I'm looking out my second floor home office window, watching six strangers

[LuckyCharms]

gather around my neighbor in her driveway, in the dark, maskless, shaking hands, hugging, yukking it up, about a foot apart from each other.

I'm wondering if people got this stupid suddenly, or if it happened over time slowly and I just did not notice it.

I spent some of the day lurking on various other forums and websites. I'm hoping that the comments that I am seeing like "No way I am getting the vaccine", "Gov. Cuomo is a fucking idiot", "my rights", etc. are not representative of the majority of the population. I'm hoping that my despair today about Covid is merely due to the fact that I am hyper-focused on what is hopefully a small portion of people who post on the internet.

However, based on what I just viewed out my window, and based on people I know who are having gatherings over the holidays...I'm not holding out much hope.

I would not want to be in President Biden's shoes. I would not want to be in his advisor's shoes.

It's not just mass stupidity that has to be overcome. It's the WEAKNESS of many Americans. They put the sane people at their mercy because of their weakness. A lot of people are whiners. Weak fucking whiners. Too weak to do what is right. I'm so angry. After all that people have gone through in war, sickness and poverty...they are too weak to do what is right.

This is what is going to kill us. Their attitude. Their weakness. How can that be overcome?

[In_The_Wind]

1. We may be wearing a mask for the rest of our life. Trusting no one, just to be safe.

[DeeDeeNY]

2. There are many lazy, stupid Americans

Just based on the millions who voted for Trump.

[Karadeniz]

3. I think there have always been more loonies than we noticed. Back in the days of Walter Cronkite

Etal, there was basically one reality and Society behaved within that reality, shared by most of us. Enter Fox. Now people could choose the reality that conformed to their many psychological hang ups. Now enter Qanon, Alex Jones, Limbaugh, etc. We're up a tree without a paddle.

If high school students had to take a current events course every year, that would go a long way to explaining and showing people how to weed out dubious sourcing. American history needs an overhaul, putting the warts back on the statue.

[wnylib]

23. Back in the time of Cronkite, there were only

three sources of TV news, the 3 networks. Now there are not only several TV sources of information, via cable, but also endless sources via the Internet and social media. That's why people can pick and choose their own realities.

I agree that students need to learn how to discern fact from opinion. Not sure that history classes are the right place for that, although students DO need more lessons on types of governments in general and specifically on how the US governing system works. I'd like to see age appropriate philosophy courses that focus on sound reasoning versus reasoning and argument fallacies, plus ethics.

Back in the 60's and 70's, the schools went through a backlash reaction to the strictness and rigidity of previous years in education. There definitely was a need for change then, but the new perspective, meant to encourage more self esteem and independent thinking, used methods that played down real achievement and gave equal recognition for every thought and each attempt at a project or sport. Students were left believing that anything is valid, with no guidelines for making judgments and decisions.

The real world outside of school does not function that way. In real life, the amount and quality of effort really do count. There are real life consequences to decisions, choices, and judgments. If you don't use good judgment and reasoning, you're going to get fleeced by con artists and governed poorly by politicians who make you feel good emotionally, but aren't competent.

[Karadeniz]

25. I think current events should be a separate course. It took me FOREVER to understand American

Politics. If they're going to vote, knowing what's going on might be nice!

[wnylib]

27. I'm a Boomer who was in grade school

in the 1950's. I can remember being made aware of national and world events as early as first grade, in watered down, age appropriate ways. As we learned to print our home addresses, we learned the city, state, and country, too.

Our teacher told us the name of the UN director and what the UN was. (It was Dag Hammarskjold then.)

I was 6 years old when Eisenhower won reelection. I remember the teacher telling us that if the other candidate had won, Eisenhower would have left so the new president could take over. She said this was known as the peaceful change of power and we should be glad that it is peaceful in the US because it's not always peaceful in other countries. She tied it into the idea of being a good sport on the playground if we don't win a game.

Our school basement was a polling site so we saw our parents and neighbors coming and going throughout the day to cast their votes.

Each year in school, we got introduced to some basic piece of information about current events, more detailed as we got older. One teacher took us to see the voting booths in the school during a local election.

In junior high, we got American history in 8th grade and government in 9th grade. Since that was the year Kennedy was assassinated, we got a real life example of our class studies on the line of succession.

In 10th grade we had world history, and American historycagain in 11th grade. In 12th grade it was government classes again, called "civics," in much more depth and detail.

From what I've seen in my town, today's kids don't get nearly enough exposure to history, geography, current national and world events, and civics in school.

[a la izquierda]

30. I'm a history professor at a major state university.

What college-age students know (or more accurately don't know) about history is appalling.
It's one reason why I'm leaving my job, in addition to the disgusting corporatization of higher ed. I hate it and everything about the academy.

[wnylib]

31. Sad state of affairs. I can understand why

you would want to retire.

I have to admit that I didn't care much for history when I was in school because of the way it was taught. The emphasis was on wars, conquests, and their dates, with little about the cultural contexts and how the consequences shaped the future or developed from the past. I had a high school American history teacher who always got sidetracked on telling us his personal stories, unrelated to the topic at hand. When the bell rang, he'd give us a busy work assignment like memorizing the names of all the US presidents in order, so that he could claim he had taught us something. One day, I called him on it and asked for lessons that had more substance. He accused me of being disruptive and out of line.

But at least I learned significant events and their dates and locations. I developed a sense of time in history, which I've noticed is lacking in many people today. After high school and before college (about 15 years later) I lesrned more history from my own independent reading.

[MerryBlooms]

4. We can only do our best to protect ourselves.

Not a damn thing we can do about Them.

[bucolic_frolic]

5. Once vaccinations are over, natural selection will run its course

covid mutations are the main worry at that point. For those who were vaccinated anyway. The rest choose to take their chances. Just like they would with other reckless behavior. Nothing you can do about it.

[bdamomma]

6. Their own

Ignorance and stupidity will get them.

[Mariana]

7. I'm wondering if people got this stupid suddenly, or if it happened over time...

People have always been this stupid.

[McKim]

17. There has been A Great Dumbing Down....

People HAVE gotten stupider. There has been what I call The Great Dumbing Down over the last 40 years. The cuts to education, the rise of trashy popular culture, the diminishing of access to higher education, the trivialization of news into infotainment have all contributed. Just find a Saturday Evening Post magazine from 1963 and read the high level vocabulary and the international stories and the longer in depth stories. You will be astounded at the high level of a common ordinary magazine in the 1960s.

[Mariana]

29. Well, maybe it was different where you lived.

I lived in Alabama, and I can assure you there was no shortage of people who were ignorant, stupid, or both back in the day. Plenty of the grown-ass adults I knew were barely literate enough to work their way through the Sunday funny pages. They certainly weren't reading the Saturday Evening Post, or anything like it. And I'm talking about white folks, who had the better of the "separate but (not) equal" schools.

[Skittles]

9. some of us listen to doctors and scientists

others listen to politicians and talk show hosts

[smirkymonkey]

11. +1000

So true Skittles, and I think those people can pretty much be divided along political lines. It's so unfortunate.

[lunatica]

10. I used to be a union advocate for UC Berkeley staff

I discovered what you’re talking about 20 years ago. This was before we became part of the Teamsters Union. There were two things I noticed right away. 99% of the workers expected the union to do everything for them without them doing anything. That left a relatively small number of people to fight for ALL the members’ rights with the majority acting like dead weight.

The other thing I notice was that the majority of the members took shit from management because they were afraid or too timid to say or do anything. The predominant attitude was to shrug their shoulders and lament about how unfairly they were being treated. It was very discouraging. I would think about Harriet Tubman who literally risked her life dozens of times, by her own choice, to save as many slaves as she could. She would have been hanged where she was caught, without even a trial. I still fought for them though. Harriet Tubman would have continued to fight for her people and all I had to lose was a job, though not likely.

[mountain grammy]

18. I was a union steward and officer in our local for several years.

That was more than 25 years ago.. lpretty much the same story.

[brush]

12. You're right to be concerned. With this holiday travel to and from...

all points in the nation, there will be another huge spite added to the already huge spike we are going through right now.

Everyone better brace themselves because it's coming in two to three weeks from how, which is barely into the start of winter where everyone will be inside.

trump failed so miserably by not modeling mask wearing and social distancing back in Feb. And he's still not doing. He should be prosecuted for it IMO.

It's so bad now with infections rampant and happening so quickly, contact tracing is impossible now because of the exponential explosion of the spreading.

The vaccines are our only hope.

[Lars39]

13. If we had to band together against

an invading army we’d be screwn.
Being surrounded by covidiots...almost everyone of my neighbors have travelled somewhere for T day. Going to get really bad in a few weeks.

[Hekate]

14. Look at it this way: the majority have good sense. 30% to 40% appear to be morons...

...and they vote.

Take care of yourself.

[tiredtoo]

15. Have someone on facebook

Who is totally bought the package. He is now telling me big tech stole this election and his closing statement was."We will never forget." Going to take a long time to overcome the mess the oligarchs and trump have created.

[Demovictory9]

16. Trump has messed things up, good. People associate their political party with view of the pandemic

[BobTheSubgenius]

19. People wear shoes to protect their feet from hard ground and the environment.

Without them, you cannot get into a restaurant. Likewise a shirt, and people accept this without a second thought. How are a mask and the need to wear one so f'ing difficult to understand?

I'd be tempted to carry bear spray with me if this was a big problem where I live.

[jmbar2]

20. I've been hunkered down for nearly 10 months now

I'm in a small town which has had relatively few cases. Until now. In the past couple of days, there's been an outbreak at the local Moose Lodge, followed by a handful of cases at the school.

Tonite, I made a run to the grocery store and overheard the guy in the produce section talking about recovering from it. He was home for months and is still very weak. It's the first I've actually heard of it in town. It's here.

I've done all that I can to stay away from it. Tomorrow, I'll spend Thanksgiving alone. I'm grateful to have a place that's safe and comfy. Things are gonna get worse before they get better, especially for the doubters.

Stay safe everyone. We can do this.

[TryLogic]

22. We can do this. I like that simple message.

[58Sunliner]

21. My partner has yet to bill this client who flew to Texas this week for family.

We are nervous. I have to hope we get paid before he gets covid. And he voted for DT. We don't discuss politics, but during a conversation he actually said that the world respects us again with DT in office. What??? People are stupid and self-involved. I had a vacuum salesman knock on my door today. I didn't answer the door because of covid, and I spoke to him from a distance through an open window. He did not have a mask on. WTF?? I think it will be bad in 2 weeks.

[iluvtennis]

24. Agree, it's the attidue of "I can do what I want - rules/policies don't apply to me".

BTW, it seems like history is repeating itself. See my post on 1918 pandemic from earlier today - https://www.democraticunderground.com/100214619547

[wnylib]

26. Since you mentioned Cuomo, I'm

thinking you're in NY, LuckyCharms.

I'm hearing a lot of bitching in western NY about Cuomo, too, and it sounds so juvenile and whiny to me. Buffalo, all of Erie County, and surrounding areas have rapidly rising cases. Several parts of Erie County are orange zones now, teetering on becoming red. Besides Cuomo's regular addresses to New Yorkers now, County Executive Poloncarz is doing daily updates.

People complain that gyms are being closed and they can't go to nail salons. A county sheriff says he will not enforce the new restrictions. Poloncarz reminded him that, according to the state's constitution, the governor can remove a sheriff who defies regulations.

Pure selfish ego is what I'm hearing. People care more about asserting their "rights" and individuality than about stopping the spread of disease. Cuomo said that western NY has not been through the really bad times of other regions so they don't realize what's coming if they don't clean up their act now, before it's too late. So now Buffalo and surrounding areas are whining that Cuomo offended them. Both Cuomo and Poloncarz said that Buffalo came nowhere near the situation in NYC last spring, but it will soon if we don't get this outbreak under control now.

I have been thinking about carrying a You Tube video and song on my phone and playing it in stores when I see bare faces or hear arguments about masks. It's the remake of a Disney animated film section, "Wear a Mask."

As I watched this situation developing, I stocked up again like I did last spring. With or without a shutdown, I don't want to go out even briefly to stores.

[quakerboy]

28. Or its always been this way

And many of us never had to pay it mind.