Bill Maher says most Americans are stupid, do you agree? (borders, crime)
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ok, I'm not here to defend Americans' brains, but consider this:
you're walking down the street with your thoughts/worries/nothing in the world to worry about/ and then
BAM! all of a sudden there's a microphone shoved into your face, someone behind it, another someone with camera, maybe one more on the other side and you are asked something.
now, your stream of consciousness goes something like this - omgwtf...am I going to be on tv...what is this man asking me... how do I look ... etc...etc. Ok, you manage to say something, whatever.
then act two. They take all the answers they got during the day, select the most stupid ones (given the situation above, there's gonna be a competition in that department for sure) and they are all ready to make idiots of people on tv with no worries in the world.
that's why I hate TV. TV is and has always been hardly anything but a big, lying b'stard.
As an immigrant I had to learn the bill of rights, branches of government, the purpose of the senate and congress as well as a bit about the presidents. While learning this my husband commented that I probably knew more about the US than most natural born citizens.
I don't believe Americans are stupid. Most people over here believe what they are told and what they see, American media is notably deficient when it comes to relating news on current events, they seem to report only what they are told and why would anyone question them? when they do they are labelled as 'communists or fascist'.
Since moving here I have been informed that America makes all the best and fastest cars in the world, its the land of the free (shamefully that seems to be in decline) and that its the greatest country in the world. Some of these may be true however I can but feel that if folks actually saw the rest of the world they might have a different point of view.
So stupid / ignorant NO ... uniformed / misinformed YES.
Yes, Maher is right, most Americans are stupid. But that is really not fair, because alot of those Americans are very smart at some profession. They are often stupid of world history, government, and other things that happen outside of this country, or have happened centuries prior.
I don't think this is at all accidental, I do believe the wealthiest 1% in this country, the real power that manipulate financial markets, decides on what countries we bomb, and insures that we spend more money on defense than the next 24 countries combined (most of them are our allies) quite prefer that Americans remain this way. It's led to a consolidation of the media and "news" that is part entertainment, part propaganda. It's made history barely a part of any scholastic curriculum.
Isn't this part and parcel with the media only broadcasting what they are told to report ?
Maybe but your town has about 8000 inhabitants and I'll bet 90 percent of Americans know who the former mayor of that town was. I'll bet no one in France or Russia knows the name of the former mayor of any town with 8000 inhabitants. ....unless they live there.
I could answer the questions in the OP, but I can't set up an equation to figure out percentages to save my life. I'm seriously mathematically-challenged. So what type of knowledge is more important? Who decides what base of knowledge lets you off the hook for being labeled "stupid"? Is it about memorizing facts, or about analytical skills, or about math and science? None of the above, or all of the above? And why should we care what some comedian says? Is he an authority on the education and intelligence of the US population?
Environment and situation define knowledge. For example: if you are in the middle of a desert you need the knowledge to know how to find water. But if you're in the middle of a lake you dam well better know how to swim and like now.
Not knowing what country the US fought in the American Revolution is pretty stupid, IMO. How can you NOT know that??? And it's not that hard to remember. The Jewish/Christian thing is amazing but I once worked with a woman in her 40s who didn't know that Jews don't believe Jesus was the Messiah. I was student teaching 11th grade American history and had a student who didn't know who Hitler was - the saddest part is that she'd taken European history the previous year. And she wasn't embarrassed at all about not knowing.
Another example of the endemic stupidity in this country: Watching a major television program (A&E's First 48) they ran an advertisement for an upcoming program, and to highlight the commentary of the narrator, they put in bold letters "GRIZZLY CRIME" when discussing what happened to someone by the suspect.
This went to air and no one knew the difference between "grisly" and "grizzly"? Forget whoever produced the intro, even an editor did not catch this obvious error?
IT is not only your average McDonald's worker, or the dishwasher, or the construction guy who did not learn the basics, it can be someone college educated, and often times it is those with college degrees who don't know the basics. Education is a subjective term these days.
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