“Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.” --American Heritage, 4th ed.
A year ago I wrote a piece titled, The Golden Age of Stupidity. It was well received. The question I want to address a year later is how we can quantify this rather negative “natural resource” that we seem bent on cultivating. Can it be quantified, and how is its ongoing development proceeding? Just how stupid are we Americans, as a nation, becoming?
But first of all, let’s try to establish that this factor is, indeed, increasing. Are we becoming better thinkers, or weaker ones?
Well, at least since the 1950s, we should have seen the stupidity levels growing simply by looking at the results of television advertising. We know this advertising works, or they wouldn’t keep throwing money at it.
In 1957, journalist and critic of consumerism Vance Packard published an informative exploration of the manipulative techniques used in advertising. The book was titled, The Hidden Persuaders, and it revealed how advertisers create in the minds of consumers, completely artificial needs (for their products and services). They do this through subliminal psychology and effectively manipulative wording. The theory then was that advertisers influence consumers to believe the company’s products satisfy consumers’ actual “needs” rather than simply satisfying mere superficial desires, or “wants.” The evidence of this strategy’s success can be clearly seen today, in ads that blatantly boast, “We’ve got what you NEED!” We have been shown the manipulative nature of this advertising technique, and we are stupid enough to ignore the manipulation, so we go out and buy the product, convinced that it was OUR IDEA! If this does not indicate a decline in intelligence, I am not too sure what would do so. Advertising is a trick to get you to buy. We know this. And we don’t care. So we dutifully and calmly listen to ads that repeat a phone number three times, tell us what we “need,” and coddle us with pretty-face smiles. We sit docile, listening to the same ad four times during a single program. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse. That’s called stupid.
They know how stupid you have become. They know that if they repeat their phone number three times, you will be more favorably inclined to call, “right now.” The unmistakable success of today’s TV advertising should be the deciding vote in the condemnation of our intelligence. But somehow we required further proof. Enter Mr. Donald John Trump.
In 2017, professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich posted a statement on Facebook about how dumb we as a people have become. Quoting a National Science Foundation survey, he stated the following.
To the question "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth," 26 percent answered incorrectly.
In the same survey, [only] 39 percent answered correctly (true) that "The universe began with a huge explosion.
Only 48 percent said "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals."
Just over half understood that antibiotics are not effective against viruses.
Oh, and in the latest political poll, 36 percent said they support Donald Trump.
We elevated a mentally challenged, con-man grifter to the presidency of the United States. Now, that example is admittedly pretty hard to top. But we appear to be up to even that challenge. Because now he is running again, even more popular than before, despite the travesty of an administration that he ran the last time. He is actually gaining in popularity while the number of criminal indictments grows, and the number of criminal counts against him reaches almost a hundred. Some utter Bozo in a red MAGA hat just claimed that Trump could literally commit murder on the steps of the White House, and the Bozo would still be a big fan. No, really. We’re in serious trouble here. It appears that the abbreviation, IQ, now stands for Inadequacy Quotient.
Fairly soon now, Trump is going to have his very own legal category: Innocent despite proven guilty. But the Grand Old Party has fallen in love with him and his band of cultish followers. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse. That’s called stupid. But who is the more stupid? The Trumpers? The party of obedient lackeys, who know better but accept him anyway? Or the rest of us who continue to put up with this crap without throwing Trump’s butt in prison. Yes, yes, I realize that the judicial process takes time. But how much time is too much time?
You’ve got to feel sorry for sane Republicans who still have not left their party. America has to live with the fact that enough of us were stupid enough to elect Donald Trump, but imagine how tough it is for sane Republicans to admit that it was their fault. The Colin Powells, James Comeys, and Nicole Wallaces are not representative of a small crowd. Huge numbers of Republicans have left the party since 09-11-01. But what percentage of conservatives are still hanging on in desperation to their party loyalty, despite the devastation of Trumpism? Senator Mitt Romney (R), Utah, has recently announced that he will not seek re-election in 2024. Can you blame him? He also said he was paying $5,000 a week for private security protection for his family, to protect them from all the rabid Trump supporters threatening their safety. Romney stated that he believes his party will come back to sanity, but it might take a decade or more. How many true conservatives will hold on for that long?
Why has the Republican Party embraced Trumpism so thoroughly? On the surface, that seems like a tough question to answer. But it isn’t so tough when you examine where the party is in popularity these days. Even when they win via the Electoral College, Republicans routinely fail to win the popular vote in presidential elections. The party’s popularity is declining. After election losses, parties do what are referred to as autopsy reports, identifying the reasons for such losses, and what to do to correct the trend. These reports are pretty clear. They state the party is out of step and should change its stance on things like abortion rights, voters’ rights, gun control, and others. But the GOP has zero interest in changing its stance on these issues. So the alternatives are pretty clear. If your stance on issues cannot (or will not) match current popular trends in the voting public, you must change how the voting public votes by other means. And those means include gerrymandering districts so those most likely to vote against you are limited in representation. You adopt deceptions and outright lies to influence beliefs. You embrace Trumpism which encourages violence against opponents.
Republicans have unfortunately learned that the Trump base, the MAGA crowd, are so stupid that they are easily duped with the deceptions and lies. They are mere pawns to be moved about on the chess board. They will gladly vote for someone like Donald Trump, fully embracing things like criminality, immorality, predatory sexual behavior, indecency, misogyny, xenophobia, racism, the deliberate mocking of handicapped individuals, and the complete lack of a political platform. The Republican Party has thus devolved into an autocratic movement instead of a viable political party, because they can’t win when they “fight fair.” Desperation produces desperate results, and the Grand Old Party is no longer grand, nor a party, by any normal definition. And all of this has become possible because of the existence of the public’s stupidity. The right has effectively programmed its audience, and the path forward, and the tactics to be employed, are clear. Television advertising has proudly led the way. The political right wing has adopted the habit of referring to their opposition as sheep. The right-wingers’ victim-base of MAGAs are perhaps more like lemmings: Easily duped. Slow to learn or understand. Obtuse.
So do we have proof of our collective mental decline? Absolutely. We are very clearly becoming far weaker thinkers, less able to evaluate variables and make logical intelligent choices. Because of stupidity, H. L. Mencken’s prophecy is fulfilled. “On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” And in the novel, 1984, George Orwell couldn’t have predicted this outcome much more clearly back in 1949. It just took double the amount of time that the cautionary tale suggested. As they say, stupid is as stupid does. And America has arrived.
