Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.
That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?
My theory is that it’s brain atrophy, not stupidity.
Americans are not stupid in the sense that they can’t learn and do things. They are perfectly capable to work in a bank, fix a car, fly a plane or be a doctor. But even if they do work as as accountant or a surgeon (like Ben Carson…) they rarely use brains for analytical thinking. They don’t have to. School is easy (you can just play sports), finding job used to be easy, buying home used to be easy, you were born into one political party and just followed it. You drive your huge car on endless highways surrounded by aesthetically sterile malls, eat your burgers, watch some football and that’s it. No need to analyze things so your brain kind of forgets how to do it.
Eventually the country split into the curious part that actually wants to study and understand things and the “stupid” part that just consumes propaganda and votes for Trump. As some point the “stupid” part became the majority. Now not everything is that easy for young people but I think it’s too late.
The stupid part gets more electoral college votes per capita and the smart part is stuck with a corpo middle manager party that’s resistant by design to any leftward shift (see Bernie 2016 & 2020)