this lane turns into right turn only at the intersection. Maybe I should get over BEFORE I GET THERE." No, because that's too hard. Just come to a complete stop in the middle of that lane and block all the traffic behind you that actually does want to turn right in hopes that someone to your left will let you merge. (This happened not once, but twice in the span of about 100 feet on my way home from work last night.)

This illustrates my biggest gripe about life today: no one thinks ahead. Being taught pro-active thinking seems to have joined cursive  handwriting on the list of things no longer being taught to our children.

And while I'm on that subject…

I'm positive the stupidity,  self-centeredness and entitlement I'm seeing in society today can be directly attributed to the fact that during the 80s and 90s, schools stopped fostering excellence and exceptionalism, instead adopting the philosophy that all students should be rewarded equally; basically for showing up and breathing. "Everyone gets a gold star no matter what they did because we don't want to hurt their self-esteem." Fuck their self-esteem, teach them that one does not get ahead in life by simply showing up.

And so now we have 20- and 30-somethings thinking that no matter what they do, they're entitled to special treatment and recognition simply because that's all they've ever known. They don't know how to think. Problem solving has become a lost art. That's why they block traffic and expect to be allowed to merge when they suddenly find themselves in the wrong lane.

It's also why—when the other contractor I'm working with runs across some software install instructions that have one or two steps missing or are no longer up to date—he grinds to a complete halt and sits there with a blank look on his face. It's as if the whole concept of thinking creatively is unknown to him. I was given the same instructions he was, realized they weren't accurate, and came up with a solution that allowed me to keep on working.

But back to traffic for a moment…

While I admittedly have not lived that many different places, the streets in the cities in which I have lived have all been laid out on a grid. Even the notoriously hilly San Francisco was built that way—resulting in some truly awesome inclines on certain streets. But Denver? Oh hell no, and furthermore what. the. fuck?

From street names that change on a whim as you make your way across the metro area, to roads that curve for absolutely no reason whatsoever and stop lights that are timed in such a way that you spend more time with your foot on the brake than the accelerator, I'm convinced that traffic engineers in Denver have intentionally done everything in their power to restrict the flow of traffic, rather than facilitate it.

And then there's this. And this. And this.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Is it just me? Is it just living in Denver? Or are we as a culture, truly headed toward Idiocracy?