The US Empire failed to raise successors that understand how it works, and thus they raised a generation of “true believers” in the myths and lies the more competent generations of leaders spread to legitimize their policy. Look at the defunding of programs like USAID, which has historically played a critical role in US-sponsored regime change, now seen as “woke” by the current admin.

The republicans have been ruining the education system for decades. Can’t have smart people without paid teachers.

I’ve lived here all my life; the answer is yes.

Source: am stupid

“The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

-Isaac Asimov

Yes, they’ve always been here. There has always been more stupid ignorant people than educated and intelligent people.

Previously, the stupid had no platform.

The fire hose of stupid shit we are inundated with nowadays used to only trickle through in person.

Someone would say something insanely stupid to you at the bar, at the grocery store, at the barber shop etc… and all we had to do was ignore them or tell them to shut up

Thanks to social media, now they’ve teamed up and have millions of followers.

The question ought to be, How are the the educated and intelligent going to rise above it?

First and foremost, beyond all other things, the problem is that people in the United States see no other country but the United States. You have libertarians arguing that taxation is theft as if the United States is the only country in the world with an income tax. You have people talking about 15 minute cities as if it’s some theoretical, untested idea instead of the absolute norm in every other country. America is continually pretending that it can’t see its problems solved everywhere else. That it can’t imagine a better world even though one already exists.

The American dream is an all time amazing piece of propaganda that has left every American imagining that one day, through hard work, they will become the oppressor, and that has created a population so submissive and pliable in the face of its own destruction that Russia, China, and even North Korea could never even dream about having.

In the 60s the counterculture decided that all authority and anything taught to them was wrong and they thought they were smarter than anyone else and their gut feelings were just as valid as education. Hippies and conspiracy obsessed right wingers converged towards things like quack medicines, conspiracy mongering, etc. Anti intellectualism, hand in hand with anti authoritarianism, has become the norm. No one with a normal personality would run for office now because the knee-jerk response is to pile hate on them so you only get dysfunctional people running for office. Watergate was a major influence as it confirmed, to them, that the gov was full of dirty secrets and actors. The assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK and the failing Vietnam war and draft added to the “everything is broken” mindset. The internet has only made things worse by allowing these people to find each other and reinforce their beliefs.

One of the biggest backlashes against the 60s was that people were tired of the constant protests and the collapse of cities like NYC which led to Nixon winning on a “law and order” platform that Reagan would later use. Then in the 80s you saw the rise of evangelical Christians against what they saw as liberalism in society. Reagan ironically used the “don’t trust the man” mentality to destroy a lot of business restrictions like the Fairness Doctrine in the media.

I am American. The answer is both a Yes and a No. It doesn’t have so much to do with stupidity, but that our education system has been slowly dismantled since the 90’s. Rather than teaching civics, critical thinking, and basic knowledge about government, economics and their inner workings we’ve setup a system that favors test scores and nothing else. Has that made people more stupid? Possibly, but I think it has more to do with only learning the answers rather than how to get there. There’s just this huge in-between of information that a lot of people don’t seem to be able to work out on their own without having a lot of hints of what the outcome will be. It saddens me to see people’s gears just come to a grinding halt trying to work out simple solutions on things.

I think the biggest bane in America is our work culture. We’ve setup a dog eat dog system of trying to strive for the most success at any cost. Work culture in America is fickle, back stabby, and rife with favoritism over quality of work. The biggest lie we were ever told was that we could be the next Bill Gates, or Elon Musk, or some other rich billionaire mogul. The biggest lie we were ever told was to invest in the stock market and have a 401k. The biggest lie we were ever told is that if we worked our asses off that we’d automatically be successful. America is just a grindhouse that treats the working class like shit and unless you decide to be a bridge burning greedy fucking asshole you’ll never really get anywhere with any real upward mobility.

Lastly, I will say that America and American’s themselves has become more and more isolationist in the last couple of decades. Maybe it is social media and the echo chambers they cause. Maybe it is the fake friendships and feeling like you are just collecting trading cards instead of making real insightful and meaningful relationships. Maybe it is the dog eat dog work culture or the keeping up with the Jones’s mentality of things like Instagram and Facebook. Maybe it is a bit of everything. The fact remains that there is a huge friendship pandemic in this country and it only gets worse and worse as many of us further isolate ourselves from reality, critical thinking, and the prospect of being really challenged by the people we could be surrounding ourselves with.

All of this has culminated in a culture that is becoming more work and money focused, less people and social relationship focused, and by and large more shallow and less well rounded and interesting overall. No generation is immune from it either. Whether you are young or old you can fall victim to all I’ve outlined above. Most people have let the technology and systems in place take away their freedom of thought and originality to instead become a husk of the human potential they once were or could be again because it is easier to fall prey to hive mind apathy and cynicism than to fight for your own uniqueness and truer sense of self.

The gish gallop has gone mainstream.

What we needed, twenty to forty years ago at the bare minimum, were journalists who were willing to shut that shit down.

I remember being a child watching the news with my parents and seeing an oil company defender accusing the scientists of chasing profits.

Like what the fuck? How did that not end immediately with “And who is currently profiting?” is and always has been beyond me.

…I’m not sure that’s a great example of the gish gallop. Technically.

My point was that we now report the untrue claims rather than saying, from the start, “This candidate said something completely false and not worth repeating.”

For clicks, views, the algorithm, for profit. Nope. It was all to game the system in order to destroy it.

Sorry, this probably isn’t coherent but I’m tired and tipsy, and I’ve chosen to hit save.

Dude get off lemmy. Go outside, talk to your neighbors.

Nothings changed, we’re still a giant group of humans. Only your perception has changed.

so, the 1940s were a result of what happened in the 20s and thirties. and america almost went nazi. like, we almost had a nazi president elected instead of FDR the first time, and the business plot almost worked. would have, if they hadn’t chosen a military leader who’d turned socialist since retiring.

the 1960s… honey. do you really believe america was leftist? there were some kids who were. the anti war movement was pretty big, and they all had to be okay with lefty tactics, but it’s not fair to say ‘america was leftist’. richard nixon still got elected the first time.

americans are traiend to be cattle. this is true. and yes, the techniques for that training are better than they used to be.

look up what happened in the late 70s and 80s. it kiiiinda started under carter, but you get the sense he would have pulled back once he saw how it was going, and also tried to do good stuff (it just literally all got stopped). look at the career of newt gingrich. plus, ronald reagan and it’s consequences have been a disaster for humanity. they set in motion subtle sabotage of society that devastated the potential of future education or anything becoming less awful, while most of the cool people around at the time were exiled locked in deep dark cages or straight up assassinated by feds.

funny you should mention ‘social order’ though. the wealthy and powerful still do care. their version just isn’t the same as yours. have you ever read ‘a handmaid’s tale’ or ‘the turner diaries’? because those are the books they jack off to.

I think most of this is being driven by personal vendettas. if you look at each person on the right, it seems they all have a grudge of some such and this current administration promises to deliver based on revenge.

The biggest player being Elon: His son Xavier has transitioned. And when his (now daughter) called out Elon’s nazi wave as being legitimate, Elon tipped his hand by saying the woke killed his son and he is out to kill the woke mind(https://www.aol.com/news/elon-musk-estranged-daughter-responds-155107557.html) - So Elon sank a tonne of money to sway this election to his own vendetta.

For Dementia donald : it’s Biden winning the 2020 election.

For Vance it’s repressed feelings you can see he’s trying to break out the drag queen smokey eye: although he’s an opportunist at the base of it. So he’s getting two things met here. I think because he’s at odds with himself(still eyelining everyday) his soul has vacated, he has much self insecurity and is unhappy with himself as a person and projects that as anger and revenge on everyone who he views is as weak as he feels. Sort of a projected self hatred.

For the speaker mike johnson: he’s a gay convert, big proponent of the conversion therapy so lots to unpack there. even lives with a reverend while married to a woman. to simplify it : He’s against the ‘woke mind’ because he has a lot of self hate. He’s against himself. Likely why he drinks so much as well and does wreckless shit : https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-johnson-chief-staff-arrested-dui-charge-trump-speech-rcna194986 - this person is self destructing.

For Hegeseth: he’s an untreated alcoholic that self medicates rather than face a true recovery.

JFK Jr: wormbrain. his worm is against anything that would kill parasites. I don’t think there’s much of a human being in that brain anymore. I think it’s all parasite now.

For Leavitt: greedy and sees this as an opportunity(as do most of the party) - and while we can say she’s young and easily influenced I’m not prepared to let her off the hook on this. There are too many progressive young minds to prove this was a choice of her’s. Not simply ignorance. It’s stupidity for sure. but not from not knowing any better.

The truth is our stupidty is not unusual, it’s just a preview of what is coming down the pipe for some of you. Right-wing populist dipshits are gaining ground in a lot of countries. It tends to go along with economic hardship. People look for other people to blame for their problems. The real truth is that it’s not immigrants, or jews, or woke women that are ruining everything for everybody, it’s a very small number of inconceivably rich people. Sure, the economy looks great (historically speaking) but real measures of happiness, like the cost of medical care, education and household measured in working-hours has shot through the roof, something which “the economy” does not capture very well.

Tl:dr, shit is going bad almost everywhere, and if you don’t get the to root cause of the issue ( a few rich people owning everything) then the stupids in your county are going to elect right-wing dipshits too.

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

– George Carlin over 30 years ago

"The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

– (source unknown, but sometimes mis-attributed to Churchill)

the only reason their kkk ass didnt join the nazi german campaign is that the president realised a big ass war against the germans and rebuilding europe is a super great deal.

us school lack of worldwide geography and history lessons, keeping the kids stupid as fuck.

the 2 party system makes sure no other new ideology comes beetween their bew god: the lobby money from the top 1%.

answering your question: yes