10 STUPID THINGS JUDGES DO: The Idiocies of Jesse Nevarez, et al

INTRODUCTION: Stupid Judges Hurt You More Than Malicious Ones Do:

The Laws of Human Stupidity

In this series “10 STUPID THINGS JUDGES DO: The Idiocies of Jesse Nevarez, et al” I am exposing bad behavior in judges. Specifically, stupid behavior from judges.

I use the words “stupid” and “stupidity” in their technical or clinical sense. That is, I am not trying to be crass or even colloquial by calling someone “stupid;” neither am I inclined to be gratuitous to certain judges, or lawyers for that matter. That is, I sincerely mean the identification of “stupid” to be an insult. There is no way to pretend that it is not what it is.

It's amazing to watch our current social malaise. It’s more a crime to call out stupidity than to perpetuate the stupidity of a bureaucrat or politician or office-holder upon a defenseless public. Non-vigorous people whine about the way in which a message is delivered, with no thought about the content of the message. I’m not writing to the non-vigorous. They cannot be helped.

I’ll cut to the chase and then try to give an important lesson in social stupidity before identifying multiple stupid things judges do.

I have recently witnessed grotesque stupidity in the court, namely in the 231^st Family Court (Texas) in Cause *NO. 231-715459-22. I have not changed the names in order to protect anyone. And, I have my customer’s permission to share her case and trial with the public. This court exhibits enough stupid judgment and actions, it will serve to illustrate nearly all bad conduct.

But first, I want to define stupidity. Did you know there are significant studies and works that deal with observable, testable, identifiable stupidity? It’s hard not to write and read about stupidity without one’s tongue in one’s cheek. But don’t let that obscure the fact that the study of stupidity is a serious one. And, of course, stupid acts continue to harm a great number of people.

In 1976, the Italian economist and historian Carlo M. Cipolla (1922–2000) wrote an essay titled “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.”

Cipolla's Five Basic Laws of Stupidity are a humorous yet insightful set of principles that explore the behavior of stupid people in social and economic contexts.

Here is a summary of the Five Laws of Human Stupidity:

1. The First Law: Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in society.
2. The Second Law: The probability that a person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic possessed by that person.
3. The Third Law: A stupid person is someone who causes losses to another person or to a group while deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses themselves.
4. The Fourth Law: Non-stupid people always underestimate the harmful potential of stupid people; they constantly forget that, at any time, and at any place, and in any circumstance, dealing with or associating themselves with stupid individuals invariably constitutes a costly error.
5. The Fifth Law: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

Corollary: a stupid person is more dangerous than a pillager.

I was surprised to learn that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote on the topic of stupidity.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the Lutheran pastor who refused to cooperate with the Nazis in 1930’s and 1940’s Germany when Hitler’s thought-and-religion police entered the church, proclaiming what was effectively a Nazi regulated church. (see Eric Metaxas, https://tinyurl.com/Metaxas-Bonhoeffer)

Not generally a fan of Wikipedia, its entry on Bonhoeffer at least gives a decent overview of his dissidence as it relates to Hitler’s and the Nazis’ meddling in the German Lutheran church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

I do not mention this as a foray into religious history or even political history. I introduce Bonhoeffer to you as a thoughtful and renowned thinker who lived in the trenches of political intrigue. Dietrich was hanged in a concentration camp just a few weeks before the end of World War II, while Hitler’s regime was collapsing all around him. He was uniquely qualified to speak to the subject of stupidity and the harm it brings to individuals, masses and nations.

I find these comments by Bonhoeffer remarkable and remarkably agreeable to Cipolla’s musings some 30 or so years later.

• Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.
• Against stupidity we are defenseless.
•  to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one.
• under certain circumstances, people are made stupid…they allow this to happen to them. [“made” not in the sense of created or born that way but formed by one’s own conduct and choices.]
•  stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem.
•  the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.
• the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

Of interest, Cipolla was a determinist-materialist, an atheist in effect. Bonhoeffer was, obviously, a theist. One of a thousand things I want to do is study Bonhoeffer’s theology. For now, I surmise that Bonhoeffer could not have helped but believe that man has free will.

This is important because Cipolla believed that humans are born stupid or born not stupid. Darwinian materialism leaves no other option, really.

I do not share Cipolla’s presuppositions.

Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, was willing to attach human culpability to the state of stupidity. Humans do something to make themselves stupid. They are responsible for their own stupidity and are, thus, ethically and morally accountable for it.

For now, here’s my Definition of Stupidity. It’s simple and unassailably accurate. It also has amazing explanatory powers.

Ignorance + Arrogance > Stupidity

Arrogance added to Ignorance produces Stupidity. It’s inevitable. It’s as sure as any math equation.

The ignorant cloaked in arrogance are helplessly stupid.

So when I write that Judge Nevarez and others are stupid or do stupid things, I mean it in a clinical and defined sense. And, I do not mean for the identification not to sting. I just know that, upon a fool, no corrections can affect him. Without a love for understanding and wisdom and ethical behavior, the stupid person will persist in his stupidity. He or she can hear nothing but the drumbeat of their own over-rehearsed mantra…something along the lines of “your Google search doesn’t trump my law degree.”

To be fair, I deal only with the issues of mortgage (i.e. home) financing for the divorcing and all that this specialty entails. There are surely many other areas - which others can address - that bear the curse of stupidity from judges upon them. For now, I’ll stay in this lane – divorce and mortgage finance.

I will explore strategies to navigate around the insanity coming from judicial misjudgments in family law.

To the judges who happened upon this article, I sincerely hope that it was out of a humble desire to learn and better yourself in the administration of justice. The grand irony of these idiocies is that they are imminently correctable. I don’t claim to be a rocket scientist. I just claim to have discovered numerous unassailable guidelines and principles that have helped a great many divorcing folks with their home financing.

Notes

NO. 231-715459-22; Presiding Judge Jesus “Jesse” Nevarez, II; Attorney for Denisse Reynoso Rodriguez (my customer) – Elizabeth Rivera; Attorney for Edwardo Huerta – James Masek; Witnesses and Beneficiaries of Judge Nevarez’s bestowments and judgments: David Meyers (real estate, receiver, agent), Joseph Soto (mortgage loan officer)