Support voting rights for amphibians

[edelsont]

I think it was some time after Donald Trump was elected, but before he took office.  I read an opinion piece in The New York Times, in which the reader was urged not to forget how abnormal it is to have a president like this.

The writer invoked the analogy of the frog in the pot of water.  You know, where if you increase the temperature of the water gradually enough, the frog will get used to it, and stay right there until he boils to death.  I scoffed: "Human beings wouldn't be that stupid."

It's an effective rhetorical device.  That frog came back to my mind recently, when I started to wonder whether I had been overconfident, earlier, about the ability of humans to perceive danger and respond to it.

And then, by pure coincidence, I stumbled across this Wikipedia page: "List of common misconceptions" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions).  Therein it is revealed, among many other fascinating factoids, that the frog story is just not true.  The experiment has been done (I'd like to read the grant proposal, wouldn't you?).  It turns out that, at some temperature well below the boiling point, the frog jumps out of the pot.

So now we know: if Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020, then the American people are dumber than frogs.