Submitted 1 year ago by Lawdoggo@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I blame social media. Though not specific social medias like Facebook or twitter, but the general concept of social media. I think people in general are easily manipulated in a social level (not just Americans, but everybody). But social media allows this to happen en mass and personalized to every single person. With minimal effort.
It’s almost like social media was designed specifically to enable fascist agendas.
“well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
I mean, I feel like you’re being a bit derivative. I would put it more towards desperation than stupidity. Why does someone stay with an abusive partner? Biden was of the stance that “things are getting better” and… they’re not.
I always considered trump’s victory as sign that the democrats were just… that flaccid and unpalatable. It’s like you have a partner who sucks. They pay their share of rent, they expect you to do all the cooking and cleaning, they don’t even bother to understand you and get pissy that a random bouquet of whatever flowers on sale doesn’t magically fix an argument and make your loins quiver.
You fall instead to this gorgeous individual who knows how to flirt and makes you feel like the world can be easily fixed and now you’re locked in their basement about to lose an arm.
It’s desperation that makes people take risks, listen to people they shouldn’t listen to.
In us bribes are legal and are called “lobbying”. It was a broken country from the very start.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. 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.
There were people warning against the glorification of ignorance in the US nearly half a century ago. It’s nothing new; it just reached critical mass (also thanks to social media where ignorant people can self-organise).
Unsolicited advice, but you have to escape your - to make it not create a bulleted list.
Lemmy uses markdown for its formatting, and this means - is has special meaning, it is syntax used to create bulleted lists with.
For example,
- Isaac Asimov will look like:
If you want it to look like
- Isaac Asimov
you have to escape the - character with a \:
\- Isaac Asimov
The \ basically says “ignore the special syntax meaning of - as starting a bulleted list, and instead treat it as a literal -”.
Excellent point about the ignorance. I would also add ingratitude. People look to whiners like the Donvict and think that complaining about first world problems is a legit reason to destroy founding principles like integrity, justice, and separation of powers. Americans have it good overall and they spoil themselves with greed. Thanksgiving to them is about football and cryptocurrency commercials and not enough about actually giving thanks, giving back, selflessness, service, kindness, empathy, and goodwill. Add a drop of ignorance and social media brainwashing and you get a nation with too many zombie mooks wearing red hats that turn out to vote. Easily conned, they ignorantly vote against their own interests. Bernie Sanders and AOC have been showing that there’s a better way to solve problems and to work for every American. But it takes gratitude, selflessness, and work, not lazy golfing and whining.
Lead poisoning. Leaded gasoline started in the 1930s, but in the 50s and 60s we destroyed our public transportation and then destroyed millions of black homes to build highways through our cities. So leaded gasoline peaked in the 70s.
Oh, and boomers, who have the most lead brain damage, hold all the political power because they hold all the wealth.
Saying that boomers hold all the wealth is not correct, unless you’re including billionaires. Your comment is ageist and your blame is misplaced. Placing blame on any age group of ordinary people is both stupid and ignorant at the same time. You’re as brainwashed as those you are blaming.
You know those scam phone calls from India pretending to be Microsoft? They overwhelmly target the elderly, because their success rate with them is so high. The elderly are without question more gullible when it comes to being taken advantage of over the internet and social media.
The elderly control every branch of our government. Their gulliblity is now something that lets all of us get taken advantage of - not just themselves. They are collectively buying MAGA Hats for the country because some guys on the internet told them it would make America Great. It’s clearly not, hasn’t, and is a scam, but now our entire country has to pay for it.
Even the best, most well trained guards cannot provide protection if they are too old to lift a shield. Our entire government hasn’t been able to lift that shield in decades.
Which explains why 9-11 was “Never Forget,” but Columbine is “Always Forget” for every school shooting that’s happened since '99.
I was a Sophomore in highschool when Colombine happened, and now my kids get to see others their age die yearly in school shootings while President crime grandpa tells us it’s because of trans kids.
It’s not boomers as a generation that’s the problem, it’s that generation is just now old to provide security. At worst, they are too proud to admit their age causes issues in their ability to lead and protect this country. But it unquestionably does.
Saying that boomers hold all the wealth is not correct
They don’t hold ALL the wealth, but they do hold the most. And that allows them to contribute more to political campaigns and have an outsized effect on legislation.
Reddit/Lemmy has taught people to hate boomers. Doesn’t matter if their hate is accurate or not. They’ve been brainwashed to put all blame on boomers and call anyone they don’t like “boomer” as a “gotcha”.
You are 100% right.
In the end it’s turned into an identity for them.
Perhaps they didn’t word it eloquently, but they’re not wrong.
The elderly are the wealthiest and that affords them tremendous political power, seeing as how young people can’t afford to miss a day of work to vote.
I’m pretty sure USA being a fucking evil empire since, at least, 1898, has played a significant hand in making its population stupid bricks, at least when it comes to foreign matters and, often, domestic ones that relate to welfare.
Oh it goes back even father than that.
was going to say, the invasion of Mexico (like 1848 or so) was naked greed and caused some countries to doubt the U.S. was serious about its supposed founding ideals, lol
I moved to the Netherlands from the U.S. in July of 2022.
My opinion now? There are morons everywhere. I think more, per capita, back in the U.S. of A.
The world is a circus, but in the U.S., you have front row seats.
Why do you think America was leftist in the 1960s?
People weirdly think everyone was a hippie. Truth is most people were squares and those people still are
The Vietnam War draft was very unpopular and that War coincided with MLK’s push for equal rights. There were a lot of vocal protests. Also, you had the hippies and ‘Woodstock Nation.’ Those weren’t overtly political, but they were counterculture, which the Right took as an attack on them and their values.
The counterculture was very small. Nixon’s approval ratings were high throughout the 1960s and only take a dive when we find out about Watergate. The fact is America was never particularly left leaning.
It’s not just the US. It’s the electoral system. There are just as many frigging idiots elsewhere, but they’re less likely to gain power.
They buy into propaganda very easily, also being complacent all the time made them somewhat selfish and arrogant
America is a slavery built colony started by a bunch of bigots.
…Built on liebensraum americans got after genociding all the native americans who are now being forced to live in petting zoos.
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
That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day, because the owners of this country know the truth: It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." -George Carlin
ACH, beat me to it.
Yes. Vaguely going backwards, cherrypicking some things:
Don’t forget lead gas, and additional brain damage from covid, then taking huge doses of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine
And plastic in our brains. Plastic is this generations led.
Adding in Russian back propaganda, plus funding right wint groups as well
These are the crazy years.
I think it is because the wealthy have constantly reduced the wealth of the average American. Each individual has to spend more time working, for less pay. This deteriorates their mental and physical health, prevents socialization, saps energy, limits the amount of money, time, and travel they can spend on politics.
IMO, the “lazy” European gets about 95% of an American’s work efficiency for the time spent, but are not nearly as damaged by their work/life ratio. This lets them have far greater agency in the politics of their land. If this continues, I think the assorted cultures of Europe will be far more documented in history than their American peer. The corrosion from beating the good life out of American workers, means that there is little incentive for Americans to want their culture to survive nor spread.
Current politics are partially driven by apathy, one born from the learned helplessness that life won’t get any better. We will need French cutlery to be deployed, so that the blood of tyrants can water the tree of liberty. Just as with the French, I think America can recover from a dead end. Whether that happens…well, we will see within a decade.
Here’s hoping the good guys destroy Dogey America, and replace it something that people can take pride in.
The wealthy reduced access to education and increased economic instability for the average person.
They wanted less taxation, so they made taxation evil. Taxation paid for education and could have been used for more. They also made sure things that would stabilize the middle and lower classes were cut or never materialized - free higher education, unions/pensions, and health care. They created an environment that pitted people against each other where you “get yours” and fuck everyone else, crabs in a bucket.
I’ve seen people when I was college spend 60-80hrs working and going to school. They end up sleeping during class or become so sour because they aren’t advancing academically they drop out of their major anyways, hard to do if your working and not looking for experience in your field, and some of delusional goals too.
My theory is that it’s brain atrophy, not stupidity.
Americans are not stupid in the sense that they can’t learn and do things. They are perfectly capable to work in a bank, fix a car, fly a plane or be a doctor. But even if they do work as as accountant or a surgeon (like Ben Carson…) they rarely use brains for analytical thinking. They don’t have to. School is easy (you can just play sports), finding job used to be easy, buying home used to be easy, you were born into one political party and just followed it. You drive your huge car on endless highways surrounded by aesthetically sterile malls, eat your burgers, watch some football and that’s it. No need to analyze things so your brain kind of forgets how to do it.
Eventually the country split into the curious part that actually wants to study and understand things and the “stupid” part that just consumes propaganda and votes for Trump. As some point the “stupid” part became the majority. Now not everything is that easy for young people but I think it’s too late.
The stupid part gets more electoral college votes per capita and the smart part is stuck with a corpo middle manager party that’s resistant by design to any leftward shift (see Bernie 2016 & 2020)
I’m willing to bet one of the largest factors is the isolation we now live in. We used to have third places on every corner, we interacted with our neighbors, and public transport made us connect during commutes. We also relied on talking to people for most of our news and information and generally just were forced to be part of a community, or multiple.
Now we drive alone in a car to work, drive alone back to our house that’s isolated from others and don’t speak to neighbors, we have no third places left, and we get all our information from the internet or TV. Most people don’t have a community larger than a handful of close friends. We can’t organize and we don’t see the struggles other people are going through or help each other out. There’s no social bonds, and everyone only looks out for themselves.
I order to progress, we need to figure out how to form communities again. We need to be able to organize. This is all constructed to keep us thinking about ourselves as an individual rather than the collective us. We think about what I can do, which is pretty minor, not what we can do, which is almost anything we want.
The internet should help with this, but we need to run our own stuff and not use corpo websites
To an extent, but it isn’t a replacement. Talking to random strangers online is not the same as talking to real local people.
I was raised in a rural area. The amount of friends I made in life after forty years is…zero. Aside from a sibling, I don’t have anyone to count on. I am also too poor to afford visiting bars or other social things, so I can’t learn how to be around people, let alone establish ties. It is my belief that America’s shitty economy is the source of these issues, because a person can’t blossom if they don’t have the fiscal agency to escape a tiny bubble.
The internet let me develop as a person, but that can only go so far. I can’t afford risks, such as trying beer, an escort to lose my virginity, or travel. Poverty is a prison without walls.
That sucks. If I were you I’d try to move to somewhere more dense and it could help you out. I know, easier said than done. You can try applying for jobs online and maybe get lucky though.
Good luck out there!
It’s a typical nationalist-authoritarian pipeline that can sadly happen to any country - but it’s only now that people get to realize their islands of democracy are no exception.
You either get vigilant early on - or get to reap the consequences. This machine doesn’t show its head before it is already too late to alter this route.
The religious ones
As a westerner who lived in Asia for the past 2 decades I have unusual take on this.
Americans generally aren’t more stupid than anyone else but they have no face saving culture which acts as a useful bottleneck on social and information exchanges. Because of this Americans can easily subscribe and announce their beliefs even if theyre low effort conspiracies because they are not afraid of losing face for believing in something stupid.
Combined that with information flow that is too fast for most to even comprehend let alone keep up with means that Americans are quick to believe lies and don’t feel punished for doing so.
This is very different in face saving cultures like Asia where if you say or do something stupid you’ll have strong social consequences and even spiritual/religious ones if you’re a Buddhist.
The caveat here is why Europeans are a bit better than this?
The European countries had their own wave of fascism and dictatorship in recent centuries. Some seem to have leaned from the experience.
Wow you putting it like that:
TL;DR: Americans are stupid because they are shameless
That’s literally it. You are so right.
I cannot count the amount of times that “annoying uncle/dad” is spewing racist/sexist/uneducated bullshit and everyone in the family feels like they just have to let them say it.
We really need to normalize pointing out stupid pov’s with harmful consequences.
This also reminds me of the common experience in the US of some random white dude with a megaphone screaming “Jesus saves blablabla” in public places. Why the fuck do we deal with that shit?
“My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
- Isaac Asimov
This comment hits hard. There are a lot of ignorant people in my life that spout idiotic stuff and I brush it off, I disengage. I could take the time to listen, converse and correct but I don’t. I disengage, I brush it off as just “Oh boy, there goes crazy Joe rambling again! But generally he’s a good guy so I’ll tolerate it”. I need to start taking the time to push back and correct people I care about so they understand people are judging them when stupid things are said. Thank you!
Something people are discussing but not enough is America and the world’s refusal to diagnose and medicate mental illness.
Crazy Joe may just need meds.
Maybe part of it is the whole “greatest country on earth” stuff as well. In other words, a lack of humility
In the European countries I’ve lived in, pride like that wasn’t really encouraged. And if you’re too boastful or what not to the point of arrogance, you tend to get the stink eye
And this applies to patriotism as well. Here in Norway for example, despite us having a stronger claim for stuff like “greatest country”, very few people, if any, really feel like being “proud” of one’s own country is something that one should be doing, or it being honorable at all. The best I see is that people enjoy living here and, if they see another Norwegian out there or Norway mentioned, they just get happy to see a fellow Norwegian, just because we are relatively small
Honestly, most Norwegians I’ve met complain about Norway’s problems more often than not lmao, despite, all things considered, you can hardly find better countries to live in, except some other European ones depending on your own preferences
There really is just, no culture of like, arrogance. Something that I feel like is very different to the US with its super heavy emphasis on individual capitalistic success
Maybe that’s a large part of it as well. A consequence of American culture being so extremely individualistic
The Netherlands is tiny and has a right wing extremist government full of very, very stupid people. In fact, the Dutch version of The Onion sued the minister of foreign affairs because it’s impossible to distinguish between what she says and what they come up with.
Every country has enough gullible people to vote for a professional liar with a Hollywood face.
Especially one that has a early onset dementia
My dude I grew up in a cult in Statesia. Unserious and not allowed to question is my childhood.
Increased blood lead level in children has been correlated with decreases in intelligence, nonverbal reasoning, short-term memory, attention, reading and arithmetic ability, fine motor skills, emotional regulation, and social engagement. … The effect of lead on children’s cognitive abilities takes place at very low levels.
High blood lead levels in adults are also associated with decreases in cognitive performance and with psychiatric symptoms such as depression and anxiety.
Lead poisoning # By organ system - Wikipedia
www.co2.earth/monthly-co2 <- 427 ppm
In my experience, all the Gen X people I’ve ever met were smart and kind people. It’s often the Boomers who are total assholes.
Yeah, gen x is by far and away the best generation (saying this as a millenial).
Nice PSA for understanding the world around us.
America is at new records of stupid.
I’d argue we aren’t at a new level of stupid, we just lost our stupid originality
We are tho. Education today is not what it was in your day or your parents day. People are literally getting dumber by the generation as education continues to erode away.
Carl Sagan released his book The Demon Haunted World in 1995, where he championed the scientific method and critical thought and lamented the dumbing down of (particularly US) society, so no… It’s not new.
I will add that your premise is wrong on the 60s. The leftism in the 60s was counter-culture, it was small and it was mostly confined to the youth… It was certainly not the prevailing attitude of the country. It was not unlike the leftist groups you see in the US today - small, loud, and a reaction to the heavily conservative country they find themselves in.
Like most (all?) big counter-culture movements, most of the people who were “in” it were not really there for deep seated beliefs. It was cool, there were parties and music, sex and drugs were plentiful. Then it was time to grow up put all that stuff behind them.
I don’t mean to disparage the whole hippie thing. Lots of people really believed in it and do to this day. I just think the majority were there for the fun then got back to “real life”.
I think this time will be different because there isn’t a “normal” to go back to because it’s literally not there anymore. You can’t have a career or a family or ow. A house like you used to. The right wants tradwives but not to pay a man enough his wife can bot have to work and that’s why that shit isn’t going anywhere. Society is going to have to change a whole lot and not backwards
I grew up in a small Utah town. The only four adults I ever remember hearing admit they were wrong especially when it came to politics or science or religion were my father and three of my high school teachers.
All the rest would literally tell me that the research papers and encyclopedias I tried to cite as evidence were made up by either satan or some government deep state conspiracy. Or they’d say we can “agree to disagree” about shit like animals feeling pain and the flaws in eugenics (I wish I was joking)
Yes, they have always been this stupid. Learning requires accepting when you’re wrong and the vast majority of people I knew growing up saw that as weakness.
I thought it would be different when I got out of that place, and while living in a larger city is better, it’s not better by all that much.
To be completely fair, something like 80% of the state of Utah belongs to a cult. You don’t see as much of this in coastal states.
Grew up in southern Idaho. Yeah that’s pretty much what I experienced growing up, too!
Wasn’t just admitting wrongness that was seen as weakness, though - honestly I came to find that most empathetic, society benefitting behaviors are spun and contorted into a weakness.
Ironic to me that, at least thru my eyes, spinning stuff like that into a “weakness” indicates to me that they’re avoiding the work they’d need to put in to be better… Which, is the real weakness here!
I think a significant portion of the problems in the US stems from a lack of willingness to work on themselves, aiming to minimize their impact on those around them (and thus themselves, through societal proxy). On the contrary, people install loud ‘mufflers’ to show they don’t give a fuck. Or leave carts outside the corral. Or scream at fast food workers, display flagrant racism, refuse to wear COVID masks - whatever.
Good ol Golden Rule really would solve it all, I think.
You forgot Satan. They also like to blame anything bad on Satan’s apparently limitless power and also Satan being so unbusy that they’d devoted time and energy into stealing your shoes.
They literally mentioned that.
This doesn’t answer your question but is more of an interesting observation that fits your question. It seems bar for political leaders’ mistakes has gotten so low over the pass few decades.
In the early 90s then VP Dan Quayle misspelled potato (though apparently not 100% his fault) and he was labeled an idiot by the entire country. Bush had a lot of funny Bushisms but most are either weird, poorly worded, malapropisms, or a mix of all three.
Then you have Trump. And while there are definitely people who think he’s an idiot, it doesn’t seem as widespread of a belief as it was for Quayle or Bush. I think part of it is because Trump is far more sensitive to criticism than any president we’ve seen so he’ll go after people who say anything negative about him. But I’m sure there are other reasons as well (ex: politicized news channels, social media, technology etc)
You realize that all of that is media propaganda right? People believe and listen to what ever is put in front of them.
The reason Trump is acceptable today is because of the media.
If they wanted people to hate Trump then media would look a lot different and you wouldn’t have Fox News pushing bullshit ideas.
I didn’t want to go into all factors that lead to this observation because that would take too long and require more research on my part. Fear of retaliation (and desire for power) is more an explanation of at least why members of his own party won’t criticize him.
The comments are very interesting. I’m just an outsider looking in but isn’t today’s political climate in the US more of a result of more democratic voters having lost so much faith in the democratic party that the majority just stopped voting? Rather than more people turning Republican? After Biden their downfall became so apparent (does anyone best Biden in incompetence? The man could barely string words together) and Kamala just seemed like a reflection of that.
Pro-business/anti-regulation types teamed up with the anti-abortion types around 50 years ago in order to get votes for their unpopular ideas, then they did everything they could to conflate the two ideologies to where Christians now think Jesus was a capitalist instead of anything that’s in the bible.
Tl;Dr: propaganda.
ProfHillbilly@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I grew up in WNC and the rural people are really stupid and myopic in their views. This makes people easy to manipulate through religion. I have there relatives and high school peers to prove it. These people are deeply uncurious. While they are screaming about being a free thinker and not being woke, they are being led around by their noses by their preachers and deacons.