The gish gallop has gone mainstream.

What we needed, twenty to forty years ago at the bare minimum, were journalists who were willing to shut that shit down.

I remember being a child watching the news with my parents and seeing an oil company defender accusing the scientists of chasing profits.

Like what the fuck? How did that not end immediately with "And who is currently profiting?" is and always has been beyond me.

...I'm not sure that's a great example of the gish gallop. Technically.

My point was that we now report the untrue claims rather than saying, from the start, "This candidate said something completely false and not worth repeating."

For clicks, views, the algorithm, for profit. Nope. It was all to game the system in order to destroy it.

Sorry, this probably isn't coherent but I'm tired and tipsy, and I've chosen to hit save.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. 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, 1980

Yes, they've always been here. There has always been more stupid ignorant people than educated and intelligent people.

Previously, the stupid had no platform.

The fire hose of stupid shit we are inundated with nowadays used to only trickle through in person.

Someone would say something insanely stupid to you at the bar, at the grocery store, at the barber shop etc... and all we had to do was ignore them or tell them to shut up

Thanks to social media, now they've teamed up and have millions of followers.

The question ought to be, How are the the educated and intelligent going to rise above it?

I grew up in a small Utah town. The only four adults I ever remember hearing admit they were wrong especially when it came to politics or science or religion were my father and three of my high school teachers.

All the rest would literally tell me that the research papers and encyclopedias I tried to cite as evidence were made up by either satan or some government deep state conspiracy. Or they’d say we can “agree to disagree” about shit like animals feeling pain and the flaws in eugenics (I wish I was joking)

Yes, they have always been this stupid. Learning requires accepting when you’re wrong and the vast majority of people I knew growing up saw that as weakness.

I thought it would be different when I got out of that place, and while living in a larger city is better, it’s not better by all that much.

As a westerner who lived in Asia for the past 2 decades I have unusual take on this.

Americans generally aren't more stupid than anyone else but they have no face saving culture which acts as a useful bottleneck on social and information exchanges. Because of this Americans can easily subscribe and announce their beliefs even if theyre low effort conspiracies because they are not afraid of losing face for believing in something stupid.

Combined that with information flow that is too fast for most to even comprehend let alone keep up with means that Americans are quick to believe lies and don't feel punished for doing so.

This is very different in face saving cultures like Asia where if you say or do something stupid you'll have strong social consequences and even spiritual/religious ones if you're a Buddhist.

The caveat here is why Europeans are a bit better than this? I'm not sure i hadn't lived there for a while but I'd imagine that smaller countries are less susceptible to this issue as they can correct quicker and I think Europe does have a bit of face saving culture, well definitely more than the US.

TL;DR: Americans are stupid because they are shameless

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, 1980

There were people warning against the glorification of ignorance in the US nearly half a century ago. It's nothing new; it just reached critical mass (also thanks to social media where ignorant people can self-organise).

Yes.

https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf

The republicans have been ruining the education system for decades. Can't have smart people without paid teachers.

Billionaires are extracting all the wealth from this country and convincing the idiots that Maria from El Salvador with 2 dollars to her name is the problem.

America won big both morally and militarily in WWII. For the average poorly informed citizen, that meant our government had permanently earned its position as the Good Guy. Lots of people thought (and still think) that any evidence to the contrary is merely a mistake or anomaly.

Then there’s capitalism. Wartime manufacturing brought us out of the Great Depression, and even the average citizen benefited. Unfortunately, capitalism became much more powerful than we realized, and now we’re beginning to see what a monster we’ve created. We know that the top 1% are literally killing our biosphere to protect their investments, but somehow our Good Guy government is allowing it to continue. The average citizen can’t reconcile those facts, so they decided that the facts must be wrong.

Government and capitalism have always been intertwined, but never to the extent we’re seeing under Trump. A Nazi billionaire is shaping government policy. That was supposed to be impossible. Again, the average citizen can’t reconcile those truths, so many of them decided that the libtards must be exaggerating.

I wouldn’t say that we Americans are stupid. I’d use the word “foolish” instead. “Deceived”, too. A few people saw what was coming and tried to warn the rest of us, but we let it happen anyway, because organizations that we thought we could trust lied to us.

Those of us with at least some awareness of what’s going on are traumatized (whether we think so or not). We’re trying to accept that our own government suddenly hates a lot of us, and that the corporations that have tried so hard to make themselves indispensable are, at best, constantly trying to deceive and monetize everything about us.

"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

Anti-intellectualism has a certain tradition in the USA, it's kind of well-known.

A German perspective: I think Germans have always been this stupid, they're mostly just more willing to say the quiet part out loud than they were between 1970 and 2014 (rough estimate). The difference is that the far right extremists have a popular platform now, and the mainstream parties refuse to ban either the far right party or all the media (X, Facebook, local tabloid press etc.) that's pushing them. If this party had been around in 1960, it would definitely have been banned.

Are we more stupid than we used to be? Yeah. But I'd use the word ignorant instead. It's a bit more accurate. Ignorance is chosen, and that's what our current epidemic of stupidity is. Chosen.

There have always been a lot of ignorant people, but now, with social media, those people have platforms to infect others with their ignorance. Also, in my own lifetime, I've witnessed a shift from ignorant people still being able to set aside partisan politics to condemn obviously bad actors or decisions to 100% doubling down on partisan politics no matter how bad the person or action is.

I've definitely FELT this increase in willful ignorance over the course of my life living in this country. People in my own life choosing to believe things they absolutely would not have believed a couple decades ago. People not understanding super basic concepts.

I think there are other factors than just bad actors spreading ignorance on social media. I think a lot of it has to do with simple distractions. The modern world has so many. A lot of the people I know don't even read books. Like, they simply don't read. If I ask them what book they read last they have to concentrate because it was multiple years ago. That's fucking crazy. Instead of picking up a book they're watching Real Wives of Whatever. Getting involved in some wealthy person's 1st world problems, instead of, you know, learning something.

We're entering an age of concentrated ignorance and, unfortunately, that's very unlikely to end anytime soon. And the stakes are higher than ever for something like that to happen because we possess greater power to decimate this planet than we used to. Through pollution or braindead child-like politicians who can wage war or launch nukes.

It takes a lot less effort to allow things to keep going the way they are than it does to turn things around and responsibly educate the masses. So we're probably going to continue spiraling.

Things are going to get dark. Our quality of life will decline.

I moved to the Netherlands from the U.S. in July of 2022.

My opinion now? There are morons everywhere. I think more, per capita, back in the U.S. of A.

The world is a circus, but in the U.S., you have front row seats.

Carl Sagan released his book The Demon Haunted World in 1995, where he championed the scientific method and critical thought and lamented the dumbing down of (particularly US) society, so no.. It's not new.

I will add that your premise is wrong on the 60s. The leftism in the 60s was counter-culture, it was small and it was mostly confined to the youth.. It was certainly not the prevailing attitude of the country. It was not unlike the leftist groups you see in the US today - small, loud, and a reaction to the heavily conservative country they find themselves in.

Yes. Vaguely going backwards, cherrypicking some things, but this country has always been fucked and done evil things that led to overall increased stupidity:

• Fox News and lack of fairness doctrine
• Citizens United
• A fucking Vice President shot a guy (Cheney was part two, actually)
• Reaganism
• Pointless wars for money
• McCarthyism
• The backlash that began after reconstruction era and boiled over during the early 20th century era immigration that saw increased nationalization and christian zealotry specifically leading to Christianity and "patriotism" forced into laws, on money, in schools, amd such. So many "murican" things that some morons think have been a constant since the founding fathers was actually forced by scared white people in power 100 years ago.
• Civil War
• Side note, did you know even Lincoln was a scheming politician? He pulled strings to ensure he'd have enough electoral votes for his re-election, including pushing for a new state he knew would be loyal to him
• All the lead up to the Civil War, which began with our differences and divide right at the founding of the country. We didn't get along since the beginning.
• Andrew Jackson and the Cherokee
• Everything else we've done to Native people
• A fucking Vice President shot a guy in a duel (this was part one)
• Some personal letters of founding fathers like Washington divulge how yhey actually thought about slaves and how they struggled to see them as humans
• The vast majority of people were not free and did not have voting rights when the country was founded, making the declaration and most of the constitution to come later laughable at best in how they worded things. They explicitly cared about white landowning males with money.

Lead poisoning. Leaded gasoline started in the 1930s, but in the 50s and 60s we destroyed our public transportation and then destroyed millions of black homes to build highways through our cities. So leaded gasoline peaked in the 70s.

Oh, and boomers, who have the most lead brain damage, hold all the political power because they hold all the wealth.

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.

I'm willing to bet one of the largest factors is the isolation we now live in. We used to have third places on every corner, we interacted with our neighbors, and public transport made us connect during commutes. We also relied on talking to people for most of our news and information and generally just were forced to be part of a community, or multiple.

Now we drive alone in a car to work, drive alone back to our house that's isolated from others and don't speak to neighbors, we have no third places left, and we get all our information from the internet or TV. Most people don't have a community larger than a handful of close friends. We can't organize and we don't see the struggles other people are going through or help each other out. There's no social bonds, and everyone only looks out for themselves.

I order to progress, we need to figure out how to form communities again. We need to be able to organize. This is all constructed to keep us thinking about ourselves as an individual rather than the collective us. We think about what I can do, which is pretty minor, not what we can do, which is almost anything we want.

I don't know but check out the show All in the Family which was aired in the 70s. I don't think they have exaggerated the character of Archie Bunker. I really think that there were many people like him during that era. And he is exactly like the pro Trump that we are seeing right now.

I remember him saying in one episode "Nixon is intelligent as he knows how to avoid paying taxes". That argument comes up from pro Trump people.

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!

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.

The descent became a downslide and now it's an avalanche.

No, it hasn't always been that bad. Stupidity happens. It is human. Most times people were able to keep stupidity in check.

That's why democracy was invented, by the way. It was founded on the belief that a collective can be more reasonable than a single or small group.

Not saying that reason were the opposite of stupidity (that would be wisdom), but reason is a means to keep stupidity in check.

Read the book "bowling alone" if you're interested in someone's attempt at researching why we went from collectivism to individualism as a country. There are a large amount of factors but if I were to take a crack at it, I'd list a few: TV, the Internet, smart phones, air conditioning, capitalism, and (last but certainly not least) racism. Racism is foundational to the country and its history.

As far as the stupidity, some of the same factors apply, but there are also additional ones like environmental factors (US citizens eat more microplastics than any other major country since like 2020 and we lead poisoned ourselves for a century), a deep-seeded anti-intellectualism, and we're a large part cultist/religious idiots that see everything through the lense of "some guy" being the best thing ever and the source of all truth.

I think it is because the wealthy have constantly reduced the wealth of the average American. Each individual has to spend more time working, for less pay. This deteriorates their mental and physical health, prevents socialization, saps energy, limits the amount of money, time, and travel they can spend on politics.

IMO, the "lazy" European gets about 95% of an American's work efficiency for the time spent, but are not nearly as damaged by their work/life ratio. This lets them have far greater agency in the politics of their land. If this continues, I think the assorted cultures of Europe will be far more documented in history than their American peer. The corrosion from beating the good life out of American workers, means that there is little incentive for Americans to want their culture to survive nor spread.

Current politics are partially driven by apathy, one born from the learned helplessness that life won't get any better. We will need French cutlery to be deployed, so that the blood of tyrants can water the tree of liberty. Just as with the French, I think America can recover from a dead end. Whether that happens...well, we will see within a decade.

Here's hoping the good guys destroy Dogey America, and replace it something that people can take pride in.

"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)

I would say "stupid" is a judgement you should keep between your ears. I think Americans are undereducated before they get released into a mad for-profit higher education system that gives them debts for life (but hitherto also great sciencing at a high level). The strong cultural undercurrent of exceptionalism hardly ever lets them look elsewhere for comparison. And the political system, which is based on who can spend more money, not so much on ideas, is proving to be a system that's rarely bringing out the best people for top jobs. But it's a dog and pony show and that favors characters over good policies. The fragmentation of people all watching the same news show at night 3 decades ago, to watching partisan 24h news channels 2 decades ago, to splintering even further on the socials now adds to the problem. There is no largely unified audience with the same facts at their disposal.

It's also nice that Trump is now dismantling the democratic state because voting in the US always gets filtered through electoral colleges and gerimandered districts, skewing results to favor the two main parties, often only one of them. It was pretend-democratic until now.

Something that gets overlooked easily is the long history of fascist rules that was in place in the south after the civil war. Jim Crow laws masqueraded as democracy for a long time and every time courts tried to put a stop to it, the white people in charge found other ways to be a-holes. That's part of American culture already.

America has always had a penchant for whacky leaders. Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. None of them fit my idea of a virtuous leader. But at least the ones this century adhered to a decorum, an unwritten standard of how to behave as president. Nixon didn't want to get caught. Trump doesn't give a sh!t. So the leadership culture has shifted, not for the better.

All this mixes a large chunk, an uncurious population that still sees itself pretty much as a role model for the world, falling for simple populist messages. It should also be said that tarring all Americans with the same brush is unfair. I think it was the votes of less than a third of eligible voters that made Trump 2.0 a reality, roughly another third just behind it, with the remainder not bothering to vote at all. I would say the often fantasized silent majority is actually not pro Trump.

So calling all Americans stupid is not right. There are a lot of people hurting right now as they watch their country develop in a bad way. We need those people to stand up and fight and calling them names doesn't help.

(Other countries have gone down similar routes, have had whacky leaders, have done questionable things. The US is not alone on this path.)

This is not about intelligence. People, in general, are really fucking smart. Think of the dumbest person you know, who is not cognitively disabled. I'd bet they are intelligent enough to hold down a job and live a meaningful life. Of all the things I've seen that hold people back, lack of intelligence doesn't even rank.

I think high levels of bias are to blame. Current media and culture encourage the embrace of bias because it makes people easier to sell to; more suggestible to marketing. It doesn't matter how smart you are, if your navel feels good when someone sings your tune, you'll believe whatever they tell you. Especially if you aren't even making an attempt to understand your bias tendencies.

This doesn't answer your question but is more of an interesting observation that fits your question. It seems bar for political leaders' mistakes has gotten so low over the pass few decades.

In the early 90s then VP Dan Quayle misspelled potato (though apparently not 100% his fault) and he was labeled an idiot by the entire country. Bush had a lot of funny Bushisms but most are either weird, poorly worded, malapropisms, or a mix of all three.

Then you have Trump. And while there are definitely people who think he's an idiot, it doesn't seem as widespread of a belief as it was for Quayle or Bush. I think part of it is because Trump is far more sensitive to criticism than any president we've seen so he'll go after people who say anything negative about him. But I'm sure there are other reasons as well (ex: politicized news channels, social media, technology etc)

People have been stupid for centuries.

1. The average education level has been low or nonexistant for most people through most of history so everyone was equally dumb. Public education is a relatively new thing. People have been vulnerable to greed, deluded thinking, etc since day 1.

2. The internet has allowed stupid people to find each other and reinforce each other's stupidity and create a race of conspiracy obsessed super morons.

3. The internet has also distilled everything into negativity to the point where everyone and everything isn't just questioned but warped and rejected. Even the most basic advice on public health is now rejected. You've got people rejecting basic facts and science. Everyone who runs for office gets subject to so much hate and lies that no sensible person would want to run for office now leaving only questionable personalities willing to do it.

I'll add that America's obsession with individualism, which ironically becomes groupthink like with MAGA, has become extremely poisonous. It is making it impossible to do even basic things like improve public transportation, gun control, education, healthcare, public health, etc. It is like we've become a nation of children who can't handle being told to go to bed and brush their teeth.

I'm pretty sure USA being a fucking evil empire since, at least, 1898, has played a significant hand in making its population stupid bricks, at least when it comes to foreign matters and, often, domestic ones that relate to welfare.

Targeted, systematic attacks on education, and a robust propaganda networks ran by billionaires.

No. Education has been under attack for the last 50 years.

For every generation that goes by education gets worse and worse. People are literally getting dumber as a result.

It’s all in the republican playbook. The dumber people are the easier they are to control. That’s how dick wads like Trump get into office.

I think so yes (there is a stereotype about them for good reason after all), but I think things are trending in an extremely concerning direction and things are going to get worse. I mean, they're clearly trying to make younger Americans less intelligent, look at what they're doing with the department of education.

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.

We've spent multiple decades making sure our kids didn't receive the best education and our government officials are complicit in fueling propaganda for pocket change.

There's a reason we've been the worst first world country in everything that matters except school shootings for a while now

Increased blood lead level in children has been correlated with decreases in intelligence, nonverbal reasoning, short-term memory, attention, reading and arithmetic ability, fine motor skills, emotional regulation, and social engagement. … The effect of lead on children's cognitive abilities takes place at very low levels.

High blood lead levels in adults are also associated with decreases in cognitive performance and with psychiatric symptoms such as depression and anxiety.

Lead poisoning # By organ system - Wikipedia

https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2 <- 427 ppm