The Dumbing Down Of Right-Wing America

[Celerity]

Tucker Carlson pretends to be a mildly brain-damaged dog watching a magic trick. But he's really doing something else.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/the-dumbing-down-of-right-wing-america



When I was a child back in the distant past of the 1970s and early 80s, I started to dumb myself down for the benefit of the kids around me. I was a total nerd back when being a nerd was very very bad. Almost a mortal offense. Even as popular as 1984’s “Revenge of the Nerds” was, it would take decades for the stigma to fade (and let’s be honest, it still really hasn’t). By the time I was in 3rd or 4th grade, I had started using smaller words so the kids around me wouldn’t be confused or annoyed. I stopped talking about complicated science concepts, even science fiction because if it wasn’t something easy to understand like “pew pew pew” laser guns, other kids rolled their eyes and threw out the dreaded “nerd” label. I did a lot of damage to myself with this performative ignorance, but I didn’t know any better. I know better now, which makes watching the professional right dumb itself down that much harder to swallow. I know they know better but, unlike the eight year-old me, the right dumbs itself down for entirely different reasons.

Be afraid

To watch right-wing politicians and talking heads for more than ten seconds is to watch, for the most part, extremely intelligent and educated people pretend to be grossly uneducated and easily confused. For every Donald Trump and Lauren Boebert, there are ten Tucker Carlsons and Megyn Kellys — people who put on a show of being confounded and uninformed in order to manipulate their audience. Gretchen Carlson, who attended both Stanford and Oxford, spent years pretending to be an idiot. Bill O’Reilly did not graduate from a prestigious college like Gretchen Carlson, but he also did not attend school in the Stone Age, either. Pretending the tides are a mystery is an insult to not only his own intelligence but his audience’s as well. Here is Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy whining about how long it took to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon:

Link to tweet

As Speaker, McCarthy would have been informed of the Pentagon’s recommendation to not shoot down the balloon until it was over the water in order to ensure civilian safety. He knew, for a fact, that Biden had given the order days earlier and the military was simply waiting for the right time to send a plane up. But instead, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, the second in line of succession to the presidency behind Vice President Kamala Harris, pretended not to know anything. Then there’s Megyn Kelly, another former bobbling blonde head from Fox News. Kelly isn’t particularly academically accomplished, but she did earn a law degree and worked for one of the largest law firms in the world. And yet…

Link to tweet

The insult is distasteful in of itself, but Kelly has to add some performative ignorance for her audience. How do we know she doesn’t believe what she is saying? Because turns out her father also has a doctorate in education and is known as…Dr. Edward Kelly. They know better but can use performative ignorance to generate fear and anger among Republican voters. It would be so easy to inform the base of simple facts. President Biden ordered the balloon shot down days ago. First Lady Jill Biden has a doctorate and millions of people around the world without medical degrees are called “doctor.” The press has been using the unofficial title “Czar” for decades. The movement of the tides is not complicated. Elementary school children have been learning about it for generations.

snip

[FalloutShelter]

1. Know who else has a Doctorate in Edu.?

Megyn Kelly’s father. Is he too using a fake title?
This is all just nasty performance art for them and they think you are stupid enough to just swallow anything.

Keep exposing their bullshit and cruelty.

[Celerity]

2. performative faux outrage for the slack-jawed fashie yokels