The United States of Stupid. I mean, really, REALLY stupid ...

ikosmos wrote:

Because if there's one thing that a bully hates, then it's laughing in his face.

Or calling him "shorty". In some places that will get you killed.

I hate to sound elitist but for the sake of perceptions of truth?
Whatever the levels of ignorance of a public, it is to its leadership and intellectuals we must look for directions...let's face reality most people prefer to engage in personal family and perhaps community life, worklife? It's always a minority, more spiritually oriented, politically and intellectually oriented...not to say they are better in a ny way, just that this is their focus......

so what is happening of course is the corruption of this minority...the forms of such corruption must be examined in detail!

The systems forms of corruption must be discreditted! 

The problem, iyraste, is when that leadership plays on ignorance, and dismisses evidence as elitist. There is a big difference between being a populist and kneecapping Statistics Canada because you don't want to have to be challenged by reality.

I'd add that that is not a problem specific to the U.S. They boys in that pic are masters of it. They have gone as far as beating people up at funerals to pretend an army does not exist.

Got into a chance conversatioin with a USA citizen the other day at the coffee shop. He was a young man I would say in his early thirties. In any case, he overheard myself and my coffee companion discussing the US election, and joined in. He was very definitely not a Trump supporter.

The conversation ranged a bit, but at some point I mentioned Tom Paine, one of the most important people in the founding of the USA. This fellow had never heard of him.

Courtesy Wikipedia:

Quote:

Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–76 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies.

...It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776, at the beginning of the American Revolution, and became an immediate sensation.

It was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history. As of 2006, it remains the all-time best selling American title, and is still in print today.

This gentleman had never heard of it, and he was one of the good guys.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

How are you on 18th century Canada, Rev? Or even 19th? Are you familiar with Lord Elgin's role in democratic reform?

We aren't all historians, and lack of education is not the same as lack of common sense. Falling for that trap is just as bad as anti-intellectualism.

 

In the late 90s, when Joe Clark was doing his second stint as PC leader, I met a Canadian who didn't know that Clark had been Prime Minister in the 70s. Granted, this guy would have been a toddler, at most, when Clark was serving, but still. A person would have to have read almost nothing about recent Canadian history, or even then-current events(since Clark and his background were often discussed in the news), to be totally unaware of his prime ministership.

I also had a debate on-line a few years back with a Canadian who was telling American posters that the Charter was superior to the Bill Of Rights, because Charter decisions can never be over-ruled. When I drew his attention to Section 33, he didn't seem to have heard of it, but eventually replied that if a legislature tried to invoke notwithstanding, the courts wouldn't allow it.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

How are you on 18th century Canada, Rev? Or even 19th? Are you familiar with Lord Elgin's role in democratic reform?

We aren't all historians, and lack of education is not the same as lack of common sense. Falling for that trap is just as bad as anti-intellectualism.

The pamphlet that Paine wrote was the most important document in the founding of the United States. Surely everyone knows about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Well, Tom Paine was at least as important as those two in US history. He single-handedly turned the revolutionary war from "no taxation without representation' to 'screw your representation, we'll make our own country'. If you read Paine's "The Rights Of Man" you will see much of his thought reflected in the US constitution.

So Tom Paine was very important in the founding of the USA in two ways. First, by convincing the colonists to break away completely from Great Britain, and secondly by inspiring a good part (if not a major part) of their constitution.

The question isn't why would they remember him, the question is how could they forget him.

I suggest it is the same phenomenon as the United States of Stupid, except in the case of Tom Paine I believe they actively want to forget him. Partly at least, for his intellectual rigour.

There have been a number of Lord Elgin's, some who gained their marbles, and some who lost theirs, but no Lord Elgin was as important to the founding of Canada as Tom Paine was to the USA.

Rev Pesky wrote:

the question is how could they forget him.

I suggest it is the same phenomenon as the United States of Stupid, except in the case of Tom Paine I believe they actively want to forget him. Partly at least, for his intellectual rigour.

This is an asinine comment.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Rev Pesky wrote:

No Lord Elgin was as important to the founding of Canada as Tom Paine was to the USA.

There was one Lord Elgin in Canadian history.

And nah, not important at all. All he did was back up Canada's first democratic government in the face of a right-wing anglo mob that went so far as to burn our parliament building and threaten to hang the prime minister.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellion_Losses_Bill

Baldwin and Lafontaine's govenment created Canada as an independent nation. It was far more significant than the business contract that was signed 18 years later. If it isn't remembered, perhaps it is because it was our nation standing up to power.

They destroyed Elgin's carriage with stones when he drove to give that law royal assent. He refused to have it repaired, and continued to use it throughout his tenure tas a reminder of what had happened.

But really, what does it matter if some Canadians or Americans aren't up on old white guy history? For a lot of people it is not their history, after all, and it says nothing about their intelligence.

And really, it is far more important that they have some familiarity with how things work here and now.

You should maybe take a history course at SFU. You could be taught by Andrew Heard, who wrote a paper on Canadian independence, and somehow accomplished that without Lord Elgin's name coming into it once.

CANADIAN INDEPENDENCE

Quote:

...As Frank Scott has argued, "Never at any time in [1919-39] was the full international personality of the Dominions, as distinct from Great Britain, established beyond equivocation".  Indeed, symbolically-important legal traces of Canada's colonial status were only shed with the passing of the Canada Act by the British Parliament in 1982.

...Until the passage of the Statute of Westminster (1931 - Rev P), no Dominion legislature had the power to pass either laws with normal extra-territorial effect or laws purporting to amend or repeal Imperial laws which expressly or necessarily applied to it; the need for this change was demonstrated in 1925 when the Australian High Court had ruled inoperative sections of an Australian Commonwealth Act which contradicted provisions of the Imperial Merchant Shipping Act.  Section 2 of the Statute of Westminster is perhaps the most significant legal provision relating to Canada's acquisition of legislative sovereignty, because it accorded both Parliament and the provincial legislatures the power to pass any laws amending or repealing legislation of the Imperial Parliament; also, no Canadian law passed thereafter could be held void because it conflicted with Imperial legislation.

But perhaps we're talking about two different Canada's.

Rev Pesky wrote:

But perhaps we're talking about two different Canadas.

No, what I am talking about is that someone can be able to recite history backwards and forwards and remain clueless about what is going on here and now, and by contrast someone can be uneducated and have a very good understanding of who has power and control and who does not.

Don't get me wrong, I think a knowledge of history is a very good thing, but being able to recite the dates and names - particularly the names most wrapped up in the national myth - doesn't really mean too much. One can do that and still be as thick as a post. Hell, the teapartiers think all those boys made America because god told them to. So how much does knowing Tom Paine's name really mean?

This is kind of like a segment of Mercer's Talking to Americans. Fun for a laugh, but it really means nothing. And if one is fool enough to think that because of anecdotal stuff like that we (or anyone) are actually smarter than them, who's the real fool here?

I was reading a collection of essays by Stephen Jay Gould, and stumbled across something pertinent to this discussion.

For those unfamiliar with Gould, he...

Quote:

...began his higher education at Antioch College, graduating with a double major in geology and philosophy in 1963. During this time, he also studied at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. After completing graduate work at Columbia University in 1967 under the guidance of Norman Newell, he was immediately hired by Harvard University where he worked until the end of his life (1967–2002). In 1973, Harvard promoted him to professor of geology and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the institution's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

In 1982 Harvard awarded him the title of Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology. The following year, 1983, he was awarded a fellowship at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he later served as president (1999–2001).

So what I stumbled across was from a collection of his monthly essays published in 'Natural History' magazine. The particular article was an examination of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein', and it's treatment by Hollywood. In the article he had this to say.

Quote:

Karloff's Frankenstein contains an even more serious and equally prominent distortion of a theme that I regard as the primary lesson of Mary Shelly's book - another lamentable example of Hollywood's sense that the American public cannot tolerate even the slightest exercise in intellectual complexity.

That comment made me wonder how much of the satisfaction of wilful ignorance of the USA citizenry is a result of exactly what Gould says, a 'sense that the American public cannot tolerate...intellectual complexity'.

By the way, Gould wrote 300 essays for Natural History magazine, and many of them are in a series of collections. Well worth the time to read.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

And yeah, that's why they invented jazz. To show us how stupid they are.

You've already paraded your ignorance of Canadian (and American) history. Stop now, while you still have a shred of cover for the paucity of your knowledge.

Rev Pesky wrote:

Cody87 wrote:

...How can you justify a comment that an entire society who (for the last 70+ years at least) has attracted some of the brightest minds in hundreds of fields and some of the most famous scientists (Albert Einstein, Nicola Tesla) and intellectuals actively wants to forget someone due to their intellectual rigour? Where other people might say "Americans try to forget {public figure X, Y, Z] due to {owning slaves, public drunkenness, poor moral role model}", you're actually suggesting Americans want to forget this man because he was smart.

This sort of casual, off-base disparagement of an entire group of people is a sure way to senselessly alienate those who belong in that group...

From an article posted upthread:

Quote:

There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western countries. Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America’s political and social fabric. Famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said: "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."

I guess you missed that...

Are Americans really Anti-Intellectual?

The fullness of U.S. history does not really line up with the images pushed to the fore in the mid-1960s. Although there have unquestionably been episodes of anti-intellectualism, Americans have been more inclined to celebrate the nation’s democratic culture as a hotbed incubating genius and intellectual accomplishment, including by people from ordinary backgrounds....

Americans ... attended popular summer schools ... and demanded access to higher education. In the 1910s and 1920s, Albert Einstein became a household name because, as one journalist boasted in Popular Science Monthly, “we have over a million and a half readers of the popular scientific magazines – over three and a half million if engineering and technical magazines are included.” ... Higher education became more accessible, as male enrollments in U.S. colleges increased by 55% between 1907 and 1915, and college attendance by women jumped by a remarkable 156%.

Fascination with educated Americans reached from black periodicals such as The Crisis celebrating African Americans who earned doctorates to the national excitement about the “brain trust” advising President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression....

Even during the putatively anti-intellectual 1950s, Newsweek reported that “drugstore book racks, once the undisputed home of Mickey Spillane, now also shelter the paperbound works of Plato, Shakespeare, Freud, and St. Augustine.”

Inasmuch as America’s supposed anti-intellectualism makes good headlines today, it can hardly be taken as a true portrait of American history. Far from celebrating the ignorant, Americans have often been drawn to brainpower, genius, and have demonstrated fascination with the curious habits of ivy-educated elites.

According to the Georgia Department Of Education, the Social Studies performance standards for the state include...

"Explain the importance of Thomas Paine's Common Sense to the movement for independence".

(section SSUSH3, near the top)

I also found a few elementary schools named after Thomas Paine, including one in New Jersey where the newsletter is called Coomon Sense. And when I studied American literature at university, the textbook, published by that radical underground bookseller Random House, contained generous selections from Paine's writing.

Pesky, besides the guy you met at the restauurant, what is your source for saying that Thomas Paine has been purged from the American consciousness?

Sure, but I am sure you don't recall every lesson from your school years.

And "expunged" is a good word. Your last question raises a somewhat more complex question than "does not knowing about Tom Paine mean you are stupid"?

I am sure the Georgia Department of Education doesn't really want students to read so far into Paine's message about independence, the state, and religion that they have a full understanding of it. Just enough so they get the bit about Britain (and maybe nowadays, Washington) being the enemy.

We've basically got a "United States is evil" thread, and now we've got a "United States is stupid" thread.  Is it time for "The United States of Lazy"?

I've got this photo of an obese Walmart shopper in a scooter, stocking up on FunYuns, that I'm dying to post.

Why not?

Feel free, but there isn't actually anything progressive or productive at all about making fun of how stupid and violent other people are.

Aside from the fact it is a complete crock of shit, how does it make you any better than the things you are pointing out, if that is what you focus your energy on?

Is that your enlightened, non-violent, and intelligent alternative?

voice of the damned wrote:

...Yeah, that's kinda part of my point, if I didn't state it on the last page. One person, even many people, not knowing the name of an historical figure doesn't mean that the historical figure has been flushed down the memory hole. Just that they don't recall everything they learned in school.

I'll grant that Thomas Paine doesn't have the status of Jefferson, Washington, or even Franklin, in the American pantheon. But this might have more to do with the fact that his role was largely as a theoretician, rather than as a soldier or politician.

In fact he was also a soldier and a politician. He volunteered in the Continental Army, and later became Secretary of the Committee of Foreign Affairs in Congress.

Theoretician? Well, all I can say is there's not really any reason for Canadians to know Tom Paine, so ignorance of him in Canada is more or less forgiveable.

For those who want to know more, here's an article form the BBC News

Who was Thomas Paine?

Quote:

Paine threw his lot in with those Americans who were thirsting for independence from Britain. In January 1776 he published a short pamphlet that earned him the title The Father of the American Revolution.

Titled simply, Common Sense, the work has been described by the Pulitzer-winning historian Gordon S Wood as "the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire [American] revolutionary period". It put the case for democracy, against the monarchy, and for American independence from British rule.

It became a sensation, selling 120,000 copies in the first three months. Given that America had only two million free citizens at the time, that is the equivalent of an American author selling 15 million books in three months today.

So Thomas Paine will stand on his own, without my support.

But there is a measure that is very real, and of an intellectual nature, by which we can gauge the USA. That is the general belief in evolution, the single most important theory in the biological sciences. Without evolution, nothing in the biological world makes any sense. So one would think that the nation whose industry depends so much on science would find strong support for the theory of evolution amongst the general population.

As of June 14, 2014, some 42% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago. Only 19% of respondents below believed that humans have evolved without the guidance of god.

Belief in Creation in the USA

Quote:

More than four in 10 Americans continue to believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago, a view that has changed little over the past three decades. Half of Americans believe humans evolved, with the majority of these saying God guided the evolutionary process. However, the percentage who say God was not involved is rising.

...The percentage of the U.S. population choosing the creationist perspective as closest to their own view has fluctuated in a narrow range between 40% and 47% since the question's inception. There is little indication of a sustained downward trend in the proportion of the U.S. population who hold a creationist view of human origins.

...A number of states have been embroiled in fights in recent years over the degree to which evolution and creationism should be included in their public school curricula.

This definitely sets the USA apart from other industrialized nations. In an older review of belief in evolution (2005) which polled all the countries of Europe (except Russia), the USA was second lowest, next to Turkey.

However, I will admit this is not your garden variety stupidity. It is something far worse, that is, wilful ignorance. A while back I read a book called "Darwiin on Trial" by a USA lawyer named Phillip E. Johnson. I can't remember the exact phrase, but in that book he said words to the effect that he would rather be wrong about evolution, than to abandon his faith.

Now there is a relatively sophisticated thinker who tosses away the greatest unifying principle of biology so he can proclaim his faithfulness.

What do you call that?

I don't have a link for this, nor time to go fetch one (since my coals are nearly heated), but wasn't it some American Xtians who asserted that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter was exactly 3?  Because their God would never make it an irrational number?

Quote:

but I didn't find any believers actually claiming they think pi equals 3. There were some hoaxes, though :

Very well.  Here's one where pi = 3.2.  I don't feel like that takes a lot from my point.

I guess my thinking was that this should be up to mathematicians, not theologians.

Quote:

Considering the rest of us use shorthand to round it off to two decimal places, rounding it off to a whole number isn't technically false.

There's no need to go with 8 decimal points of accuracy if your ruler is only good for two.

That's a far cry from "my God would never, ever..."

Mr. Magoo wrote:

That's a far cry from "my God would never, ever..."

Now I am curious.

Did anyone ever say that? the 1897 bill doesn't seem to be based on religion at all.

And Cody. I agree that it applies (like how some people will believe anything about Hillary or Trump, depending on your camp), but I am talking about how gullible we can be in talking about them. It's like the myth that people actually believed the earth was flat. Well, a myth until Alex Jones came along, that is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth

6079_Smith_W wrote:

And Cody. I agree that it applies (like how some people will believe anything about Hillary or Trump, depending on your camp), but I am talking about how gullible we can be in talking about them.

Sorry, the context was clear and I wasn't intending to derail. I just found it striking how easily a couple of words could be switched to apply to "Trump supporters," "Clinton supporters," "Brexit supporters," or "Bernie supporters."

In fact I could have even just said "You just summed up politics in a nutshell."

When you believe your ideological opponents (and/or their supporters) are evil (stupid/heartless/racist/etc), it becomes easy to believe anything about them.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

...I have to say I'm not sure I buy this shibboleth any more than I do your Tom Paine one.

What shibboleth was that?

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Are you kidding?

Belief in creationism as some assumed marker for stupidity.

Well, I wouldn't call it a marker for stupidity, but it certainly does indicate something drastically different about the mental functioning of creationists. They have abandoned all empirical evidence in favour of an ancient system of myths. That's not stupidity, but it is something pretty terrifying to me.