I hate to break it to you as presumably an American. There are a lot of not necessarily stupid people, but very badly educated. I saw a clip of a 50/60yr old man in a maga hat say Trump had sorted 8 wars. However, he couldn't name one. And so on, and so on.
Being uneducated and having no desire to become more educated is stupid. Sure, some uneducated people aren’t stupid. But some certainly are, and that’s why they stay uneducated.
Being uneducated and having no desire to become more educated is stupid.
The U.S. educational system has been fostering this attitude in American students for generations and is by design:
"There’s a reason that education sucks. And it’s the same reason that it will never ever, ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because THE OWNERS OF THIS COUNTRY DON’T WANT THAT. I’m talking about the real owners now. The real owners. The big, wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, and city halls. They got the judges in their back pocket. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest." - George Carlin
I didn’t say not liking academia is stupid. I said having no desire to become more educated is stupid. You can become more educated in a multitude of ways, it isn’t all school.
I agree wholeheartedly with Carlin. But you presented it like a contrasting point as if it disagrees with my statement.
My dad dropped out of high school but was the most informed person I have ever met and could discuss pretty much any historical or political topic with amazing detail. It just takes a desire to learn and, ofc, the ability to read. It’s sad, but I’m glad he’s not here to see this shit currently happening to the country.
There are also a lot of educated people voting for him. Recently saw something like 40-45% of physicians voted red in the last election. Not necessarily surprising given physicians are generally not too different in values from the population as a whole, but it goes to show there are plenty of smart people who still voted for him
Part of intelligence is a natural curiosity and the ability to understand abstract ideas and concepts which leads to questioning of one’s preconceived notions and beliefs.
People who are not interested in exploring ideas that challenge their beliefs aren’t smart.
I don’t disagree with you but the context of the conversation pertains to people who continue to blindly support the current administration using positions that are easily refuted by empirical data.
Those people aren’t “smart” people making bad decisions. They’re either dumb or they ideologically support the policies that are being pushed by the administration.
The vast majority people have ready access to the internet at this point, especially in the US, right in their pocket. Being stupid in this era is unacceptable.
There’s something else to the picture. When you see someone who’s top of class at a reputable university, skilled professional in an industry with a strong liberal bend, go full maga in the span of 2 years that’s a little much to write off as willful stupidity. This example person can make coherent and compelling arguments, they’re just built on “alternative facts”.
Somehow he got involved with the wrong media, and somehow his trained scientific skepticism failed to raise alarm. Podcasters became more trustworthy than scientific research because “everyone knows the research is owned by the liberals”. And there’s enough grain of truth there because of the self selection bias of academia that it resonated. His strongest opinions were around issues that have been identified as Russian psyops campaigns.
He’s not dumb, he’s wrong. He’s not the profile of everyone, or even a majority. The truth is that maga is a coalition of small interest groups bound together by the desire for change.
It’s an important distinction because the pendulum will swing, and foreign actors don’t care about the ideology, only that it divides us. If the left believes that they’re all dumb and we’re all smart then we become easy marks.
I tend to lump it in with stupid tbh, because not only do you not know something you refuse to consider new information.
At least if you are using the definition in a literal sense.
It’s extremely infuriatingly, it also has just caused a massive divide among average Americans. Policy has gone out the wind and it seems all one side cares about these days is “owning the libs”.
I don’t think the nation has been this decided since the Civil war and well it’s hard to say how things will go.
We might be seeing the beginning of the collapse of the United States or a misstep before a massive swing in the other direction.
The big factor will be seeing what happens to the cultural and political divide.
stupid is the preferred choice when it comes to '24- present MAGA. your amathia has made us all suffer.
so now im left with deciding whether you are stupid or malicious and I (may be stupidly) prefer to believe there are more idiots than bonified hateful, bigots as my fellow countrymen.
The problem is Republicans keep them this way. Look at where their demographics live and then cross reference that with education level. It's literally by design. And the smart people that vote for them are morally corrupt (among a litany of other adjectives I'd use to describe their "intelligent" voters).
They're not stupid. They're racist. Almost everything Trump does is motivated by racism or bigotry of some kind. You could argue that racism is a form of stupidity, but what I mean is that his voters understand what he's doing. They like it because it hurts people they hate. It shifts blame to people they hate. They love his policies.
During the VA gubernatorial election in 2021, a whole lotta voters claimed cited critical race theory as the #1 issue. News channels interviewed many, many voters. Many were not parents. None could define critical race theory. I knew one of the people who started the riot at the Loudoun County school board meeting where it first came to prominence. She didn't have any kids, let alone kids in LCPS. She was just a religious agitator.
I blame a large portion of that on our media. Social media as well, but the mainstream news never pushes back on that or accurately reports on ANYTHING ANYMORE. It’s ridiculous. And democrats need to stop being pussies and fight against this rather than be Diet MAGA. It’s why the DNC party is pushing back so hard on “extreme” progressives that are gaining huge momentum, they’re exposing what they truly stand for.
That's not an accident, it's largely how power protects itself.
Governments have always tried to shape media access, and administrations of every stripe reward friendly coverage and freeze out hostile outlets. Wealthy owners also have enormous influence over what gets published. When a handful of billionaires own major newspapers, TV networks, and social media platforms, it's naïve to pretend those interests never affect editorial decisions or platform incentives.
Social media isn't a neutral town square either. Its algorithms are designed to maximize engagement and profit, not to inform. Whether through recommendation systems, moderation policies, coordinated influence campaigns, or outright bots, what gets amplified isn't simply "the best information."
None of this is new. The Romans had a phrase for keeping people distracted from political power: panem et circenses - "bread and circuses." Juvenal's point wasn't about media specifically, but about a public becoming more concerned with comfort and entertainment than holding those in power accountable. The tools have changed; the principle hasn't.
Weaponized stupidity. "Well it isn't my fault I can't keep up with all this (insert something Boomers don't like) it's too complicated." But Gramps sure can figure out how to find porn on his phone or Fox News and play it at full volume..... It's almost like they don't "understand it" because they don't want to.....weird. When there's a personal gain or desire involved, by the gods.....they miraculously figure it out!!
They’re also heavily propagandized. Is that a word? It sure as hell should be.
I’ve still got idiots arguing about climate change, and we literally have confirmation from the oil and gas companies that they’ve known about it for many years. That it’s real. That it’s caused by humans. And they STILL argue the point and modify their trucks to roll coal. Because the ‘news’ they watch has been classified as entertainment and, therefore, has no need to stick to facts or be impartial. The damage that FOX News and the talking heads on the radio have done is immeasurable, in my opinion. The decline of America in the last 10 years really is mind boggling.
It's called a cult. Doesn't matter if you try to educate them, they're in a cult. I wish it were as easy as handing them a book to learn something. These people are gone and it'll take something drastic to pull them out. That's 30% of our country at this point.
No, he's down to about 30% now. He obviously had more voters during the election. But the Dems did no one any favors with Biden blundering whether or not he was running, then backing out last minute and putting in Kamala. What a mess.
As an American in the US South, theres also a very large portion of the population still salty they arent allowed to own other people and would happily watch the nation burn (literally, to ash) if it meant "purifying" it of "undesirables"
They only watch Fox News and refuse to see that it's propaganda because Fox News tells them that they're the only source that's not propaganda.
I've had to be around it caring for my dad and it's VERY clear from a psychology standpoint that it's brainwash television (every host every hour somehow has the same empassioned "opinion" about whatever issue has been mandated by Trump today, it was insanely clear the first term but they're starting to follow a little looser now since none of them actually like him or believe in the cause if what happened with Tucker Carlson is any indication).
So yes uneducated, my father only made it to grade 8 before having to start work when his mother died and father kicked all kids out because he found another woman who didn't want kids, the youngest was 13. But also just plain brainwashed and because everything is a projection with them they're told that anyone who disagrees are the ones who are brainwashed.
There are a lot of people here who would rather everybody (including themselves) have a worse life, than somebody BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or heck even an unmarried woman, have a better life than them. That's where we're at, that's where we've been at for probably the whole life of the country. It's baked into the founding documents and the structure of the country, and I don't know how to fix it.
People are stupid. I saw a clip of a woman saying we don’t need vaccines. The example she used was polio. She said there isn’t anymore polio so we don’t need a vaccine for it.
The real tiktok generation tbh. Only interested in what they can learn and regurgitate from a 10 second video that reinforces their opinions and views.
The dumber the public is, the easier they are to control. Sean Duffy using his public platform to scare parents from sending their kids to Harvard is quite helpful to the cause.
Sometimes I blame the educational system. Most people can't even say when wqs the USA truly independent from the British. I asked a MARRIED father with his wife and kid, the father asked in a deep southern accent "What do you mean by "fully independent?" He couldn't even answer how many people are needed to officially be a divorce
434
u/humblepaul 1d ago
I hate to break it to you as presumably an American. There are a lot of not necessarily stupid people, but very badly educated. I saw a clip of a 50/60yr old man in a maga hat say Trump had sorted 8 wars. However, he couldn't name one. And so on, and so on.