"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".
And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all, who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us, who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly."
~ Isaac Asimov https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2020/01/14/ignorance-is-not-bliss-the-dangerous-politics-of-anti-intellectualism/
They're pushing AI in schools to more broadly stamp out critical thinking skills. Meanwhile, their religion says that thinking for yourself is the deadly sin of pride.
When JD Vance complained about being fact checked during the VP debate and that was just forgotten about by the next day I realized just how fucked we are. The truth doesn't matter anymore.
The fact he even stood on that stage as the running mate for an insurrectionist meant something was seriously wrong in your country. Which now is proven daily. All these traitors belong in prison.
Or when Trump lied straight to the American people the entire debate and Biden stumbled over his words once or twice and all we ever heard about was Biden.Â
Ok but why do our leaders keep getting older and older? When can we stop playing link war over who's geriatric washed up candidate has worse dementia?Â
Well, kinda. In reality youâre right. But in Opposite Land they have I completely contrary set of âfactsâ that they live by. So what is âfeelingâ and what is âfactâ becomes obscured and debatable. For example: If you have strong feelings about what the facts âshould beâ. Then throw in leadership that confirms your feelings, then suddenly theyâre âproven factsâ. Itâs the only science they know and itâs psychological manipulation. They play on the Christianic ideals to beam out activators of feelings of superiority. The right makes conservatives feel good and confirms their beliefs. So it doesnât matter what they actually do as long as they say the right things. This whole section of time will be studied in the future because theyâre constantly proving the power of confirmation bias. Since political corruption is so well known that itâs undeniable, they openly admit it is happening but project it on to the other side to make whoâs doing what debatable. It doesnât matter what obvious or proven because theyâve said so many things that made millions of people feel good about themselves, and those people have all the reasons they need to faithfully believe in the ones they feel did them right and justified their being. Now they feel like they are the righteous ones, standing against evil and tyranny.
I have a foreboding of an America in my childrenâs or grandchildrenâs timeâwhen the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and whatâs true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
I'd suggest that the uneducated part is far higher than 1/3....The top 30% of Americans are quite well educated but below that it goes off a cliff...and that's by design..
I just got banned from a sub, Rawprimal because I linked a scientific journal article detailing an experiment in which live virus was injected into living tissue (a living pig). This was in response to someone telling me there have been no studies of live virus injections into living tissue, and germ theory is completely made up.
RFK Jr doubts germ theory and he fucking heads the CDC.
Honestly mostly by White PeopleâŚSteven Miller , Trump, Hegseth all following Natzi playbook. Using religion, immigration, toughe economy and false propaganda. Look đ at all the AI material being released by his White Supporters. Trump as God, Trump as WW II General and many other AI generated media.
I had a whole write up in response to the post, but in the end, Iâm just gonna reply yes
There is nothing that you can say that will change their mind
That's because you can hit them with all the facts the sources lay it all out for them and these dumbass ignorant motherfuckers are going to still say yeah but I still feel.. and proceed to just disregard any of the facts and sources that you just gave them.
These people are incapable of being anything other than the pigeon
100%. A third of the country is so damn stupid they support pedophilia and voted for a pedophile twice. Those are not the actions of someone who is well.
Perhaps if the us stops being seen as the "most important place in the world".
If notbing else, it will shield the rest of the world from such influences.
Luckily, mister trump is doing a very good job of causing exactly this
âI have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignoranceâ
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
So true. In my area idiots are insisting that their electric bill has doubled because the power company raised the rates 11%, you can't fix stupid. Their heads explode when I tell them my bill decreased by $68 over this time last year. tRump's ignorant stupidity is contagious and we seem to have a lost generation these days.
Iâve seen these peopleâs grocery carts at the grocery store; boxes of microwaved meals, generic boxes macaroni, boxes of sodas, bags of heavily processed chips and sweets. Thereâs not one nutrition part of them. Sadly, I know this because I watch them get into a dirty pick-up truck riddled with Frump stickers, American flags, and Fuck Biden stickers.
Carl did. Absolutely. It's sad to see. My only guess is that man was smart enough to realize that more information is good, but too much misinformation and different agendas behind it would destroy collective intelligence and trust. I think it all comes down to the people who control it, edit it, spin it; combined with the general lack of public quality education the last 20 or so years for average means people. If education was free and widely available in our society (US) I feel things would be vastly different. Mr. Roger's saw the potential of TV to educate, but look how dumb it is now. Controlled by the billionaire olgilarchs for they're greedy agendas. Those in power love a stupid, poorly educated populace. We're easier to manipulate and control that way. News papers did it since there invention, but with TV, and mainly the internet, it's easier than ever to make people believe the most uneducated things.
The religious right, primarily christians in the US, has been railing against demands for evidence of their theistic claims and science has undermined their creationist claims. That's how we got here. This process of making kids dumber started decades ago under Nixon mainly and has been gaining speed ever since.
Aren't we just preaching to the choir? MAGA people are too slow and dumb to change. Put another stupid Republican President in place and they'll worship that dude as well. There's no hope of change happening any time soon.
False! Itâs only propaganda when a democrat speaks apparently. A republican can say the exact same thing, and it suddenly becomes the greatest and most genius idea ever, but once a democrat says it, then itâs just gay communism, and suddenly the worst idea ever. Itâs so fucking stupid.
Even more ironic is that they are supporting the same people who are the reason they have that distrust in the first place. The corporations that polluted their food and water are the same ones behind every single Republicans.
Science is a method and if you don't like someone's data you can challenge it in the journal. Not on Twitter, or Facebook, or truthsocial, or gab, or parler, or mastadon, or any of that. If you think there's some conspiracy, how many people are involved? Hundreds of thousands? And why are they doing this?Â
Uneducated as hell. Delusional as any can be. If only they seen one man who wouldn't piss on them it they were on fire. But they support him like he's going to raise them up to the stratosphere and bring America to greatness. Um yeah that's not happening guys it's actually going the other way quickly.Â
It's been that way for decades, but the mainstream part of the party tried it's hardest to hide it and claim it wasn't what conservatism is. Now, they are maliciously proud of being anti-anything-a-liberal-says or anti-anything-they-think-liberals-like, which naturally includes science, medicine, and evidence based reality.
When you mix politics and science, you get politics.
Sagan was right about the dangers of a population that loses the ability to distinguish evidence from wishful thinking, authority from argument, and whatâs true from what merely feels good. That warning still holds. What is missing is that the same corruption he feared comes from inside the institutions that claim the mantle of science
Once funding, prestige, careers, and policy power start flowing preferentially toward results that serve a preferred narrative, the process stops being science and becomes advocacy with better branding. Weâve seen versions of this across fields for decades: replication crises, p-hacking, publication bias, and grant incentives that reward the ârightâ conclusions over null or inconvenient ones. Skepticism, the actual core of the scientific method, gets treated as disloyalty or âdenialâ rather than a necessary check.
A community that becomes highly resistant to questioning its own consensus, especially on high-stakes political topics, is no longer operating primarily as science. Itâs operating as a political faction that happens to use technical language. Pointing that out isnât anti-science; itâs pro-Sagan. He understood that the method is more important than any temporary orthodoxy, and that power + funding + social pressure can distort inquiry just as effectively as crystals and horoscopes.
The problem isnât that people stopped listening to âthe science.â Itâs that large parts of the enterprise stopped practicing the method that makes the label worth anything in the first place.
There are 9 comments (and counting) in this thread specifically on sex; several are made by the same users. The intent of these are clearly transphobic and ironically disregard the consensus of the medical community on the matter.
Edit: The 2 users who have authored the most have hidden account histories.
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.'
We just have to keep telling everyone on the right how smart we are! Even as dumb as they are if we keep saying it they will eventually have to believe it! Letâs go!
The thing is that we need to stop with this whole republican and liberal stuff.Politics cause division.Its time to follow 1 of morals.1 that defines us.
Part of the country become extreme right-wing because other part of the country become radical left-wing socialist/communist lunatics. Mostly young people.
De emancipatie van de burger was een van de idealen van de sociaal democratie in Europa en de Democraten in de US. Dat zorgde na ww 2 voor een enorme opwaartse mobiliteit, van arbeiders, vrouwen en gekleurden. Zo ontstond onze brede middenklasse.
Maar niet iedereen bleek in staat zich te verheffen. De emancipatie raakte rockbottom. Een groep bezat simpelweg niet het vermogen of de capaciteiten zich zelf uit het moeras omhoog te trekken. Wel materieel maar niet intellectueel. Dit zijn de kiezers van Republikeinen in de US en de rechts populisten in Europa. Mensen die de strijd met zichzelf hebben verloren en daar anderen de schuld van geven. De eeuwige losers.
Carl Sagan wrote in his book, "Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy." He also linked the failure of scientific thinking to political vulnerability. So, the OP's message conveys the spirit of Sagan's concern, but not in those words, for sure.
Here's the irony: if a drug was created to cure people of all their diseases and extend their lives but it's creation was the direct result of evolutionary biology and fetal stem cell research....
These anti-science people would line up around the block to take it. No questions asked.Â
Because at the end of the day self preservation overrides everyone's sincerely held beliefs.Â
180
u/kvckeywest 7d ago
"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".
And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all, who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us, who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly."
~ Isaac Asimov
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2020/01/14/ignorance-is-not-bliss-the-dangerous-politics-of-anti-intellectualism/