America: America: Why R Your Peeps So Dum?

[unhappycamper]

U.S. culture is going down like a thrashing mastodon giving itself up to some Pleistocene tar pit.


America: America: Why R Your Peeps So Dum?
JoeBageant.com / By Joe Bageant

December 9, 2010 | If you hang out much with thinking people, conversation eventually turns to the serious political and cultural questions of our times. Such as: How can the Americans remain so consistently brain-fucked? Much of the world, including plenty of Americans, asks that question as they watch U.S. culture go down like a thrashing mastodon giving itself up to some Pleistocene tar pit.

One explanation might be the effect of 40 years of deep fried industrial chicken pulp, and 44 ounce Big Gulp soft drinks. Another might be pop culture, which is not culture at all of course, but marketing. Or we could blame it on digital autism: Ever watch commuter monkeys on the subway poking at digital devices, stroking the touch screen for hours on end? That wrinkled Neolithic brows above the squinting red eyes?

But a more reasonable explanation is that, (A) we don't even know we are doing it, and (B) we cling to institutions dedicated to making sure we never find out.

As William Edwards Deming famously demonstrated, no system can understand itself, and why it does what it does, including the American social system. Not knowing shit about why your society does what it makes for a pretty nasty case of existential unease. So we create institutions whose function is to pretend to know, which makes everyone feel better. Unfortunately, it also makes the savviest among us -- those elites who run the institutions -- very rich, or safe from the vicissitudes that buffet the rest of us.

Directly or indirectly, they understand that the real function of American social institutions is to justify, rationalize and hide the true purpose of cultural behavior from the lumpenproletariat, and to shape that behavior to the benefit of the institution's members. "Hey, they're a lump. Whaddya expect us to do?"

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. I have lunch with two work friends each week - and have for years.

and, yes, invariably, we delve into politics...and bemoan the apparent decline of any sort of curiosity and critical thinking of the public as a whole - as well as wonder at the apathy. Boggles the mind.

:banghead:

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

wheee....

[cali]

3. excellent piece- though I'm sure the cries of "elitest bullshit"

are soon to come.

[TBF]

6. Right, I don't think most people are all that dumb - but I can't deny

the evidence of the FOX news effect. I am in touch with many old friends on FB. They never left our small town, or didn't travel very far. They see the things we see but their views are skewed on how to handle it - especially on the economy (which they've decided to blame on "illegal aliens") and the war - which they choose to deal with by "supporting our troops". I think we do have to realize our media is contributing to the problem, which is why I'm really focused on net neutrality. They've already taken over the televisions, if they take our Internet too how are we going to get any information?

[Anakin Skywalker]

4. Too Much "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" (Entertainment as Distractions)

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. +1000. I would love to see what would happen if the TeeVees go off for a full year.

National IQ would rise significantly. (maybe...)

[Javaman]

8. I would like to think that, but frankly, I think due to our lack of reasoning skills

huge portions of the population would:

1)accidentally set themselves on fire since they didn't know it was hot enough to burn

2) drown due to the believe that even though fish can breath underwater, why can we?

3) beat themselves senseless thinking if they hit themselves hard enough they will get the brains needed to survive the tv apocalypse.

Many people will cheer this as the stupid species extinction event.

[Divernan]

7. Link takes you to a seven page, excellent article.

"Purposeful ignorance allows us to enjoy cheaper commodities produced through slave labor, both foreign, and increasingly, domestic, and yet "thank god for his bounty" in the nation's churches without a trace of guilt or irony. It allows strong arm theft of weaker nations' resources and goods, to say nothing of the destructiveness of late stage capitalism -- using up exhausting every planetary resource that sustains human life.

The American defense, on those rare occasions when one is offered, runs roughly, "Well you commie bastard, I ain't ever seen a sweatshop and I got no Asian kids chained in the basement. So I've got what the guvment calls plausible deniability. Go fuck yerself!"


Such a thriving American intellectual climate enables capitalist elites to withhold and ration vital resources like health care simply by auctioning it off to the richest. Americans fail to grasp this because the most important fact (that a helluva lot of folks can't afford to bid, and therefore get to die early) never gets equal play with capitalist political propaganda, to wit, that if we give free medical attention to low income cleft palate babies, a wave of Leninism will seize the nation. That is cultural ignorance. We breathe the stuff every day of our lives.

But when Americans too poor to buy health care nevertheless vote to retain the corporate auction process, that is cultural stupidity. (Let us now pause to clutch our hair in our fists and scream AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!)"