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?
Targeted, systematic attacks on education, and a robust propaganda networks ran by billionaires.
And (or) Russians
LOL
No child left behind + Unregulated social media + 60 years of social and economic regression in rural areas = USA #1. !!!??
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
Unregulated, chemically dipped, gene-modified, mutated and ultra-processed food eating up their intellect
yes
Thought there were always jokes about it
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.
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 cope
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
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.
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!
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.
It’s not uniquely an American problem. The American symptoms are quite a sight to beheld though.
So our technological progress has brutally outgrown our cultural one. I think you’re right.
There was a time when computers were designed to grow our culture:
https://www.quora.com/Who-invented-the-modern-computer-look-and-feel/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
– George Carlin over 30 years ago
"The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
– (source unknown, but sometimes mis-attributed to Churchill)
As much as I love these quotes, I think it’s important to qualify them:
Everyone is born stupid, but people can be educated. If we want an educated populace, we must put in the work to create functional systems of education, and celebrate intelligence as a society. It’ll be hard work, and there are plenty of people out there who would prefer to see the masses remain stupid.
“The way Americans regard sports heroes versus intellectuals speaks volumes” An article by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
“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
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.
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 news 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. When I was a kid news was for nerds only, now it’s more like the national sport where everyone has their team. 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.
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.
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.
