You can imagine the title spoken by Kim Jong Il in "Team America, World Police." That's how it always sounds in my head.
This morning, I propose to answer that question. Why is everybody so fucking stupid? Why do nearly 1 in 5 Americans believe that their president is a Muslim, even though just a little while ago, they thought he was a slavish follower of a radical black Christian preacher? Why do so many (more than half, if we believe the polls) people believe that the moderate Imam who wants to build a community center in a former Burlington Coat Factory building is building a "Victory Mosque" to celebrate the 9/11 attacks?
Why are so many people so fucking stupid?
It's nothing new. Back during the Clinton administration there were plenty of people who believed crazy things about the president. They thought he'd murdered an aide. They thought his wife had some evil reason for hiding travel records.
Back in the '70s, I had a co-worker who believed, really and truly believed, that the moon landings were faked.
Back in the '50s, many believed that the entertainment industry was riddled with Communists who were bent on destroying democracy.
I'm sure that at Valley Forge there was someone who believed that Gen. Washington had sold all their boots to buy diamond necklace for his mistress.
There were probably Romans who believed Caesar made a pact with Hades to gain power over the Senate. (And contemporary accounts of Tiberius' sexual proclivities may have had more to do with what he did with the currency than anything he did with his dick.)
But I wonder if there has ever been a time in the age of modern communications when so many people believed things that were so clearly disproved?
Some people believed that Martians were invading when they heard Orson Wells dramatizing a H.G. Wells story on the radio. But truth be known, it wasn't really very many, and they didn't believe it for long.
The Clinton-era conspiracy theories were persistent, but the number of people who embraced them was small (vocal, but small). After all, Bill Clinton was re-elected with all those stupid theories out there.
We progressives like to think we're "reality based." But we're vulnerable, as well. Did you believe (even for a short time) that George W. Bush sent his daughters to South America to buy a ranch where he could escape extradition when he was going to be charged with war crimes?
So, I ask again: Why is everybody so fucking stupid?
I could start answering that with "Rupert Murdoch's Fox News," and I don't think I'd be wrong. I suspect at large proportion of the people who believe President Obama is a muslim watch Fox. But it isn't the only answer.
I used to keep CNN on my TV at home most of the day every day. Nowadays, I seldom turn it on because it's gotten so ... stupid. "Our national conversation," is as dumb a catch phrase as I've ever heard. No, Rick, Ally, Wolf, it's not a fucking conversation. When I yell, "How can you be so idiotic?" at the TV, you never hear me. Believe it or not, if I want to know what people are saying on Twitter, I know how to pull up the site and read the trends. I don't need you to waste my time reading me random Tweets.
Not so long ago, we decried the 24-hour news cycle because it was so repetitive, and because the need to keep feeding news into its voracious maw made it unreliable during a crisis. Today, the pace seems to have slowed. The long hours of the 24-hour news cycle are being filled with white noise (the best description I can think of for reporting random Tweets and Facebook updates as if they meant something).
I don't need to turn on the TV to know what I'm thinking. I don't need to turn on the TV to find out what the people I care about are thinking.
Why does Rick Snyder think I'm dying to know what someone tweeted at him?
Today, we're bombarded with individual opinions. Every news anchor thinks he's a pundit. Every pundit thinks his opinion is truth. Newspapers are dying. Cable news is pablum. Online news is just an echo of the nonsense that goes out in the other media.
Edward R. Murrow must be spinning in his grave.
Can you blame the average person if he doesn't know what he can believe?
I believe:
Nothing that comes in a chain email.
Little that comes from politicians (even in my own party).
Some of what I read at DKos.
A lot of what comes from Associated Press (not as good a source as it used to be).
Some of what I see on TV.
Nothing that comes from sources I consider unreliable (The Washington Times, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs).
A lot from sources I consider reliable.
But I'm closing out my fifties and have spent my lifetime studying the news. I'm a journalist, dammit. I think I have a pretty effective set of filters for my news intake.
But, how does the average person sift through the flood of sewage we call news these days? The answer is, they don't. They believe what feels right to them. They take the word of the pundit they believe and figure all the others must be lying. They don't even try to evaluate what they're seeing and hearing. It's all about the source. If the source holds their worldview, what they say must be true.
When random Tweets are considered news, how is the average person going to tell the difference between white noise and the information they need? How can we debate the cost/benefit ratio of single-payer health care, when all people remember about health care is "death panels?" How can we reach a consensus on regulating our financial system when the average person doesn't know the difference between TARP and stimulus?
How can we have an informed electorate when the information gathering process overwhelms people and leaves them stupid?
This is the legacy of the Information Age. Information used to come up from the well with a hand pump. Today, it's a tsunami washing away all sense and sensibility.
The old structure of news distribution has been swept away. It was never perfect. But it was better than having no structure at all. We need a structure for information. Without structure, it's not information, it's just random data, without meaning or usefulness.
We're entering a new Dark Age.