In view of the overall political situation, is it fair to state that America is dumbing down?
Or is such an impression merely typical old folks nostalgia for the “good old days”?
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America has been dumbing down for a generation, maybe two.
What could anybody expect, politically, after that?
Parts of it are dumbing down.
There is still a large, mostly secular, well-educated subset of Americans that are able to think and act for themselves.
The group that is dumbing down America is the uneducated, largely right-wing religious, intellectually incurious crowd that simply accepts anything that an authoritarian tells them.
I don’t see any evidence of a decline in the intelligence of the population of the U.S. It’s also difficult to use the word “intelligence” without defining it in some way.
No, the average person knows more about more things than ever.
The problem is we’re not used to (and maybe not made for) this much information, people cope in different ways. Some question everything, some believe everything, but most fall somewhere in the middle.
Deciding what information to consume and trust has become a life defining decision, but it’s given the same weight as what to order for lunch.
We’re smarter than ever, but easy to lead and unwilling or unable to verify as quickly as we consume.
Well, saying yes or no would be a pretty dumbed-down kind of answer, compared to the fullness of the situation.
Compare the language and thinking of Jimmy Carter or Dwight Eisenhower or FDR to the thoughtless illiterate should-be-in-prison “grab-‘em-by-the-pussy” clown who was given the now-called “POTUS” seat last year.
Or listen to a good Martin Luther King speech.
Listen to recordings of the above people talking and reading speeches, and listen not just to how thoughtful, resonating and sense-making what they have to say is, but that they actually seem to fundamentally understand what they’re saying. Contrast that with practically any modern American politicians.
And/or try a similar exercise with the news media. Certainly the television news media is a corporate-dictated retarded ape circus compared to what it was like 40 years ago. Much of the print journalism is that way, too. And not only is it dumber, but it’s often clearly slanted or misleading or false or makes no attempt to cite its evidence for its statements.
Not that there wasn’t plenty of stupidity and drivel and lame speechmaking in the past. There was, but now there’s a pretty bleak desert, particularly in the US media.
Fortunately, there are also many intelligent and new things being said and understood, so there is much more going on than just mental decay, even though it can often feel that way when looking at conspicuous examples.
Look who you guys elected, need I say more?
The Flynn Effect says that intelligence in industrialized nations has been steadily increasing since 1930.
“In view of the political situation?” Uh. Obvious yes.
If that is what we are going to judge the country by, we’re ⅓ retarded.
Our POTUS talks to that third, just like they need to be spoken to. Small words. Short sentences. @Zaku hits it on the head. I would add, compare Trump’s speeches, to a grade school teacher’s (not a smart one.) He knows his audience. They’re just too stupid to know that they are being talked down to, and manipulated.
This country has no care for education. The leaders clearly want a easily led flock of sheep….
I don’t think the dumbing down has had anything to do with the current political clime at all. It has been going on for way too long. I saw an eighth grade graduation test from the 30’s. It was a test that I would say many of today’s high school seniors would struggle with. And I have seen too many shows where the contestants cannot answer, in my mind, some of what I consider basic knowledge. And we as a society glorify these things.
The dumb ones are just making more noise than they used to and it is affecting some other people. People who wouldn’t give a hoot about politics before are choosing sides based on how much noise one side makes, and they they throw their stupid 2 cents in.
With Trump as president America has sunk to depths I could not have imagined a year or two ago. America can’t dumb down any further.
^Sad, but possible. The idiots breed faster than most of the rest of us.
It has been for years. What else is new??
I’d be interested to know which of us are native to the US.
<- born in raised in the U.S.
Thanks. And you’re defending us. So am I. I wonder if the people who are claiming that we’re all just getting stupid are all non-native to America.
@Dutchess_III – I have faith in the younger generations. If more of them had voted in the Dem primary than the > 45 crowd, we likely wouldn’t have ended up with Trump.
Anyway, people always like to think things are getting worse or people are getting less-intelligent. But from what I can tell, the opposite is true.
Personally, my 15-year-old daughter is (and has been for years) smarter than I’ll ever be.
My son is smarter than me too. I always tell him that was never the plan! He said, “I know what you mean.”
I said, “Zoey?” (His 3 year old daughter.)
He said, ” Yeah.
Bernie got him all fired up to vote. But when Bernie ended up out, my son dropped out too. He didn’t vote. I know of several young people who reacted the exact same way.
Maybe having experienced Trump will change all of that come 2020.
@Dutchess_III: “Bernie got him all fired up to vote. But when Bernie ended up out, my son dropped out too. He didn’t vote. I know of several young people who reacted the exact same way.”
Yep. Close to 50% of the voting population are so disillusioned with the Dems and Repubs that they don’t vote (higher in smaller elections). So, when the Dem party, which has been in decline, threw away an entire generation of motivated voters who were brought into the whole thing by the possibility of real change in the Dem party. They flushed it all away and ran Clinton. I repeat, they ran Hillary Clinton. Good luck trying to get people back.
But who knows what will happen. Socialism is no longer a bad word for the younger generation, and there are card-carrying socialists winning down ballot tickets. This does give me hope. Third parties are doomed in this country (for now), so I’m hoping there is another chance to change the Dem party from within. It may take some years, however.
The Democratic party is too heavily vested in the system that is. And unlike the Republican party, the Democrats, though otherwise ineffectual, do have the juice to quelch any revolt. They stole the nomination from Bernie. The Republicans couldn’t pull it off with Trump.
I’m an American. I even have a touch of native American in me. And I unquestionably believe that the country is dumbing down. I’m glad some of you know smart kids. I know a lot of kids that are worrisome in their education, and awareness.
Oh, I know some too. That one grown woman who had never heard of the Holocaust….but there were dumb people when we were growing up too, but you just didn’t hear much from them. If you didn’t like what they were saying, you just went somewhere else. I also think they kind of knew they weren’t very bright.
Now a days you can’t get away from them and thanks to mass media they all band together and pat each other on the back and give themselves the idea that they’re smart.
But I know a lot of smart, savvy kids too. I raised 3 of them.
^The way the world is, gives more of a voice to the stupid.
Think of Trump on twitter, “The empty can rattles the most.”...
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