On a planet, somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy there once existed the planet of the apes. They called this planet of the apes, Earth.

Apes of many sizes, shapes, and colors walked the planet of the apes. They lived among the trees together with all the other animals. The biggest challenge of the apes was to evolve beyond their primate nature.

Throughout time, some apes were able to evolve beyond other apes. Thus, they called themselves the great apes. The apes perceived themselves as great, although in reality, they were just monkeys.

The apes were just monkeys and all monkeys were functional idiots. They were functional because they knew how to function within the jungle. They were idiots because they did not know that they are idiots. The monkeys were so dumb they did not know how dumb they are.

One day like any other, one of the idiot monkeys decided that it was a good idea to stand on the neck of another monkey. This idiot monkey that stood on the neck of another monkey wore a uniform. The uniformed monkey believed that his uniform gave him the right the perform cruel acts on others in order to get the other monkey to conform to his will.

He stood on the neck of a helpless monkey for more than eight minutes while the helpless monkey cried for help. After eight brutal minutes, the helpless monkey lost his breath. The idiot monkey in uniform took the life of another monkey for no good reason. The monkey in uniform made a fool of himself. He became an idiot.

Many monkeys watched the whole ordeal. They became horrified by the treatment from one monkey to another monkey. While watching the murder in broad daylight, the monkeys noticed that the monkey in uniform had a different skin color than the monkey on the ground.

The monkey in uniform was white, while the other monkey was darker. The monkeys that witnessed the murder started to believe that the darker monkey was murdered because of his skin color. All the monkeys called the monkey in uniform a racist, but nobody called him an idiot.

All racist monkeys were idiots, but not all idiot monkeys were racist. All racists are idiots because they did not recognize that skin color does not speak much about the character of a monkey. Only the monkey character can reveal what kind of an idiot he is.

Idiots came in many shapes and sizes. Some idiots were rednecks, some hillbillies, but some idiots wore suits. On the planet of the apes, idiots were very hard to spot. The smarter the monkeys appeared to be, the better they were able to camouflage their idiocy.

In a search for justice for the unjust death of the darker monkey, many other monkeys took their anger to the streets. The monkeys in uniform became their new enemy. Monkeys wanted to be part of a tribe but they did not want to belong to any random tribe. They wanted to belong to the right monkey tribe.

They sought a tribe that seeks equality and fairness for all monkeys. They saw all monkeys as equal, except for the monkeys in uniform. But if all monkeys are equal, why did it matter if some monkeys wore a uniform and some did not?

A long time ago, the monkeys gathered together and decided to give uniform to the monkeys that were supposed to enforce the law of the monkeys. By law, they prescribed that only the monkeys in uniform can use force on other monkeys. Monkeys delegated the use of force only to the monkeys in uniform.

Thus, the monkeys in uniform gained more power over the other monkeys. They gained higher power, but the power came with a new responsibility. Now the monkeys in uniform had the responsibility to rise beyond their idiocy and serve justice without prejudice. However, within the monkeys in uniform, there were always some idiots. There were always a few bad apples.

It is always the few bad apples that spoil the bunch. Few idiots in uniform made everyone look like an idiot. To protest against idiocy, many monkeys took to the streets and started protesting. They protested against the bad apples, but within the protesters appeared a few bad apples that started to loot and pillage the properties of the innocent.

Within the protesters, there appeared a new type of idiots who believed that creating more damage to other monkeys would fix the damage done to them. They believed that doing two wrongs will make everything right. They were such idiots.

From a big White House appeared a new monkey. This monkey was unlike the other monkeys. This monkey was perceived to be the most powerful among the monkeys. This monkey was an orange monkey. The orange one presided over all the other monkeys. The orange monkey saw the looting and pillaging in his land, and decided that the use of force could pacify the other monkeys.

He believed that the use of force could lead to peace. He was such an idiot that he didn’t know that force only leads to more force. Only peace leads to more peace. The orange monkey threatened to use his tanks to subdue all the other monkeys in his own land. The orange monkey became a great idiot.

All these bad news traveled fast. The bad news was spread by the media which was always focused on spreading only bad news. Although the monkeys had achieved many great things, the focus on the media was always on the bad.

The worse the news was, the more monkeys watched the news. The monkeys of the media wanted to be watched. They made money only when more monkeys watched them. So the idiot monkeys of the media decided to make the bad news even worse. Every small act of idiocy they amplified it to appear even more idiotic.

Some monkeys started to wonder if this is the planet of the apes or the planet of the idiots? They wished to live on a planet of apes, but the idiots started to outnumber the apes. They believed that they lived in a democracy, but when the majority became ruled by idiots, democracy turned into idiocracy.

One monkey decided that he would build a rocket to get away from all these idiots. One monkey wished to die alone on the planet of red musky dust, rather than on the beautiful planet of the apes.

The highest idiot of the story comes at the end of the story. The idiot monkey who wrote stories about idiot monkeys was the greatest idiot of them all. He believed that writing stories about idiot monkeys could change the minds of the other monkey.

But he forgot that monkeys can not read. He forgot that idiots can not understand. Monkeys will always be monkeys and idiots will forever remain idiots.

If you made it to the end of the story and recognized the monkey idiots for who they are, then you have my sympathy. However, if you were unable to recognize any idiots in the story, it is time to take one good look at the mirror.

The idiot always hides in the unlikely of places. Keep looking at the mirror until the idiot appears.

How can we teach monkeys to vote for presidents who are not idiots?

If idiots are unable to recognize other idiots, they will be always led by idiots.

Look back again at the pale blue dot. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust.

Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot.

Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?

And if the lights in the sky rise and set around us, isn’t it evident that we’re at the center of the Universe?

Aristotle, Plato, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and almost all the great philosophers and scientists of all cultures over the 3,000 years ending in the seventeenth century bought into this delusion.

The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything in space in the past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.

Long ago, when an early galaxy began to pour light out into the surrounding darkness, no witness could have known that billions of years later some remote clumps of rock and metal, ice and organic molecules would fall together to make place called Earth; or that life would arise and thinking beings evolve who would one day capture a little of that galactic light, and try to puzzle out what had sent it on its way.

And after the earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it’s burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being – and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth.

And yet – never mind how many kings, popes, philosophers, scientists, and poets insisted on the contrary – the Earth through those millennia stubbornly persisted in orbiting the Sun.

You might imagine an uncharitable extraterrestrial observer looking down on our species … – with us excitedly chattering, ‘The Universe is created for us! We’re at the center! Everything pays homage to us!’

… and concluding that our pretensions are amusing, our aspirations pathetic, that this must be the planet of the idiots.