[deleted]
Thought there were always jokes about it
[deleted]
Submitted 1 year ago by Lawdoggo@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
jlyndby@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Madison420@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Bro wall e is based on the premise Americans are fat lazy and stupid and somehow bumble into taking over the world with our bullshit.
Bloomcole@lemm.ee 1 year ago
LOL
As if those sweaty fatfucks on their mobility scooters aren’t the smelly ones.
And how do their millions of homeless and junkies smell?
American copey0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I’m confused who is talking about scent?
PixellatedDave@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s always about the money.
Can’t you see It all makes sense Expressed in dollars and cents Pounds shillings and pence Can’t you see It all makes perfect sense
-Roger Waters
FollyDolly@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Targeted, systematic attacks on education, and a robust propaganda networks ran by billionaires.
Corporate_Hippie@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Absolutely. But also something that is not mentioned enough is American anti-intellectualism. Its a culture where its been completely normalized to have opinions on things based on nothing but a feeling or a youtube video, and then regard those views as equal to analysis that come from experts that have studied their whole lives on the matter.
Not everyone gets to be well educated but it takes a special kind of arrogance to be uninformed and proud.
Necroscope0@lemm.ee 1 year ago
This is present on both sides. So many on the left apparently think that burning Tesla’s owned by random people who bought them way before Elon revealed himself to be a Nazi cunt is going to do something other than drive undecided people to the MAGAts that it blows my mind. Looks like a lot of the left agrees with Elon about empathy being weakness because they have none here. Not understanding how regular/ undecided people feel about having their car burnt up and thinking they are going to do anything but get pissed and join the other side is about as unempathetic as it gets. Musk would be proud of them. I just hope it is a vocal minority doing it and agreeing with it and that they are caught and arrested before they can damage the anti MAGA cause too much.
Guns0rWeD13@lemmy.world 1 year ago
yes, this plus phones. and it’s not just the right. leftists have become detached from reality too. they live in a insulated bubble of anime and very elementary critical thinking.
skitazd@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Unregulated food causing them to lose chromosomes
satans_methpipe@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No child left behind + Unregulated social media + 60 years of social and economic regression in rural areas = USA #1. !!!??
PlausibleDupont@jlai.lu 1 year ago
Here in Europe we used to think Americans were stupid.
And it’s not like it’s prejudice from people never leaving their hometown. Nope, actually TV shows and movies make Americans look way smarter than they are.
Nope, the conclusion comes from people that met real Americans, either in Europe or in the US.
Last time I saw an American in Paris he was asking for ketchup on top of his duck breast. The most barbaric thing I’ve seen in a while 😂
tranceFusion@lemm.ee 1 year ago
[deleted]Obi@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Man at least get your stereotypes right, the squirrel eaters are in Québec, we barely have them in Europe.
Stegget@lemmy.world 1 year ago
FWIW I feel the same way about people putting A1 on their steak.
Bloomcole@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Yes I don’t know what’s worse, their stupidity or their total lack of taste and style.
Peasantskreskin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Of all the ways to quantify stupidity you could have chosen… and thats what you went with huh.
Bloomcole@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I get his point.
What bothers me more than their stupidity is their boorishness and vulgarity of which they are totally unaware of.
kepix@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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
andros_rex@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Dont forget the failure of the Business Plot. Which side of the war would those fuckers be on?
(Fun fact: Prescott Bush, Dubya’s grandfather might have been involved too - it’s debatable but the argument against it is that he was too busy with Nazis abroad to be helping them here….)
nibble4bits@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I don’t fucking get the religious right in my country, all I can say is they’re so fucking gullible by the corporate mainstream media, facts and hit them in the fucking face and they’ll always move the goalposts. They form an opinion and never be swayed by it, despite the strong evidence against it. They picked a guy who cheated on every wife he has, a criminal past, massive security clearance violations, is the most un-christlike in behaviors… And they excuse it all because they don’t like being told they can’t do things that are harmful to ourselves, or they only like receiving socialism but don’t like the responsibility of paying into it. They’re selfish as fuck, and I’m sick of it.
AidsKitty@lemmy.world 1 year ago
America had an election and made its choice. Democrats want to transform America into Europe 2.0 but most Americans do not want that. We have a binary political system so that only leaves one other choice. It is what it is.
krydret_ismaskine@feddit.dk 1 year ago
That’s wildly misrepresenting the mainline Dem platform.
Bernie Sanders would be a centrist or social democrat in a general European perspective and most Dems are to the right of that, in some cases very much so.
Teppichbrand@feddit.org 1 year ago
“My Chancellor says we should not indulge in superficial anti-Americanism now, but I assure you: Mine is not superficial at all.”
kerntucky@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Thanks for that quote.
I wanted to know who said that so I looked it up and here’s the full quote with attribution:
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has several times made statements to the effect that we Europeans should not cultivate a superficial anti-Americanism.
But mine isn’t superficial at all.
Personally I have nothing against the US itself - it’s a beautiful country - it’s the people who live there that are the problem.
I guess you could say it’s the same thing with Bavaria.
– Volker Pispers, a German kabarett artist who is well known for his political satire.
Teppichbrand@feddit.org 1 year ago
Impressive, thanks! I’ve cited this from my memory for at least a decade. I used to listen to him when I went to sleep. :)
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Probably? I haven’t been very impressed with American adult society since I was in high school witnessing how easily they followed Bush II into war.
krakenfury@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
This is not about intelligence. People, in general, are really fucking smart. Think of the dumbest person you know, who is not cognitively disabled. I’d bet they are intelligent enough to hold down a job and live a meaningful life. Of all the things I’ve seen that hold people back, lack of intelligence doesn’t even rank.
I think high levels of bias are to blame. Current media and culture encourage the embrace of bias because it makes people easier to sell to; more suggestible to marketing. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if your navel feels good when someone sings your tune, you’ll believe whatever they tell you. Especially if you aren’t even making an attempt to understand your bias tendencies.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 year ago
Here’s an honest response.
Grew up in South Florida. Shit was pretty liberal back then. Moved to a much more “conservative” state and found the same brain drain happening. At first it was fairly liberal, but has become less so.
Maybe we deserve it. Maybe we don’t.
The one thing I know is not to rely on your fellow human to do what is right.
MellowYellow13@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You mean fellow American, not human.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 year ago
I don’t think being a shitty person is a uniquely American thing. See “brexit” for more info.
rational_lib@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Miss Cleo was big in the 90s. And she wasn’t even the dumbest one. Americans have always believed in stupid bullshit. The CIA used to hire psychics too. Go back to the 1920s, and Americans pretty much took it for granted that fairies are real.
What’s changed recently is that the media went from being a mostly curated place where completely lunacy was hard to find, to a right wing clown show led by con artists. And don’t underestimate the degree to which this was done deliberately - Elon buying Twitter was a pretty clear example of the billionaire mafia taking a platform that was sort of trying to be more attached to reality and making it a lot dumber and more right wing.
blakemiller@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Advantageous geography has allowed the US to fall upward in success throughout its existence. It’s as simple as that, no joke. By sitting on a mountain of natural resources and having no formidable enemies in the western hemisphere, the US was the default player to take center stage post WW2. Europe was decimated and America funded the war. Bam, the US gets success in spite of its thoroughly racist and regressive culture. Their position (and hubris) became too entrenched for there to ever be a legitimate contender. We might get to witness a changing of the guard now though, we’ll see how much damage 47 does.
FDR era is an incredible circumstance though. The past North’s failure to reconstruct the South led to all kinds of strategic chess moves that ultimately saw the D and R parties swap. The liberals had to put aside the racism problems for a bit so they could unfuck the economy. It was probably the best that the progressives could have hoped to achieve given their challenges.
All said as an American. So we’re not all morons. But it’s a sticky, uphill battle. I’m not sure if it’s fixable without a big change to the world order. Thanks for the question!
yeather@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
The smarter citizens are patriotic enough to try ans stick through and fix the mess, while the stupid Americans are patriotic to the point of messing it up again.
conicalscientist@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There was definitely a time when people were smarter. I read a comment on r/xennials that stuck with me. They were lamenting the loss of a the culture of their youth. I’m not sure I can rephrase it as well as they said it.
Basically they were describing how it used to be about how we questioned things. Like the show The X-Files. It was about seeking the truth. They noted how that show was reflective of how reality was. There was this common mindset that the answers are out there. That we can work together even to seek the answers and we will find them inevitably.
You see that doesn’t make much sense in 2025 because everyone has the answer to anything and everything. Except it’s their own answer. Not the answer. More than ever their answer is one which is derived from their internet / social media bubble.
There is no longer some big unknown out there full of mysteries to unravel. Not anymore. The zeitgeist right now is that I have my own world view and that’s the one. I know how the system works. I know the way. It’s the way I see the world. So why doesn’t everyone else come join my world view??? Are they stupid?
In the past we didn’t know everything. Nobody knew anything. Nobody had any illusion that they did. Nor could they whip out their pocket rectangle and find answers immediately.
In the past people had to be more open minded. They had to be honest about not knowing. Without modern media they had to be seekers of knowledge. As opposed to over confident purveyors relying on a quick internet search (these days a simple GPT query). The modern zeitgeist is one where everybody talks. Nobody listens. 8 billion deaf ears listening and learning nothing. Just waiting for their turn to talk. Everyone learned everything and they’re so damn sure of it.
Stupid people think they know it all. Smarter people are unsure of what they know. Of course there were stupid people before. But they knew they were stupid. Today the stupids can mask it by repeating words from the podcast, the tiktoks, the youtube videos they just watched.
PurpleSkull@lemm.ee 1 year ago
So our technological progress has brutally outgrown our cultural one. I think you’re right.
Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There was a time when computers were designed to grow our culture:
www.quora.com/…/Harri-K-Hiltunenkrydret_ismaskine@feddit.dk 1 year ago
That’s exactly it. Our biases and community instincts (for lack of a better word) can’t keep up with the firehose of information and direct communication with so many people and from so many sources.
In the past, small societies sort of kept things in check. You knew the people around you and everyone sort of found a common ground to share. Like when I was a kid in the countryside, I made friends with the other kids on our road because of proximity, not because we had tons in common. But we became friends despite being different and gained new experiences and built common ground through that. We learned to compromise and solve differences or issues.
Today you can find community anywhere online, so you’re less likely to have your “rough edges” smoothed out a bit.
Not that life in small societies is perfect, Svante described the Jantelov for a good reason, some small villages communities can get very insular, xenophobic and oppressive of anyone slightly off from the standard mold.
But I do think our range and speed of communication has outpaced our instincts and reference frames.
swelter_spark@reddthat.com 1 year ago
This is very insightful.
DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin
Montreal_Metro@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
They were pretty stupid back in the 90s and got worst over time. Obviously this is a generalization as there are some non-stupids too but judging by the election results they seem to be the minority.
el_bhm@lemm.ee 1 year ago
What had happened is nothing new.
Thing is, USA never had a pure dictatorship. Or were affected by imperialism. People in Europe take to the streets far faster because there are generations that remember the boot of russia. Or were under imperialist rule. See again russia and/or nazi germany.
And while what had happened is nothing new, propaganda fuel hate circle had happened in such a short timespan and force humans has never seen before.
Further more. Explaining lies takes way longer and much more effort than spreading them around.
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Idk I just think the far reich feel unfettered now. They don’t fear anything so it may seem that everybody is shitty but they’re just louder than they were.
SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Yes. Am Americans, can confirm.
Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yes and forgetful as well. Utterly unable to learn from history since the history they are taught is whitewashed.
jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 year ago
You’re getting confused by algorithms that promote stupid things to make money. It is not a valid representation of the population.
Also the US just got coup’d. The fascists in charge dont have popular support.
InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The south was always this racist, they were just isolated.
When social media unleashed their filth upon the nation the billionaires realized they had the ultimate weapon: a political bloc that voted purely on emotion, especially hate.
missandry351@lemmings.world 1 year ago
Add internet to fuel the fire
GaMEChld@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“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
aaron@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Post-modernism laid the groundwork for an ‘I have my facts and you have yours’ culture. Or call it ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’. Community has been replaced by an atomised screen time facing our individual echo chambers. Decades of neoliberalism has impoverished swathes of the population, materially and intellectually. There are many chickens coming home to roost.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Post-modernism laid the groundwork for an ‘I have my facts and you have yours’ culture.
I feel like this is a common regressive take. The Right/anti intellectualist movement understood postmodernism as giving them the right to claim that facts don’t matter.
Post modernism itself is a way of interrogating frameworks we take for granted. It’s not saying “facts don’t matter,” it’s saying “how do we know those are facts”? There are valid questions to ask about science as a way of knowing - which epistemological frameworks we take at face value, and if we really can. Lolita is a postmodernist work, because it’s asking you to interrogate what a novel means (in the context of an unreliable narrator - HH is lying to you, but he isn’t real. what does that mean about what is being described in a novel? Is a novel a window into a different universe which has a reality to be described?)
The Right’s unreality is more of a Romantic one - none of those fuckers are reading Derrida or Deleuze. It’s more reality to sexual insecurities and the death drive. I’m not a Freudian but I look at anti intellectuals and see deep sexual confusion and fear. If “male” and “female” are permeable categories, how does someone who defines their existence solely by their white masculinity going to police the boundaries of their own identity?
orcrist@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I don’t think postmodernism had much to do with it. Go ask your average MAGA racist if they even know what that term means and they’ll shrug their shoulders. Similarly, the research does not show that your echo chamber theory holds water, and in fact it suggests the opposite. In the days before the world wide web, people were actually stuck in echo chambers, that being the communities where they lived.
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The requirements for justice includes truth (objective facts of reality not merely opinion or belief or rumors) for accountability, attacking education prevents an ability to evaluate if something presented confidently as truth is truth. It’s a fast track to corruption and injustice.
Putin, Trump, Erdogan, etc style of extreme right wing populist propaganda is to attack truth and prevent justice by weaponizing ignorance. They’re spreading a firehouse of distracting lies, for example staged attacks against people representing their beliefs on facebook and twitter, to a public who is at least in part unable or unwilling to critically evaluate facts of reality from propaganda lies. Another more general example is if you’re not aware of confirmation bias and how it’s used and works due to a lack of education you are going to be much more susceptible to it’s effects when used.
People aren’t necessarily getting dumber other than some temporary dips due to toxic environmental things like lead in fuel or maybe some effects of toxicity we’re not aware of yet, It’s just the people who were already susceptible to fascist rhetoric & con artists are being indoctrinated against education as either unnecessary or harmful, which makes them easier to continue to mass propagandize to with more methods that have fewer rules platforms need to follow compared to older mass media propaganda like newspapers or network TV news.
Glide@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Yes.
dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee 1 year ago
This sub has 1 rule: no stupid-questions.
melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
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.
nylo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
who is the Nazi that was almost president instead of FDR?
melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
lindberg; guy who famously killed his own baby. apparently pretty good at planes.
Bloomcole@lemm.ee 1 year ago
yes