Dunning-Kruger effect runs rampant in America.

Yeah I'm american and a huge majority of the people I interact with are idiots just mindlessly consuming shit as the world burns down around them.

The idiots make the most noise.

Yes. Youve still got people on Lemmy who argue for a 3rd party vote in the previous and next election. Its mind numbing the fairy land these people live in. All around the world people are watching as Americans struggle with simplest choices.

But as fun as it is to blame Americans entirely their media is completely cooked. Their FCC refuses to enforce laws against bad actors. Internal bad actors and external bad actors constantly spread misinfo and manipulate public perception. Even though its been said over and over I still dont think people actually understand the influence this is having on the average citizen. You can convince the media voter of anything if you can control their perception of the world.

reminder that this situation has been engineered by decades of a billionaire powered machine defunding education and capturing a significant portion of the country in a propaganda machine

like, yea, americans are dumb and shitty, but we've largely been made to be this way. it's not inherent and it's not unfixable (altho it's not like it's solvable overnight, ofc, it took a long time to get here and it'll take a long time to get out)

About 35% are undoubtedly and rigidly so. The truly unfortunate part is that they’re motivated idiots. They are actively and aggressively ignorant and very much want to impose their idiocy on the rest of the country.

This looks exactly like the cover of one of those "everyone is stupid but me" self help self fellatio instruction books. When do they tell you to pull a rib out?

I run into Euros all the time who think colonialism is over and everyone is forgiven because global south countries can make deals with Euro companies to destroy their land at the expense of their people instead of being invaded literally to destroy their land at the expense of their people (most of the time, of course). People in imperial metropoles are just more likely to require delusion to make sense of a world where they benefit from cruelty without being a bad person.

Many of the tactics we have to fight settler-colonial imperialism has come from colonized and marginalized people in the United States; liberals conveniently forget they exist because this fact challenges the inevitability of their way of life.

I wish I could find a gif of that woman at the gas station saying "Apparently, I'm an idiot!" in regards to voting 3 times for Trump.

yes

Yes! Oddly, the rest of the world, all of those smarties all over the globe, enable them, and even give them gobs of money.

I don't get it

My theory is brain atrophy. It's not that those people are stupid and unable to learn, it's that they don't have to use their brains for any sort of analytical thinking and kind of forget how to do it. You can still teach them their trade and they will be good at their job but they are never challenged intellectually. School is easy and you can finish education just by playing sports or whatever, news are predigested and dumbed down, entertainment is not intellectually stimulating in any way. Most people go through their lives without ever having to contemplate anything deeper than what hamburger to have for lunch. Then when Trump shows up they simply don't have the brain capacity needed to understand he's lying to them. "He says the war is good for us". That's it. There's no "but" because their brains can't do that anymore. The processing just stops right there.

Of course there are still curious people there that study, wonder about things and try to understand the world. It's just that they are the minority now. In other countries the proportions are reversed for now but things don't look that good there either.

This is the analogy I use.

Remember those high school seniors who were bullies to everyone and treated the teachers like garbage? The ones who know they were destined to work shitty jobs or join the military because they'd never go to college or get a good trade.

That's your Trump voter. They know their way of life has peaked. They are too old, too dumb, or too stubborn to adapt to a changing world. They want coal plants and big gas guzzling cars because that's what they want

One third of Americans are the worst of the worst. Racist, homophobic, bigoted, easily manipulated ,and stupid af.

Another third is apathetic, which imo also means stupid.

So yes.

Spoiler: Yes.

Anyone that lived through the pandemic knows that yes, most people are idiots

What are those two symbols that look like A in a circle?

I mean, is it not apparent at this point?

If you watch someone do the thing where they step on a rake and hit themselves in the face more than once, you have to accept the reality that they're probably stupid.

Americans have stepped on the rake a lot more than once.

I don't think that was ever in doubt. Some of them are silly, mostly harmless idiots and others are violent, dangerous, evil idiots, though, it's important to remember that.