Why are so many Americans acting so stupid?

[ashredux]

“Half of U.S. adults can’t read a book written at the 8th-grade level.” -
(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)

That means that many can’t read above a 5th grade level.

The GOP’s lies to them and they believe Trump won and vaccines will kill them.

This is how we fall….uneducated people believe stupid things.

[DEbluedude]

1. They're not acting. n/t

[sop]

11. "Stupid is as stupid does" - Forrest Gump

[dchill]

36. "That is all."

[GPV]

2. Repubs designed this. They broke our schools for easy votes, and this just comes with the

territory. Essentially, imagine medieval peasants with iPhones. Pretty much sums things up.

[True Blue American]

3. Republicans gutted the Public School

Last edited Sat Jan 29, 2022, 10:46 AM - Edit history (1)

Budgets to feed their friends private Schools that stole millions.

When you think of moderate John Kasich, that good Christian man, just remember he cut the Public Education budget so bad in his last budget his Republican Legislature put it back. Then he left the ECOT online school scandal to the tune of Millions.

https://ecotexposed.org/

DeWine promises to prosecute every election. Never does!

[Wicked Blue]

6. Reagan started it nt

[Bluethroughu]

7. +1

[True Blue American]

21. 1000

[2naSalit]

34. +1

[lostnfound]

10. Don't blame the schools, blame the culture: intellectually lazy and shallow thinking.

How many learn to read but never pick up a book after high school (or even college)?
My father born in 1906 dropped out after 9th grade but was a wise person and engaged reader.
In Texas I know many whose rigid knee-jerk thinking seems to never evolve, but others who know what is happening in the world Ms enjoy good books of all kinds.
Self-education is what is lacking, except now, it has been replaced by the illusion of self-education, as people consume inflammatory falsehoods spread by malicious actors. In
‘Building a Bridge to the 18th century” and other books, Neil Postman wrote about high literacy rates driving civic engagement in the first 200 years in the US and the effect that reading books had on the actual thought processes of American citizens. Civic discussions could be nuanced, logical, hard fought exercises, and attention span was better developed.

I like your “medieval peasants with iPhones” analogy.

However, the fact remains that the materials published and circulated back then indicate intense interest in the printed word. George Fisher wrote in his 1748 book The Instructor, “Tis to ye Press & Pen we Morals owe / All we believe & almost all we know.”

Patterns of literacy could also be inferred: more people could read in New England and the mid-Atlantic than in the South, and city-dwellers were more literate than those living in the countryside. Moreover, literacy rates in America were much higher than in most of Europe. The Foundation for Economic Education estimates that around 80% of men and 50% of women in New England were literate by 1776. These number quickly rose, and by the 1800s, only one in four Americans were illiterate.
https://readcenter.org/literacy-rates-improved-since-1776/

[GPV]

12. I'm a teacher. I don't blame the schools. I blame the Repubs for gutting public education.

[2naSalit]

43. +1

I agree. I am an example of the change in the quality of public education as I was fortunate to have had most of my schooling in a region that highly valued education. It was a crime to not send your kids to school, truancy laws were in place and were heavily enforced.

That all changed by the time I bailed in the 9th grade for survival reasons. But I went to classes once in a while, trade schools, twenty-five years after I should have graduated high school, I enrolled in college with high GED scores in everything but numbers (I discovered I'm dyslexic too). And I graduated twice.

My family, though dysfunctional, all read a lot. We always had a library of some size or another and a piano. I think our culture has been swept up in marketing strategies that sway us away from seeking knowledge and understanding. Think about how so many are glued to their hand screens, they can't even look up.

Big changes need to take place but we, as usual, won't deal with them until forced.

[lostnfound]

52. "marketing strategies that sway us away from seeking knowledge and understanding'

Well said. That’s what I was hinting at when I said don’t blame the schools. The expectation that learning should be a life-long hobby, at least, is actively discouraged by our culture. Television and advertising in general seeks to make the public predictable, voracious, needy consumers and little else.

It is HARD to find quality programs, and easy to find stuff that makes your IQ drop 50 points.

Humans are visual.

[True Blue American]

58. Agree

I watched it happen in my state.

[c-rational]

48. +1

[ecstatic]

54. Exactly. All of this is by design.

Look at what kids are taught in other countries versus what they're taught here.

[Klaralven]

4. Ethnicity and geographic distribution of low skilled adults doesn't seem to support that they're GOP

Adult Literacy in the United States

FIGURE 3. Percentage of low-skilled adults age 16 to 65, by nativity status and race/ethnicity: 2012 and 2014


U.S. Skills Map: State and County Indicators of Adult Literacy and Numeracy

https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/skillsmap/

[Scrivener7]

5. How do you read that as not supporting that it is the GOP? The most illiteracy in your source map

occurs in the reddest areas.

And are you seeing a spate of Democrats cutting educational funding that the rest of us have missed?

Or perhaps you are thinking the black and latino illiterate people enumerated in your source are the ones voting for TFG and ignoring science?

[Klaralven]

14. County level 2020 election results to compare with literacy distribution map

[Scrivener7]

19. Again, what is your point? Are you seeing Democrats cutting funding to education?

Are you saying that the illiterate black and latino populations are the ones voting for TFG and ignoring science?

Clearly you are trying to imply something. Why are you not simply stating it? Share your wisdom, do.

[True Blue American]

23. If you look at that map the blue areas are where the better educated

Workers and jobs are.

[radius777]

53. Dems are the party of densely populated

metropolitan areas, and you will naturally have immigrants, working class, inner city poor, etc in such areas who are struggling to get by.

But there's no excuse for people who have been here for generations choosing to be anti-science and anti-education as they are in many red areas.

[PJMcK]

13. Your map belies your point, I think (n/t)

[no_hypocrisy]

8. Either they're not thinking or

they've never learned how to think.

Then there's the special class of those who are willfully ignorant. Don't know and don't want to know.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

18. My teachers taught me to think, NOT what to think.

In other words, the LACK of intellectual curiosity leads to stupidity and ignorance.

I can tell when I am speaking to a person who lacks intellectual curiosity by their limited vocabulary, their grammar, their inability to think for themselves, limited life experiences, even down to their education levels.

Literacy opens doors to so much of what life has to offer.

[no_hypocrisy]

28. Ironically, I was "that one" in my classes in high school who easily argued with the

teachers, often excoriating them. And they argued with me. And I argued back. No regrets.

Funny how in the Seventies, girls weren't supposed to speak up.

[Scrivener7]

9. The same percentage of Americans has always acted so stupid.

It is stunning to read about the 1918 flu, because the response to it was almost exactly the same as the response to Covid. The same levels of stupidity, the same moronic behavior.

[uponit7771]

56. +1, there's just more of them now because s pop is 330 million

[Scrivener7]

59. And, they feed each other through social media.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

15. They are the ones who complain "OTHERS" are taking away their jobs.

I wonder why?

[The Jungle 1]

16. Repukes are fighting to make education worse.

The teachers in my PA school district were told by the school board they were not allowed to discuss 1/6.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

33. That is the same OXYMORONIC attitude as...

Fighting for Peace or having sex to preserve Virginity. Those dogs do not hunt.

Republican lawmakers are not concerned about TRUTH. LIES are more profitable.

[Lonestarblue]

20. Too many people get all their news from television or radio instead of reading.

Fox and hate radio have helped dumb down several generations. But younger people are also more likely to get their information from sources not requiring them to read (online video) or to read snippets that provide no context and no background to develop understanding (tweets, social media, etc.). The few remaining local newspapers in Republican states have been taken over by the right wing, and any news they supply to their diminishing number of readers is completely biased. I read mostly news sources on the Internet now, though I resist their videos purporting to be news. I can read an article faster than having to wait for one or more ads to play and then wait for the video to get to the point, which it often fails to do.

The US has been declining in international rankings for education for years. I blame Republicans because they cut school budgets and allow far too many children, especially in poor districts, to attend substandard schools.

[certainot]

40. yup. any time dems try to increase school funding rw think tanks use rw radio to kill it and

unlike fox, radio is coordinated on the local level as well

[fightforfreedom]

22. When I was in high school I figured out I had to also educate myself.

Most of my teachers did a good job but I knew I wasn't being taught everything I needed to know. I started to read a lot of books. I became a history, science buff. It amazing how much you can learn by simply reading books.

[paleotn]

24. Dunning-Kruger effect. It's well studied.

Couple that with the decline in the quality of public education in the US over the last 30 to 40 years and you get where we are now. Teetering on Idiocracy.

[certainot]

45. mount stupid also represents certitude. authoritarians are characterized by fear of uncertainty so

they have to learn to create certainty, which requires denial of reality, which is rewarded due to sex on the wrong brain.

[AllaN01Bear]

25. thank you, thank you, thank you. i have been wanting to ask this very question.

[AllaN01Bear]

26. i have seen smart ppl belive in this nonsense too also.

[NoMoreRepugs]

27. If 1 in 6 believe the Orange Menace won I myself

can’t see a way for the country to move forward. That’s just too BIG an anchor holding back progress.

[randr]

29. 100 is the average IQ

Half the people fall below that rank. It has always been that way.

[Kaleva]

38. I think you mean that 100 is the median.

[GB_RN]

30. To Paraphrase George Carlin...

Imagine how stupid the average American is. Now, just think that HALF of the public is even dumber than that.

[Wounded Bear]

31. I was reading at a 9th grade level...

in 6th grade. It's not that hard.

[mountain grammy]

32. I think Rupert Murdock saw it

seeing Rush and others succeed, with help from American right wing oligarchs and he jumped in with his nutty channel. He made himself much richer lifting up stupidity, gulliblity and conspiracies and America was ripe for the pickings.

[Kaleva]

37. Why give a pass to the more dangerous educated people who believe stupid things?

[ashredux]

39. Most don't actually "believe"...they want to manipulate the others...they are evil

[live love laugh]

49. Propagandists don't believe, propogandized do.

[PatrickforB]

41. This is why the right wing has encouraged the creationist fanatics

to pollute school curriculum with creationism as an 'alternative' to science, why they encourage the voucherists to lobby the rerouting of funding to 'christian' schools, why they encourage the krazy kluxers to wash down the curriculum in TX, because as TX goes, so goes the nation in terms of watered-down textbooks. And now, here in COVID-world, we have crazy Q parents being encouraged to show at school board meetings protesting mask mandates.

So....................cui bono?

The OLIGARCHS, of course. While businesses claim to want people who can think critically, reason and calculate at high levels, have great communication skills, and are readily able to troubleshoot, the OLIGARCHS, at the same time want a stupid, ignorant, docile population that is confused, does not know truth from falsehood, and thinks government is the problem.

[live love laugh]

50. And it's why they are attacking school boards.

[RestoreAmerica2020]

42. Ahhh..the stupid people syndrome--Carlos Cipolla's 5 Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

..Cipolla identifies 4 categories of people:helpless, intelligent, bandits, stupid people. With stupid people being perhaps the most dangerous. Animated video at link.

https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tFP1zc0tCxIz05ONzVg9OLLSSwvVshPUyguKS3ITAEAiqwJpg&q=laws+of+stupid&oq=&aqs=chrome.5.69i58j69i177j69i64j35i39i362i523j46i39i199i362i465i523j46i39i362i523j35i39i362i523l5j46i39i362i523j35i39i362i523l3...12.-1j0j4&client=ms-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:f932a6ae,vid:SbaMZYJr7TI,st:0

[bucolic_frolic]

44. They should always be asked to WRITE IT DOWN.

That should give them pause.

[Alice Kramden]

46. There is also a disdain for education

An attitude of disdain is prevalent now, where formerly knowledge was more respected.

[WinstonSmith4740]

47. Remember when Reagan took a meat cleaver to the education budget?

And pretty much any other program that benefited the public good? This is exactly what they were looking for. An uneducated populace is WAY easier to manipulate & control than an educated one. It's also why they had to get rid of the Fairness Doctrine, and allow foreign ownership of media outlets, which allowed Faux Noise. They knew exactly what they were doing, and why.

[mcar]

51. GOP has had a 40+ year war on public education

They have succeeded.

[RANDYWILDMAN]

55. And they followed a college dropout named Rush

and companies paid him millions to propagandize the listeners and all the other RW stations followed his lead and the RW pols followed as well.

Calling your followers, Dittoheads so they can be as dumb and misguided as yourself is pretty clever. Calling women you don't like Fema-nazi's is pretty sick and mysoginist. I hope everybody who paid this man one cent, rots in hell for the dumbing down of society this man has wrought.



Don't forget the power of turning TV/RAdio/Media from information to infortainment.

[True Blue American]

57. Hey guys, check this out!

Not all bad news!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/30/nyregion/new-york-redistricting-congressional-map.html

[SKKY]

60. You think it's an act???