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No Stupid Questions @lemmy.world
Impleader @lemmy.world

Have Americans always been this stupid?

Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.

That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”

Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?

268 comments

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country?

    The prevailing economic wisdom after WWII was Keynesianism, which says that the government should increase government spending when unemployment is high and decrease it when inflation is high. What happened in the 70's and 80's was that the economy started experiencing both high unemployment and high inflation at the same time, "shrinkflation," which wasn't supposed to happen according to Keynesianism, and which it had no real response to. The reason it was happening (at least from a Marxist perspective) was that the US had already developed in the ways that saw the highest returns, and there simply wasn't as much new ground to cover - this is what's meant by "the tendency of the rate of profit to fall." Regardless, the government was faced with a decision of which problem to focus on between unemployment and inflation - and it chose inflation.

    The phenomenon of shrinkflation started under Nixon, who attempted to fight it with price controls and taking us off the gold standard, which was perhaps the most anyone ever did. Ford had no idea what he was doing and just asked people to spend less.

    And then we got Carter, and Carter does not get nearly enough hate for his role in this. Carter chose to confront inflation rather than unemployment, the real beginning of "supply side economics" that Reagan would take further. Carter's whole deal was "restoring the dignity of the office" after Watergate and his focus was on individual morality. His message was essentially, you're going to have less purchasing power, but it's ok because we can seek fulfillment in other ways, outside of the economic sphere. He marked the transformation of the Democratic party away from representing the interests of labor and towards the beast that it's become today, with it's obsession over norms and procedure and technocracy.

    The result of Carter's messaging and policy was one of the greatest blowout losses in history against Ronald Reagan. Reagan would do all the same things as Carter, but he at least had the decency to lie about it. He focused on how much more you'd be able to afford with cheaper goods, conveniently ignoring the fact that with lower wages, purchasing power would actually decrease. However, thanks to the Democratic party completely abandoning labor and the common people, there was no real pushback against this, there was no alternative explanation or solution or criticism of the broad direction of policy. In fact, economic policy was moved out of the sphere of democratic accountability altogether by leaving it to the Federal Reserve to set interest rates. Instead, the culture war kicked off and that's what elections would be about from then on.

    Why did the Democratic party abandon unions? Because the unions like the AFL/CIO stripped themselves of power and radicalism by purging communists during the Red Scare. The Carter administration didn't view labor vs capital in terms of the fundamental struggle of society but as just another set of competing interest groups and lobbyists, which is honestly pretty much how the unions saw themselves and wanted to be seen anyway.

    So what happens when more and more important questions are taken out of the hands of the voters, who then watch conditions gradually decline? Well, the voters get mad about declining conditions - and at the same time, get dumber from not being engaged in any important questions. There's a sense that we can just fuck around and do whatever because our actions don't have consequences, because most of the time what we say and believe seems to have no real effect on policy anyway. Nobody gets to vote on whether or not to keep arming Israel and bombing Yemen or on whether to raise or lower interest rates or anything like that - the only thing we get to vote on is stuff like whether trans women can play sports.

    Trump's popularity is very easy to understand in that context - he is a rebellion against that declining status quo and a desperate attempt to reassert the power of elected officials over technocratic institutions. Of course, since the left has been purged and is devoid of power, this rebellion can only come from the right. A similar thing happened in Iran (which Carter also fucked up btw but that's not important right now), where after being installed by the CIA, the shah hunted down and exterminated everyone on the left, and then conditions declined and people wanted change, only that change had to come from the right because the left was powerless. And if the American left can't materialize and offer an alternative vision, both to Trump and, more importantly, to the failed bipartisan status quo that existed before him, then we're headed towards the same future.

  • Are we more stupid than we used to be? Yeah. But I'd use the word ignorant instead. It's a bit more accurate. Ignorance is chosen, and that's what our current epidemic of stupidity is. Chosen.

    There have always been a lot of ignorant people, but now, with social media, those people have platforms to infect others with their ignorance. Also, in my own lifetime, I've witnessed a shift from ignorant people still being able to set aside partisan politics to condemn obviously bad actors or decisions to 100% doubling down on partisan politics no matter how bad the person or action is.

    I've definitely FELT this increase in willful ignorance over the course of my life living in this country. People in my own life choosing to believe things they absolutely would not have believed a couple decades ago. People not understanding super basic concepts.

    I think there are other factors than just bad actors spreading ignorance on social media. I think a lot of it has to do with simple distractions. The modern world has so many. A lot of the people I know don't even read books. Like, they simply don't read. If I ask them what book they read last they have to concentrate because it was multiple years ago. That's fucking crazy. Instead of picking up a book they're watching Real Wives of Whatever. Getting involved in some wealthy person's 1st world problems, instead of, you know, learning something.

    We're entering an age of concentrated ignorance and, unfortunately, that's very unlikely to end anytime soon. And the stakes are higher than ever for something like that to happen because we possess greater power to decimate this planet than we used to. Through pollution or braindead child-like politicians who can wage war or launch nukes.

    It takes a lot less effort to allow things to keep going the way they are than it does to turn things around and responsibly educate the masses. So we're probably going to continue spiraling.

    Things are going to get dark. Our quality of life will decline.

  • leaded gasoline was fun, huh?

    EDIT:

    Someone else suggested it first, oops. Still, the video I linked is a fun deep-dive. I had no idea leaded gasoline is still used in small airplanes.

    • I don’t think he represented leaded fuel in aviation correctly, although he wasn’t wrong. It’s an economic and legal issue

      It’s important to understand this is propeller planes only: jets and turboprops always used jet fuel with no lead. The octane benefits to piston engines really don’t apply to turbines so it was never a concern. However commercial aviation is almost entirely turbines. The most active, profitable and by far the largest part of the industry never had a problem.

      Those piston engined propeller planes though… that entire industry was destroyed by litigation and lack of economies of scale in the 1970s. Not only is this a small part of the industry with less profit, not only was the industry mostly destroyed, but now most of those airplanes in active use are old. Very old. They keep flying much longer than for example a car, and there are very few aircraft produced every year. Also note the small volume of fuel used, and lead contamination means this has few refiners and limited distribution: there’s not much profit

      So there have been attempts to develop an unleaded fuel for decades, but why does it never happen? Everyone seems to support the idea. Economic and legal. To support a new fuel, engines potentially need to be modified, aircraft performance certified, and someone needs to take legal responsibility for any problems. Who’s that going to be?

      • there’s so little (relatively) fuel used that refineries could never become profitable developing a new fuel, could never earn enough to offset liability, could never spend the time and legal effort to get a new fuel approved
      • Even if there was an approved fuel, and it was available, and the remaining manufacturers took full legal responsibility, and all new aircraft were certified for that fuel, there are so few aircraft manufactured that it would take centuries to replace the fleet
      • Most of the aircraft fleet is orphaned: theirs is no manufacturer. There’s only an owner and a mechanic, and even if there was an approved fuel and it were available, and there were known engine modifications they could make, there’s no way they could re-certify the aircraft with a new fuel nor any way they could cover the legal part
      • Most of the fleet has been privately owned for many decades. We have a general legal principal that things are “grandfathered” to when they are first sold. For example, building codes change every year but your house is still ok because it’s grandfathered in since it complied when it was new. Same with most of the small aviation fleet: they’re good when they meet the standards in place when they were new. In most industries, this is not too bad since there’s turnover, but this industry collapsed so completely that there essentially isn’t turnover

      So because of the collapsed industry meaning very little new development or manufacturing, the high legal bar because of safety requirements, the sheer age of the fleet, and the general legal principal of grandfathering, there’s just not a way to move forward

  • People have been stupid for centuries.

    1. The average education level has been low or nonexistant for most people through most of history so everyone was equally dumb. Public education is a relatively new thing. People have been vulnerable to greed, deluded thinking, etc since day 1.
    2. The internet has allowed stupid people to find each other and reinforce each other's stupidity and create a race of conspiracy obsessed super morons.
    3. The internet has also distilled everything into negativity to the point where everyone and everything isn't just questioned but warped and rejected. Even the most basic advice on public health is now rejected. You've got people rejecting basic facts and science. Everyone who runs for office gets subject to so much hate and lies that no sensible person would want to run for office now leaving only questionable personalities willing to do it.

    I'll add that America's obsession with individualism, which ironically becomes groupthink like with MAGA, has become extremely poisonous. It is making it impossible to do even basic things like improve public transportation, gun control, education, healthcare, public health, etc. It is like we've become a nation of children who can't handle being told to go to bed and brush their teeth.

  • 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.

    • Isaac Asimov, 1980

    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:

      • Isaac Asimov

      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.

  • the same % of Americans have always been stupid. but for a long time it was honest ignorance that made them pliable, in small communities, to conmen.. who quickly worked their con and moved on to the next town.

    But thanks to the internet connecting disparate crazies, and elevating crazy to a mainstream voice, and then hostile foreign powers elevating that further on social media thanks to the internet, giving it a heavy dose of false legitimacy.. its devolved into a unique bouillabaisse of cromagnum hyper-idiocy the likes the world probably has never seen before.

    and thank to isolated media bubbles like Fox News and OANN, it will only continue to get worse and worse.

  • 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.

  • Parties and what they represent evolve over time. America is going through a rapid evolution currently.

    Since the end of the Cold War America has pursued or engaged in free trade and Neo Liberalism and the War on Terror.

    The result is there are significant sections of the populace that feel left behind by our economy as wealth inequality builds. They see their jobs going over seas and an ineffectual government that has failed at protecting them economically and has failed in the War on Terror. Add to it a powerful propaganda machine in the form of our news and social media and it is a recipe for change… What that change will end up shaping into may not be the future you want.

    This is the backlash. After the Democratic establishment has ignored unions and the working man. Leaving them open to the populist out reach of Donald Trump.

    Never mind that Trump will never deliver any of what he promised. The fact is he now has the power and is using it to break up the system that has been in place since WW2. Which benefits a small number of oligarchs who want to cement their power over the US.

    I suspect we will see a shift in the next mid-term election (if it takes place) and a realignment of the Democratic Party toward populism. We as a people have to figure out how to fight corporate propaganda and their hegemony over social media.

    That is if Trump doesn’t kill our Democracy first.

268 comments