This being the day of the solar eclipse …

… and general stupidity of opinions …

… here are two that — warning! — could reduce your IQ by reading them.

The Daily Caller read The Atlantic so you didn’t have to:

The Atlantic, a once-great magazine, has determined that the total eclipse of the sun due to occur on Monday will fail to affect enough black people.

The Atlantic’s very lengthy essay on the failure of the eclipse to occur where a sufficient number of black people reside is entitled “American Blackout.” It clocks in at a remarkable 4,544 words and does not appear to be satire.

Concerning “the Great American Eclipse,” Brooklyn Law School professor Alice Ristroph writes in the rapidly deteriorating magazine, “there live almost no black people” “along most of its path.”

The Atlantic’s longwinded law professor assures readers that “implicit bias of the solar system” is “presumably” not the cause of eclipse’s failure to affect enough black people.

“Still, an eclipse chaser is always tempted to believe that the skies are relaying a message.”

Oregon, where the eclipse will first appear in the continental United States, “is almost entirely white.” “There are very few black Oregonians, and this is not an accident.” It’s totally on purpose in 2017, The Atlantic claims, because the Pacific Northwest state had a “racial exclusion” clause in its original 1857 constitution.

The Atlantic notes that the eclipse will then move toward Wyoming and Idaho, which also have very low populations of black people. …

After an extensive discourse criticizing the U.S. Census, The Atlantic tells readers that the eclipse will travel through Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. In this section of its essay, The Atlantic manages to drop the names of Bruce Springsteen, Jesse James, Eminem, Chelsea Manning, Michael Brown and Howard Zinn (a shallow socialist writer panned even by most serious socialists).

“There are too many damn facts,” The Atlantic also complains.

After considerable whining about the Electoral College and the way Congress is organized, The Atlantic moves on to southern Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. There’s substantial discussion of the Ku Klux Klan in this section — and, of course, slavery. …

Here, The Atlantic criticizes Abraham Lincoln for being too cautious with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Next, The Atlantic traces the path of the eclipse to “overwhelmingly white rural areas” in the Deep South. There’s much discussion of the Civil War and much talk about “the glib view” America’s commoners have concerning Civil War history. Dylann Roof, who murdered nine people in the name of white supremacy, rates a mention.

In its final paragraph, The Atlantic concludes that the United States is “still segregated” and has “debts that no honest man can pay.” Cryptically, the magazine suggests, “the strange path of the eclipse suggests a need for reorganization” of the entire American political system.

The Atlantic classifies its article about the path of the eclipse in the category of “science” even though nothing remotely approaching science appears in any of the 4,544 words.

Interestingly, in trying to read this, the piece failed to load on two different browsers, as if The Atlantic is blocking people from reading this idiocy.

Next, GQ, even though I’ve warned you before you should never read GQ for anything but fashion advice (bad though it sometimes is):

But when demonstrators assembled in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, those white robes were few and far between. To be sure: Markers of white supremacy such as Nazi and Confederate flags were on display. But on the march, it looked as if an army of JC Penney mannequins had become sentient. Scores of white men dressed in crisp polos and khakis, turning the uniform of business-casual blasé into a white-hot statement. “What we see in a lot of images coming out of Charlottesville are these very clean-cut-looking young men,” says Susan Campbell Bartoletti, the author of They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Groupand Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow. “They’re putting the face of a gentleman on values that are, in my opinion, anything but gentlemanly.”

Chris Deaton:

Evaluating the violence in Charlottesville and the reaction to it from public officials and commentators requires basic levels of reason and decency. To botch it reveals some terribly unflattering trait: It could be related to political or partisan obsession, ego, honest-to-goodness insensitivity, vacuity, or some other deficiency of the heart or mind. It should be easy for the people who occupy public office and the media, be it professional media or social media, to get this right. And yet.

White nationalists are bad. Neo-Nazis are worse. The ones moved to violence are worse still. If you are curious about flirting with their worldview, a piece of advice: Don’t do that. If you are not a neo-Nazi, or a white supremacist of any kind, but want to march with them for the common cause of preserving a Confederate monument, don’t do that, either. If you’re stomping around with people chanting “Jews will not replace us” and don’t want to be associated with Nazism or white nationalism, step out of formation. Better yet, don’t show up in the first place. There is no ambiguity here. And yet.

President Trump says “you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists,” including “very fine people.” And “what about the ‘alt-left’ that … came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs?” he asks.

Well, the “alt-left”—specifically individuals associated with antifa—aren’t necessarily swell. As Peter Beinart writes in the Atlantic, “for all of antifa’s supposed anti-authoritarianism, there’s something fundamentally authoritarian about its claim that its activists … can decide whose views are too odious to be publicly expressed.” There have been many occasions on which to condemn the movement—it “has time and again plunged volatile situations into violence,” observes Ben Shapiro, “from Sacramento to Berkeley.” Don’t forget Portland, either. But there’s no reason to mention antifa in the context of white supremacists marching on Charlottesville. White supremacists were the instigators there. Their most extreme members, neo-Nazis, are the worst subgroup on both sides by an inestimable degree. There is no reason to compare or equivocate these people and Marxist militants. It’s okay to censure the “alt-left,” especially when its activists turn violent, in a different and proper context. And it’s okay for critics of the president to just leave it at that. And yet.

“Watching ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ a movie about a group of very aggressive alt-left protesters invading a beach without a permit,” tweets Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg. That one got about 10,000 retweets. This one will fly past 40,000:

What is cute about this? We have wondered what the grandparents of neo-Nazis who may have fought in World War II would think of their grandkids. What would World War II veterans think of being compared to a group that features disorderly anarchists? Those men who landed on Normandy fought in actual muck. There’s no excuse to drag them into the muck of our personal politics.

The same goes for the nation’s shameful history of race relations and its generational efforts to improve them. The United States has evolved into a pluralistic society. You can imagine how Americans whose ancestors did not live in such times would be disturbed by the images captured and chants shouted in Charlottesville. And how those same people would be troubled when the president’s response to the events earned praise from men like Richard Spencer and David Duke. Two of those people, a black Republican named Gianno Caldwell and a black Democrat named Wendy Osefo, teared up on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning while discussing the last five days. Said Caldwell, the Republican, “Last night I couldn’t sleep at all because President Trump, our president, literally betrayed the conscience of our country, the very moral fabric in which we have made progress when it comes to race relations in America.” It’s tough criticism. But given the circumstances, it at least deserves respect. It ought to be received openly. And yet.

Here are several of the responses to a tweet from Mediaite linking to the video: “Lol, pathetic. I think they need their binkie.” … “ah a snowflake moment” … “Such Drama! Need an Emmy for that.” … “This was absurd! I left the room.” … “Were they upset when then President Obama said nothing to condemn BLM over the Dallas police officers who were killed?” … “Spare me the alligator tears.” … “Everyone needed to use a barf bag while watching this male guest while he insulted @realDonaldTrump. Did he take acting lessons from #Obama?” … “Think they’ve been holding back those tears since January 20thwhen they lost their beloved Obama.” … “oh please, where do they get these people?” … “THEY are sad because he OUTED THEM as PART OF ANTIFA!” … a .gif of Judge Judy rolling her eyes … and a .gif of Jimmy Fallon with the caption “ABOUT TO UGLY CRY.”

One of the most depressing lessons of the last two years is that a significant chunk of Americans has zero desire to understand each other. Sometimes this is rooted in ignorance. Sometimes it is rooted in a lack of common sense. And sometimes it is rooted in a lack of empathy. It is not a symptom of the right or of the left. It is not a symptom of a political movement at all. It is a symptom of a people terrified of being challenged, of not having all the answers to all of society’s ills, of the possibility of being wrong, of accepting vulnerability, of appearing weak. Sometimes the strong thing to do is to say the right thing. Sometimes it’s to say nothing at all. And sometimes it’s simply to be a good neighbor. No one is ever going to find that in a political pamphlet. They’ll only find it within themselves.

Jonah Goldberg:

Last year around this time (and the year before that), I was arguing with some of my fellow conservatives about the insanity of finding any common cause whatsoever with the so-called alt-right. The issue wasn’t that every avowed nationalist who claimed membership in the alt-right was a Nazi or Klansman. It was that the alt-right was open to Nazis and Klansmen. And why wouldn’t these newly minted white supremacists welcome such pioneering organizations to their cause?

Right-wing cynics, hucksters, and opportunists deliberately blurred these distinctions in the name of a right-wing popular front. Steve Bannon, now a White House consigliere, is by most accounts not a bigot in his personal dealings. But when he ran Breitbart, he had no problem making it a “platform” for the alt-right. Internet entertainer Milo Yiannopoulos was a Breitbart star for his defenses of the alt-right and its supposedly hilarious Holocaust jokes. He was let go (and disinvited from the Conservative Political Action Conference) only when it was revealed he was equally broad-minded about some expressions of pedophilia as he was about some expressions of Nazism.

In Bannon’s case, and in the case of so many on the right who pulled their oars to the beat of Bannon’s drum, the motivation wasn’t racism or anti-Semitism; it was the need to win at all costs (or to make a profit).

Win what? Well, that varied. At first it was the war on the “establishment,” including Fox News. Then one alleged civil war on the right or another. And, ultimately, the fight to get Donald Trump the nomination and the presidency.

As the primaries wound down, the imperative for unity intensified. Why look under rocks when you can use them as stepping stones to victory? Besides, Trump was making it as clear as possible that he welcomed support and praise from any quarter.

The Right’s game of footsie with the alt-right ostensibly ended when Trump won. Bannon disavowed them once he made it to the White House. Like France after the liberation, it seemed everyone was suddenly a member of the resistance and nobody was a collaborator. At least, that is, until Saturday, when the president invited speculation that the old popular front is still operational.

Whatever its status at the White House, the alt-right thinks it will replace the traditional Right. It won’t, for the simple reason that the vast, overwhelming majority of conservatives are patriotic and decent, just like Americans generally. They don’t want anything to do with people who want to overthrow the Constitution and set up racial Bantustans.

No, the real threat to traditional conservatism is the mindset that made it possible to form even a theoretical alliance with the alt-right in the first place: the idea that winning and fighting are self-justifying.

Over the last decade, many on the right have convinced themselves that the real problem with conservatism is a lack of will. They admiringly quote left-wing activist Saul Alinsky and claim that “we” have to be like “them” by doing whatever is necessary to “win.”

During the campaign, when Trump attacked the ethnicity of an American judge or the parents of a fallen Muslim U.S. soldier, the response from his defenders on the right was usually, “At least he fights!”

Such amorality was warranted, many explained, because if Clinton had won, America would be “over.” National-security official Michael Anton, then writing from the safety of anonymity, dubbed it a “Flight 93 election” and argued that conservatives must do anything for victory or accept certain death. In an interview with New York magazine, Anton went further. “If we must have Caesar,” he said, “who do you want him to be? One of theirs? Or one of yours (ours)?”

The election is over. Yet that spirit not only endures, it has intensified. Trump’s conservative critics, or “apostates” as Conrad Black calls us, face the same ultimatum. “The choice, for sane conservatives,” Black writes, “is Trump or national disaster.” Black is hardly alone in making this or similar cases. The upshot of them all is that the test for “sane” (or real or good or true) conservatives is loyalty to the president, not to any coherent body of ideas or ideals. Even truth takes a back seat.

I’d point out that such thinking could invite the worst and most opportunistic creatures to infiltrate the movement. Except they already have.