This is not to say that everyone who voted for Bush is stupid.

Why not? It was an amazingly STUPID thing to do. That’s like saying “Not everybody who tries to fly by gluing feathers to their arms and jumping off their garage roof is stupid.”

I blame televangelists, if only because television and religion are the primary causes of the anti-havingafuckingclueism displayed by so many. Televangelism from churches the size of malls.
Also because televangelists bear an uncommonly large portion of the responsibility.

Wrong, Brad. People are not more stupid that they used to be. The stupidity that is rampant is framed as acceptable by the degeneration of media.

I feel sick.

Don’t blame me, I voted for Nader. No…wait…

I know somebody who voted for Bush because Gore was boring, and Bush, while an idiot, was a cokehead, which meant that he at least knew how to have fun.

There are days I am quite sympathetic to the arguments for monarchy.

This may change now. I think some people believed that there was really not so much difference between the two. You used to hear people saying there’s no difference between dems and repubs all the time.

After seeing what a huge mess bush and his enablers have made now these people may think a little harder the next time and actually pay attention to policy statements.

But…but…but…Bush is a guy you could have a beer with!

It’s not that there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans, fly.

It’s that they both suck. They both suck beyond the ability of mere hyperbole to capture.

What has changed in the last eight years is that the Republican party has become the home of proto-fascists. This means we can now say about the Democrats “Well, at least they aren’t proto-fascists”.

That, however, is not enough to get anyone excited, anymore than if you were to set someone up on a blind date, and the best description you could offer them about their date was “Well, at least they don’t have pilonidal cysts”.

This girl in my class voted for Bush just because a guy in our class said he was going to. You could just tell she was totally clueless. The guy was working for his parents, so there was probably that whole “tax the rich” angle. Other than that, I’m pretty sure he too doesn’t know shit about politics or issues.
I remember her regretting her decision the next year. I told her she shouldn’t have listened to the guy because he didn’t know anything. Makes you wonder if the majority of Bush voters were like that.

Undecided Voter: Mrs Griffin, what about our traffic problem?
Lois Griffin: 9…
Audience: Huh?!
Lois Griffin: 11!
Audience: Yaaaaaaay!!!!

I remember having a long conversation one night with a coke dealer at his place, not a friend, just one of those nights.
He voted for Bush in 04, after voting for Gore in 00.
That was a long fucking night.

Brad, I’m afraid you’ve stumbled upon the horrible truth of American democracy, which is that I’d say around, oh, 90% of voters (and remember that only about half of American adults even bother to vote) haven’t the slightest inkling why they’re voting for whom they’re voting.

When you’re the type of person who cares about politics, it’s easy to assume that everyone else is just as passionate as you, and that, say, everyone who voted Republican is a wild-eyed, gay-bashing, bible-thumping maniac. But I’ve had exactly the same experience as you, and found that the people I know who will admit they voted for Bush usually offer up a similarly lame explanation (“Kerry just seemed like a snob” is probably the one I’ve heard the most).

I agree, too, with the person above who said this isn’t exactly new. I’ve had a renewed appreciation in recent years for the writings of H.L. Mencken, and his anti-democracy leanings, which of course date mostly from the 1920s.

You got virtually the same answers I got to that question…twice. Before the first election, I frequently pointed out to anyone who would listen that this man had literally not even held a job that was not procured for him by his father or his moneyed cronies…and the response: “Al Gore said he invented the internet…or Al Gore crowded him at the debate”. When I would point out that by all measurable standards, Gore had soundly trounced Dubya in all the debates, I would get some equally nonsensical, infuriating answer about Gore being tainted by Clinton. I think there is a huge percentage of the populace that pays absolutely no attention to anything of substance in any campaign, but instead responds like Bill Mahers hamsters…going into the polls and stomping on the red button because “he said lower taxes….or tort reform…or gay marriage is bad..or worse yet…my opponent wants to “cut and run”…even though they haven’t the slightest idea of what any of the issues behind those bumper stickers actually mean to them! After the second election, I endured months of a horrible depression only to console myself with the old expression about “people deserving the leaders they elect”, until I realized that I still have to live in this country of morons…and I damn sure don’t deserve this! Whats the matter with Kansas? Maybe the simple truth is that a large part of this country is stupid and shallow; disconnected from history and reality. Look at the Fox News ratings as an example. Debacle after debacle, year after year, a big chunk of this country still turns to Faux News as their only source of information. At this point, we are not only dealing with the intellectually challenged, but the flat out delusional!

The “people are stupid” meme irritates the living hell out of me these days, though in the interest of full disclosure, I used to buy into it whole-heartedly. And then I realized all the incredibly stupid shit I do on a daily basis and it got to thinking.

People aren’t stupid. People are pretty sharp. They can fix cars and split the atom and write novels and operate computers and fly airplanes and discuss philosophy and figure out the relationship between a mathematical formula and a good country song and do all kinds of neat shit. Now, people do a lot of dumb shit, like vote for Bush or pretend their the bulwark protecting White America from a Muslim horde or drive the wrong way down a one-way street or think evolution is a religion or forget to bring money to the DMV when they get their license renewed.

So, I don’t think most people in our country, in our culture, are stupid. I do, however, think a whole helluva lot of them are ignorant about a great deal of the world, apathetic about just as much, and unsettlingly proud and defensive of the fact that they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about half the time and can’t be arsed to find out. It’s that last one that gets me, that pride over having a shortsighted, self-centered, misinformed view of reality. That, and the laziness, the idea that since actually learning something you didn’t already know is just too much effort, so it’s easier – and therefore better – to hold on to bullshit. It’s easier to blame poorly understood biology, for example, than for too many dudes to not act like complete buffoons about, say, the female bosom.

This is all encouraged, subtly, by pop culture. We are a people for whom excessive devotion to learning is seen as some worthy of scorn by a large segment of the population. I know a guy who voted for Bush over Gore because he was, he said, “uncomfortable” with the idea of a president smarter than he was. I know a girl who says global climate change is a “crock” because the whole spiel scared her so badly as a child and she can’t forgive scientists for that. And, apparently, I’m the asshole for pointing out that these are really stupid reasons. “Are you calling me stupid?” is the inevitable reply. No, say I. Your reasoning is stupid, doesn’t mean you are. Whether you stick to it might, though.

We can’t be bothered to learn, we can’t be bothered to care, and when called out on our apathy and ignorance, we can’t be bothered to own up to it. A lot of it, I think, is part of the whole power struggle thing that makes up so much of life in these United States. You admit to being wrong about, say, voting for the idiot son of privilege because you think he’d be a good guy to have a beer with, you show weakness. You own up to being the recipient of privilege in a culture that systematically advances the interests a certain skin color/sexual orientation/gender/what-have-you over all/most others, to some degree or another, and that this is a bad thing, you show weakness. You own up to not knowing everything and that maybe – just maybe – the universe is gonna do what it damn well pleases no matter what you say, you show weakness.

The problem isn’t people doing stupid shit. The problem is far too many people are assholes about the stupid shit they continue to do because they’re deathly afraid someone who doesn’t like them anyway will think they have a tiny penis, spiritually speaking. But for all of that, I don’t think people are inherently assholes anymore than I think they’re inherently stupid. Far too many of us, however, buy into the idea that it’s totally necessary to be an aggravating, obnoxious jackass about everything, if for no other reason than it’ll keep some other aggravating, obnoxious jackass from getting something.

I don’t know why people do that, but they do. You don’t have to be an asshole just because someone else is. It’s okay to have been wrong about something. It’s important to get the correct information from a reasonable source on a topic before you spout off on it, if just so people will stop throwing things at you. You’re not perfect and probably never will be, but that’s a piss-poor reason to not work towards the ideal, to not at least try.

I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong and maybe you do have to be an ignorant, obstinate asshole to get by in this world. Doesn’t make any sense to me, but what do I know. Just I see all these poor miserable bastards doing little more than making each other even more miserable, for little more than pride’s sake, and I gotta wonder if it’s me who’s actually missing something.

Two things: one, Bob Somerby will tell you that all of those “stupid reasons” were of course staples of the media coverage of both campaigns, abetted and sometimes even concocted by the Times, Post, et al. Those were actually tuned-in people, because they were repeating back to you what passed for expert opinion in the elite punditocracy. They didn’t make it up themselves. (Of course, that just makes it that much worse, societally speaking…)

Two,
Another guy voted for Bush because he thought Al Gore’s shifting wardrobe and hair styles were proof that “he didn’t know who he was.”

When did Gore change his hairstyle? That sounds like a corruption of the Clinton-haircut-at-LAX story or something.

Um, sorry about that. The thought sort of got away from me, there.

Go Mikey,

I agree whole heartedly. Americans are smart, but their priorities are heavily skewed. There’s a creeping anti-intellectualism in America, affixed to the myth of wealth as an indicator of worth. It’s been around for a long long time, but the institutions that used to honor reason and truth above spin and hype have been atrophied from above.

When I was in college, I could go down to the front of Sproul Hall and every 2 or 3 days would be a creationist trying to tell me how thermodynamics, one of the subjects I was studying at the time, proved the world was 6000 years old. Now we have presidential candidates espousing a faith that actually denies physical reality. Some days, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

And now we have to contend with the same sort of illiteracy in other avenues of science policy, global warming and stem cells as glaring examples. They are so beholden to the opinions to authorities with little or no expertise in these fields that they resist hearing any information that will allow them to recognize reality.

I voted for Bush because he looks like he’d be real fun to have a beer with! Because what’s more fun than watching someone fall off the wagon?

DISCLAIMER: I did not actually vote for Bush.

The “people are stupid” meme irritates the living hell out of me these days, though in the interest of full disclosure, I used to buy into it whole-heartedly.

Hey dude, opinions can’t be wrong, so I can’t knock it.

FlipYrWhig said,

Two things: one, Bob Somerby will tell you that all of those “stupid reasons” were of course staples of the media coverage of both campaigns, abetted and sometimes even concocted by the Times, Post, et al.

Ding Ding Ding! That’s the theory that wins my vote.

It’s in the best interests of our economic and political status quo that as many people as possible remain as ignorant as possible.

We can’t control how stupid people are – that’s more-or-less an innate thing – but we have vast control over how ignorant people are. And if the American people weren’t ignorant, who would buy the Ginsu knives? Who would buy the Slim-Fast? Who would buy the male enhancement pills? Who would buy the oxygenated face cream to be used right after using the antioxidant face gel? And, more importantly, who would continue to vote these mentally deficient mouthbreathers back into office, time after time after time?

I’m telling you, if Americans weren’t more ignorant than the stuff you clean out of your belly button, our economy would come to a screeching halt.

Sorry, but most people are functional illiterates. And incurious. And socialized into that peculiar American anti-“book-learnin'” thing. If they aren’t actually stupid, they were not smart enough to keep themselves from being rendered stupid. If you think the average American could/would read/comprehend even the snark & whatnot here & in other zones on the net, think something reasonable/worth expressing as a result of reading, & successfully/legibly post it here, you’re sadly mistaken. Let alone actually read something serious (in a book, even?) and not have many of his/her assumptions challenged, and maybe form a different (or any) world-view as a result?

Heh. “A person is smart; people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.”

It’s not so much that 9/10 Americans are “I’ve got mail! YAAY!” stupid, it’s that they’re ignorant of their government and their candidates, but feel compelled to vote anyways. Like, “I’m voting for Bush, because Al Gore said he created the internet”? No, you need a slapping.
Gore was on the Senate committee that funded a little thing known as DARPAnet.

You wanna vote? Great. Spend a day and educate yourself about what the fuck you’re doing, please.

Righteous Bubba,
I don’t know if I agree with that. Opinions can be wrong. “Black people are sub-human” sure as hell ain’t a fact. I can back up the opinion “Willie Nelson is awesome” using logic and reason if I have to, but it’s still an opinion. One can indulge in misguided opinions. However, if one’s opinions, no matter how widely shared, run counter to reality, well then…tough shit, right? Or, for that matter, two deeply held opinions might contradict one another, so one might have to go. Or, one of the two might match up with reality and you have no choice but to take that one, the right one, even though you might like the other one better. Tough.

‘Course, just because an opinion is not exactly “right” doesn’t neccessarily mean it’s automatically “wrong”, or vice versa. I don’t know if “people are just stupid” is “wrong” in it’s attempt to explain the stupid shit people continue to do. It just doesn’t sound totally “right” to me, and it strikes me as something that’s used as little more than an excuse not to try to change things, a dodge committed by bother the condemned and the condemners.

Granted, I’m stoned right now, so it’s entirely probable I’m totally missing your point. Maybe opinions can’t be “right” or “wrong”. Maybe they can just be varying degress of “stupid” on up to “Yeah, that makes sense and, hey, reality backs it up.” I can dig that.

Granted, I’m stoned right now, so it’s entirely probable I’m totally missing your point.

If I try to post something that sounds asinine and people go for it I think I have only one person to blame. That person is George W. Bush.

I’d blame Ron Popeil.

Heh. “A person is smart; people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.”

Yeah, that should be noted, too. You can take a group of ordinary, mostly decent human beings, scare the living shit out of them, point ’em in the proper direction and they’ll skin grandmas alive with rusty spoons at your say-so. I don’t know why that seems to be a truism, but by God, it’s scary how much history seems to point to it being so.

Americans are lazy, self-centered, and lack empathy. They don’t make the connections between politics and “real” life. Nobody important like your boss or your neighbor is going to give a damn if you’re not informed about the social construction of reality as long as you keep your lawn trimmed and your cubicle in order, so there’s no motivation to actually read a book and create independent thought. They say people with active minds are less likely to get Alzheimer’s, which explains why the disease is becoming much more prevalent.

I don’t presume to know whether the massive amounts of ignorance in the country stem from genetic stupidity or lack of good education or from being too busy trying to keep one’s head above water to sit down and catch their breath. I’d love to know.
It’s somewhere between one in four and one in 3, judging on Bush’s polling.

Ooops, who are just genetically stupid. But who knows how many are still too busy to notice.

When I was in school, I’d read during my free time between and during classes. Other students would question me why I was reading, if I was doing something for another class. And I would tell them, “No, I am just reading.”

They would ask me why.

This question puzzled me, and continues to, to this day.

“Why am I reading? Because it’s fun.”

Oh, they would say. Then there’s a brief pause that I mistook for thinking.

“Why are you reading such a big book though? I could never get through that.” My books, at best, reached 200-300 pages. Often they’d be non-fictional books (or in the case of my theology/occult books, undeterminate-fiction). Talking to these people, I found that books breaching 100 pages were just too much.

I was in school with people who weren’t really determined to not learn. Rather, they didn’t give it any thought if they learned anything or not. They just followed the busywork handed out by our teachers, handed them back in, and then went out and did… whatever. No examination of what they were being told, no questions, just fill out papers.

This has been going on for so long that I’m not really surprised by the unexamined perspective of my peers, now that we can vote. I listened to students just coming out of school while I was working retail and finding out that they didn’t care about anything. One person supported the war in Iraq because, and I quote, “blowing stuff up is awesome.”

Still, I think what we have to comprehend is that we are fighting more than just people who are ignorant. We’re also fighting more than the racist, bigoted, sexist, anti-gay anti-woman, anti-foreigner Republican rabble. We’re fighting the empty shells that lead both of these forces around by the fucking nose.

I mean, do you believe Dick Cheney believes in *anything*? Cause I don’t. I don’t think any of the wingnut leaders and pep squad believe in anything except what gives them power. They could turn on a fucking dime if tomorrow Darwin’s theory of evolution would get them more votes and more power. Because there’s nothing there behind their eyes. There’s no beliefs, there’s no prejudices, there’s nothing. Dick Cheney loves his lesbian daughter and would gut homosexuals in the street in the same fucking pace. It’s not even doublethink anymore, it’s nothink. Absolutely zen.

The ignorant, the stupid, and the hollow fucking thugs that rally them. That’s who we’re facing. Internet trolls in charge of America.

“the fault lies within ourselves” — dude, this is the third time in 2 days I’ve seen people citing this Julius Caesar meme. Al Gore’s excellent op-ed in the NYT yesterday said Venus isn’t so vastly hotter than Earth because it’s closer to the Sun, but because its atmosphere is CO2: “the fault is not in our star”. (It dropped the continuation, “but in ourselves”.) Then Frank Rich in commenting on “Bring It On” noted that an executive order allowing the VP to de/classify documents was issued shortly before “the Ides of March”, 2003.

My conclusion? The Senate is getting ready to lure GWB to its floor and fucking stab him 100 times with motherfucking knives. Only possible explanation.

I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong and maybe you do have to be an ignorant, obstinate asshole to get by in this world.

Or so Faux News, Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh and Darth Cheney would like you to believe. And a predictable percentage of Americans fall for that particular lie, because after all, it’s all over the media. Part of the current political crisis is the “Race to the Bottom of the Stupid” which has been promoted & bankrolled by the Repubs since at least Reagan. Anti-intellectualism is a recurrent theme in American politics, but the current popularity of Pro-Stupidism in media — everything from Ashton Kucher’s career to Donald trump’s hair to Drudge’s rise to ‘respectability’ — seems to be a new nadir. It’s not just enough to be uninformed, ignorant, out of touch, and thereby “authentic”: Teh MSM tells us that you have to be proudly, assertively, militantly Stupid. The (Repub) meme is that you have to own your cherished fact-blindness, cluelessness, and refusal to learn anything from painful personal experience much less “biased” sources like other peoples’ painful personal experiences. It’s not enough that you should see pictures of other people grabbing the hot end of the branding iron, or smell their flesh cooking, or listen to their anguished cries of pain — you have to grab the hot end yourself, and when your scorched flesh is pried away, you have to go right back there and grab the brand one more damn time, because that will prove that you are The Real Deal and Comfortable in Your Skin (what’s left of it after the burns heal). Thus, the ascension of Dubya Bush and Paris Hilton as King and Queen of our Media Universe: two individuals born to every opportunity to live long, prosperous, maybe even productive lives who have nevertheless chosen (very public) careers more suitable to the fetally-compromised offspring of a crack whore and a meth dealer who grew up in a succession of bad foster homes and juvenile detention facilities.

There have been prominent waves of Know-Nothingism in America before, some of them also media-promoted, including the Gilded Era and the Roaring Twenties. The (global) crashes that follow these stupidity binges have always been unpleasant. I just hope there’s enough “slack” left in the planetary economy, biologically as well as financially, that the imminent crash doesn’t suck us back so many levels that we’re no longer able to snark about our social betters on these here intertoobzes…

A few words from my students (at a small, private college in the lower Midwest) regarding government:

The princes of today’s society…

The newly placed democratic government installed by the U.S.

Yes, I realize I am a failure as a teacher…

One does have to note that in 2000, Al Gore got more votes than Bush, so there’s hope yet.
And in 2006, the Democrats gained 31 House seats and 6 Senate seats. All is not lost.
2004? People were scared. And Kerry ran a bad campaign and still got 49%. (Al Gore ran a perfectly fine campaign. Kerry did not. He could have made Valerie Plame an issue, but he did not.)
So, yeah, there are stupid people, but I’m not willing to throw in the towel just yet. Let’s see what happens in ’08.

Patkin, I hear that. I never really got the “it’s such a big book” thing, either. The words aren’t more difficult or anything, there’s just more of them.

I went to a private middle school. I remember one year, our english teacher gave us a choice. We could A: read some ~100 page chick novel about coming of age, community, and life. Or B: we could read “Shogun”, a 1000+ page novel about war, politics, samurai, ninjas, guns, and sex.
Geeee…

I’m not a huge reading fan myself, but, when you’re in school and don’t have access to anything electronic, it’s a perfectly crombulent activity. Especially when you’re taking the same. goddamn. “how to write an essay” english class. every. goddamn. year.

Imagine a large US city with a Big Famous Sports Team™ . On gameday, when Big Famous Sports Team™ is hosting the Bitter Rivals, some percentage of the city’s residents (let’s say half) know that there is a game on and have picked a side. Of those, some smaller percentage will actually take the time to watch the game on TV or listen to it on the radio. An even smaller percentage get off their asses and actually go to the game. Of the rare few thousand who go the the game, there is a tiny handful with no shirts, body paint and fright wigs in the BFST’s team colors who, having read every scrap of information about every member of each team, extract the highest drama from every play/pitch/goal/etc.

Politically speaking, (and I say this with much love) if you are commenting on Sadly, No! you probably are one of the people in the fright wigs and the body paint.

All I’m saying is: if you’re super-plugged in to what’s going on you have a leg up over most people. Use that power wisely by sharing it and making other more savvy instead of writing them off as dolts for not already knowing what you know or caring as much as you care.

Hi Greg, I read Shogun, and then all those novels myself.

The fact that they were long was a feature, not a bug. Because if you like the book, why would you want it to end so soon?

But I’d like to plug two books I read back when I was a kid, that are not fiction.

The Rising Sun, by John Toland.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer.

I have to admit I did not go out and buy these books, my dad had them in his study.

Toland and Shirer are both pretty awsome. Did you read Toland’s Hitler biography? It was the definitive bio of Der Fuehrer for a long time. Then Kershaw wrote one that was twice as long.

Not Nik Kershaw.

Ian Kerhaw.

Anne Laurie, let me join in the calls for you to start a blog. Well fucking said.

I don’t know how American culture degenerated to the Eloi levels of dumbness we now see….

I hope you find the answer, Brad. It would presumably explain why our Vice President is a Morlock!

reminds me of that old Hicks line;

“looks like we have a reader here………”

i am frankly stunned by the lack of knowledge of some Americans (and, sorry to say, Canucks also). Its not like I’m a snobby prick, or anything, but when my well travelled, well educated, American friends turn round and say;

“was Russia involved in the 2nd world war?”

“how come a Scottish guy can be the UK President, they wouldn’t allow a Mexican to be the president of the US”

, I do have to wonder about the level of education.

This is not to say that everyone who voted for Bush is stupid.

I would call it stupid but then I’m a foreigner who lives in a country where 99.9% of the population thought George W was “a moron” in 2000.

And what’s the voting turn out again? Something like 25% of the electorate actually vote in America? Now why is that? Perhaps it’s the lack of meaningful choice. On the so-called left (it always cracks me up when I hear the Dems being referred to as “the left” when they’re not even fucking liberal), you’ve got people like Hillary Clinton, who recently accepted the highest campaign contribution from HMOs of all the contenders in the presidential race, including Republicans. Mitt Romney came in a close second. These two may as well be bedfellows on health care. Many other contenders for the presidency in the Democratic Party also accepted huge campaign contributions from health insurance companies. How can these people in good conscience claim to be different from Republicans? Health care in the US is completely privatized and insured people die every day because insurance companies refuse to pay for health care. They DELIBERATELY kill people to make money. This would be called murder in any other state.

If I lived in America I’d be hard pressed to walk my weary body to a voting booth, too.

America could be a great country if it had a government that cared for its people. Instead it has a government that demoralizes and abuses its citizens and expects them to buy this story that a two party state controlled by the rich and by lobbyists equals a democracy.

Smotes Durston, that’s a very sad thing you say there. It seems that some are born ignorant and some achieve ignorance through their own dedicated endeavours.

Matt T., about your guy who said this:
I know a guy who voted for Bush over Gore because he was, he said, “uncomfortable” with the idea of a president smarter than he was.

Woo. So he’s happy about the red button being in the hands of somebody dumber than him? He’d prefer the most heavily armed country in the history of history to be led by a complete doofus? Your man there has some serious, serious issues, I think.

Caligula, the crazed Roman emperor who stood before the Roman Senate and said, “May I introduce you to Senator Barbaro,”

I prefer to believe in the Caligula who said “Rasputin, bring hither the skin-diving suit with the bottom cut out, and unleash the rampant wildebeest.”

(Which apparently happened shortly before he mentioned the bucket of soapy frogs, and I was quite disturbed to find many diverse mentions on the intertubes, when I googled “bucket of soapy frogs”. It’s a wacky old world, and no mistake)

The “people are stupid” meme irritates the living hell out of me these days, though in the interest of full disclosure, I used to buy into it whole-heartedly.

I irritates me too, Matt T. Not because I think that my fellow Americans are acting very smart nowadays… hell no. The reasons it irritates me are various.

First, can I just mention that the very concept of a ‘meme’ is embedded in a theory which suggests that people have no minds as such? The whole theory of ‘memes’, as I understand it, is basically that ‘ideas’ are like animals which are competing for survival, and that their environment is the brains of a people. The people are assumed to be passive receptacles for these competing ideas, and one idea wins only on the basis of whether it is more ‘adapted’ than another one to our biology. So if you are using the term ‘meme’ you are almost assuming that the people have no minds.

Second, I sometimes think that the people are not as stupid as they look. I take some pleasure from hearing people say, “we invaded Iraq so that we could get their oil- I think it was a good idea.” It is a cruel, cold thing to say, but at least people who say that seem to have a decently good grip on some of the actual geopolitics involved.

Third, I sometimes think that believing too fervently in the stupidity of your fellow citizens can, in some mysterious way, make you stupid. I mean, look at the Neoconservatives. Their entire political philosophy, as I understand it, is based on the necessary deception of the stupid masses. They believe that they need continual war and propaganda to keep pro-democracy forces in check domestically, and to keep the people in a kind of drama which removes their need for critical thought. Their own ideas are intelligent, they are riffs on Machiavelli. Yet it seems to me that their ideology has led them to ignore, or refuse to think about, certain issues that are supremely important, such as Global Warming.

Also, Smotes Durston, you know the things you listed that your students have said are not exactly stupid, they are more like Machiavellian, and/or thoughtless. To say:
“It is better for the president of today to be feared more than loved [otherwise] his citizens would feel as if they had free reign, which could be very destructive”, that’s not stupid, that’s just a riff on Machiavelli.
To say:
“The newly placed democratic government installed by the U.S.” is, in fact, a sort of unconsidered, unthoughtful thing to say- how do you ‘install’ a ‘democratic’ government.

I don’t think you are a failure as a teacher, I think you are just dealing with students who have been given certain ideas from the media and from today’s political climate.

Wow, did you really get THOSE answers? If so, send ’em to The Daily Howler — they’re some small empirical confirmation that his warnings to us about the press corps have been spot-on.

I wish people would come up with a different “standard” of stupidity than Caligula’s appointing a horse to the senate. He did this not because he was stupid, but in order to show his contempt for the senate, which in his view of the Roman emperor’s unlimited powers had no business of interfering in his decisions (this contempt was probably intensified by the lickspittle addresses he got from most senators). So in that respect he perhaps resembled Cheney more than Bush…

Time to feed the Morlocks!

This is not to say that everyone who voted for Bush is stupid

Most people who voted for Bush are not stupid. But most stupid people did vote for Bush.

Yet it seems to me that their ideology has led them to ignore, or refuse to think about, certain issues that are supremely important, such as Global Warming.

This isn’t particularly stupid on the part of neocons. Climate change isn’t going to kill any rich person living in an industrialized nation in their lifetime or probably even in the lifetime of their children. And, considering that they are people completely devoid of a conscience, getting them to understand why the fuck they should care about anybody else is impossible.

Neoconservative behavior makes perfect sense. Just alter your thinking a little: “I am the most important thing in the universe. All that matters is what makes me happy and gives me pleasure. Class matters, and I am obviously of the upper class, and it gives me pleasure to show that in everything I do, because it means I’m better than everyone else.”

That’s all it takes.

Jillian:

I realize that. What you say about their views makes sense. I also realize that in their invasion of Iraq, they were not truly concerned with the security of the Iraqis, the creation of a secular, democratic state in Iraq, or with any of the rest of it- nothing but getting access to oil and building bases in the middle east, and possily some other things.

You are absolutely right that in order to understand the Neo-cons you have to understand their actual aims behind their public statements (not always an easy thing to do), and understand that they don’t give a rats ass about anyone not in their class, except to effectively control them.

I still think that they are ignoring certain things which can, and have, harmed them. The fact of their occupation of Iraq is, in my opinion, hurting them in ways that they apparently did not expect. It seems to me, and perhaps I am naive, that their policies have become unpopular. And it also seems to me that this is perhaps connected with their extra-low opinion of the intellligence of Americans.

But you may be right as well. We will see, as this situation unfolds.

The “best” reason I heard for voting for Bush was that of course he’d keep oil prices low. Chuckle!

people aren’t MORE stupid, there’s just MORE stupid people, what with overcrowding and whatnot.

They “now admit they made a huge mistake?” It sounds like someone forgot to give some of the Epsilon Semi-morons their Soma.

Shit! Where’s my Soma?

Shit! Where’s my preview? This could be ugly. (closes eyes & hits “submit”)

Hey, Smotes Durston. I too have students who come in the door articulating some pretty ill-informed, nonsensical and/or soulless stuff. I try to respond like kingubu, who I believe has it exactly right:

All I’m saying is: if you’re super-plugged in to what’s going on you have a leg up over most people. Use that power wisely by sharing it and making other more savvy instead of writing them off as dolts for not already knowing what you know or caring as much as you care.

Takes a lot of patience — especially if you try to follow this advice in dealing with all sorts of people, not just students.

One friend voted for Bush in 2000 because “Al Gore’s people were rude and wouldn’t let us enter the area closest to Gore” at a rally in downtown Des Moines. I attempted to explain the role of the Secret Service in protecting the VP, but to no avail. She was in high dudgeon because they were “rude”. This girl was not stupid on the issues. In fact, she did not agree with 99.9% of Bush’s stated objectives, but since Al Gore was rude, she voted for Bush. “I just like him more,” she said.

Another friend voted for Nader because “Al Gore is not pro-choice enough.” Every so often I have to ask her, “How do you like your pro-choice preznit now? How ’bout that Supreme Court? Pro-choice enough for ya?” This particular argument enraged me like no other, because for me, it was always about the Supreme Court. The idea that Bush could possibly get his hands on the Supremes was horrifying; therefore, if there was even a slight chance that my giving a vote to Nader would help elect Bush, there was no way I was going to throw away my vote on Ralph.

Of course, you have the couples who don’t vote at all, because “our votes will just cancel each other out.”

Dammit, I should be studying right now, less I be found “stupid” on the midterm I have to take today.

Jillian is absolutely right. I’ve seen that mentality in person in young and old. If anything, she’s being generous in giving them concern for even their own children. Cheney knows he’s living on borrowed time, and if anything, I’d half wager he perversely wants to fuck things up for those of us who aren’t about to die, in the back of his mind. But mostly it’s about the money.

The whole theory of ‘memes’, as I understand it, is basically that ‘ideas’ are like animals which are competing for survival, and that their environment is the brains of a people. The people are assumed to be passive receptacles for these competing ideas, and one idea wins only on the basis of whether it is more ‘adapted’ than another one to our biology. So if you are using the term ‘meme’ you are almost assuming that the people have no minds.

Not quite, at least as the term is used today; it’s just that people don’t always pay much attention to what’s going on in their minds. There have been many, many studies showing that even “smart” students who know they’re being used as subjects in psychology experiments are remarkably easy to mislead or confuse. Some fairly recent studies, in particular, showed that when subjects saw the same opinion expressed in several different media sources, they assumed “It must be true, or at least most people believe it to be true” — even when that repeated opinion is clearly labelled as coming from a single source. The M(eme)-word has (covers head) “gone viral” precisely because we needed a word more encompassing than “sloganeering” for the kind of stealth-targeting of such semi-conscious perceptions as Brad’s Bush-voting acquaintances’ “understanding” that Gore was a rude, faddish fabulist and Kerry was a snooty elitist with a crazy wife. Of course, I’m also defending the word because it supports my own theory that “Most People” (most American voters) have gradually allowed themselves to be led to perceive Real Americans as dumber, meaner, shallower, and far more politically regressive than can be justified by statistics.

[…] 2: And now “Sadly, No!” is on the same meme! Ends the post with “You can blame television and our dumbass elite press […]

Of course, I’m also defending the word because it supports my own theory that “Most People” (most American voters) have gradually allowed themselves to be led to perceive Real Americans as dumber, meaner, shallower, and far more politically regressive than can be justified by statistics.

Hmm. Good point Anne.

“The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

– H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Sun

[…] Sadly, No! » The sad degeneration of the American mind … is not enough to get anyone excited, anymore than if you were to … On gameday, when Big Famous Sports Team™ is hosting the Bitter … Ends the post with “You can blame television and our dumbass … http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/6376.html […]

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