The United States of Stupid. I mean, really, REALLY stupid ...

The way things are supposed to work on this planet is like this: in the United States, the power structures (public and private) decide what they want the rest of the world to do. They communicate their wishes through official and unofficial channels, expecting automatic cooperation. If cooperation is not immediately forthcoming, they apply political, financial and economic pressure. If that still doesn’t produce the intended effect, they attempt regime change through a color revolution or a military coup, or organize and finance an insurgency leading to terrorist attacks and civil war in the recalcitrant nation. If that still doesn’t work, they bomb the country back to the stone age. This is the way it worked in the 1990s and the 2000s, but as of late a new dynamic has emerged.

It is as if the entire American body politic has been infected by a putrid miasma. It permeates all things and makes life miserable. In spite of the mounting problems, most other things in the US are still somewhat manageable, but this one thing—the draining away of the ability to bully the whole world—ruins everything. It’s mid-summer, the nation is at the beach. The beach blanket is moth-eaten and threadbare, the beach umbrella has holes in it, the soft drinks in the cooler are laced with nasty chemicals and the summer reading is boring… and then there is a dead whale decomposing nearby, whose name is “Nyet.” It just ruins the whole ambiance!

The media chattering heads and the establishment politicos are at this point painfully aware of this problem, and their predictable reaction is to blame it on what they perceive as its ultimate source: Russia, conveniently personified by Putin. “If you aren’t voting for Clinton, you are voting for Putin” is one recently minted political trope. Another is that Trump is Putin’s agent. Any public figure that declines to take a pro-establishment stance is automatically labeled “Putin’s useful idiot.” Taken at face value, such claims are preposterous. But there is a deeper explanation for them: what ties them all together is the power of “nyet.” A vote for Sanders is a “nyet” vote: the Democratic establishment produced a candidate and told people to vote for her, and most of the young people said “nyet.” Same thing with Trump: the Republican establishment trotted out its Seven Dwarfs and told people to vote for any one of them, and yet most of the disenfranchised working-class white people said “nyet” and voted for Snow White the outsider.

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.

The US is filled with ill-informed imbeciles. The land of stupid,for sure.

But Canada is catching up.

Whatever the levels of ignorance of a public, it is to its leadership and intellectuals we must look for directions..

Got into a chance conversatioin with a USA citizen the other day at the coffee shop. He was a young man I would say in his early thirties. In any case, he overheard myself and my coffee companion discussing the US election, and joined in. He was very definitely not a Trump supporter.

The conversation ranged a bit, but at some point I mentioned Tom Paine, one of the most important people in the founding of the USA. This fellow had never heard of him.

Three months ago, what used to be known as the Republican establishment were convinced that the nomination of Mr. Trump would doom their party to a defeat of epic proportions. They foresaw the trifecta loss of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives. They may have overestimated the American public.

No Lord Elgin was as important to the founding of Canada as Tom Paine was to the USA.

...began his higher education at Antioch College, graduating with a double major in geology and philosophy in 1963. During this time, he also studied at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. After completing graduate work at Columbia University in 1967 under the guidance of Norman Newell, he was immediately hired by Harvard University where he worked until the end of his life (1967–2002). In 1973, Harvard promoted him to professor of geology and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the institution's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

In 1982 Harvard awarded him the title of Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology. The following year, 1983, he was awarded a fellowship at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he later served as president (1999–2001).

Karloff's Frankenstein contains an even more serious and equally prominent distortion of a theme that I regard as the primary lesson of Mary Shelly's book - another lamentable example of Hollywood's sense that the American public cannot tolerate even the slightest exercise in intellectual complexity.

Rev Pesky wrote:

No Lord Elgin was as important to the founding of Canada as Tom Paine was to the USA.

There was one Lord Elgin in Canadian history.

And nah, not important at all. All he did was back up Canada's first democratic government in the face of a right-wing anglo mob that went so far as to burn our parliament building and threaten to hang the prime minister.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellion_Losses_Bill

Baldwin and Lafontaine's govenment created Canada as an independent nation. It was far more significant than the business contract that was signed 18 years later. If it isn't remembered, perhaps it is because it was our nation standing up to power.

They destroyed Elgin's carriage with stones when he drove to give that law royal assent. He refused to have it repaired, and continued to use it throughout his tenure tas a reminder of what had happened.

But really, what does it matter if some Canadians or Americans aren't up on old white guy history? For a lot of people it is not their history, after all, and it says nothing about their intelligence.

And really, it is far more important that they have some familiarity with how things work here and now.

...As Frank Scott has argued, "Never at any time in [1919-39] was the full international personality of the Dominions, as distinct from Great Britain, established beyond equivocation".  Indeed, symbolically-important legal traces of Canada's colonial status were only shed with the passing of the Canada Act by the British Parliament in 1982.

...Until the passage of the Statute of Westminster (1931 - Rev P), no Dominion legislature had the power to pass either laws with normal extra-territorial effect or laws purporting to amend or repeal Imperial laws which expressly or necessarily applied to it; the need for this change was demonstrated in 1925 when the Australian High Court had ruled inoperative sections of an Australian Commonwealth Act which contradicted provisions of the Imperial Merchant Shipping Act.  Section 2 of the Statute of Westminster is perhaps the most significant legal provision relating to Canada's acquisition of legislative sovereignty, because it accorded both Parliament and the provincial legislatures the power to pass any laws amending or repealing legislation of the Imperial Parliament; also, no Canadian law passed thereafter could be held void because it conflicted with Imperial legislation.

But perhaps we're talking about two different Canadas.

...Don't get me wrong, I think a knowledge of history is a very good thing, but being able to recite the dates and names - particularly the names most wrapped up in the national myth - doesn't really mean too much.

...How can you justify a comment that an entire society who (for the last 70+ years at least) has attracted some of the brightest minds in hundreds of fields and some of the most famous scientists (Albert Einstein, Nicola Tesla) and intellectuals actively wants to forget someone due to their intellectual rigour? Where other people might say "Americans try to forget {public figure X, Y, Z] due to {owning slaves, public drunkenness, poor moral role model}", you're actually suggesting Americans want to forget this man because he was smart.

This sort of casual, off-base disparagement of an entire group of people is a sure way to senselessly alienate those who belong in that group...

There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western countries. Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America’s political and social fabric. Famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said: "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."

Cody87 wrote:

...How can you justify a comment that an entire society who (for the last 70+ years at least) has attracted some of the brightest minds in hundreds of fields and some of the most famous scientists (Albert Einstein, Nicola Tesla) and intellectuals actively wants to forget someone due to their intellectual rigour? Where other people might say "Americans try to forget {public figure X, Y, Z] due to {owning slaves, public drunkenness, poor moral role model}", you're actually suggesting Americans want to forget this man because he was smart.

This sort of casual, off-base disparagement of an entire group of people is a sure way to senselessly alienate those who belong in that group...

From an article posted upthread:

Quote:

There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western countries. Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America’s political and social fabric. Famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said: "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."

I guess you missed that...