Americans are idiots. I am an aforementioned, born, raised, and inoculated American Idiot, so hope that I can say this without anyone getting too offended. The first step to recovery is admitting we have a problem, so let’s drive to the border of Republicanland and Jump Right In.
I know that the phrases “right wing idiots” and “Americans are idiots” is inflammatory, but the court jester manner of the average American’s interaction with politics is distressing. It’s more like junior high cheerleader bickering than it is a smart debate. GOP presidential primaries have become a cross between a reality show, a NASCAR race, and insult your mother schoolyard contest. All of us fall victim to political pre-pubescence, however. We all share blame for what American Politics has become. If the extent of your involvement with local and national government is pointing fingers at the other guy, then you’re not helping to improve the American Moron Phenomenon, either. You’re just as much an American idiot as the rest of us.
If you want to help stop American idiocy, stop blaming stupid and start doing smart.
The Proud History of American Idiocy
Historically, the United States has always had a giant ego – a healthy ego is required to take great risks, so we can’t fully fault ourselves there. A contributing problem, however, is too many of us act like entitled hypocrites when we haven’t actually done anything to earn respect. We boast of being “the best” as a result of past progress rather than our own accomplishments. We Walk around with our heads in the clouds, and take as much as we can with our social consciousness on the bad side of Black As The Night…
This sort of blind complacency has become only a minor cause of our larger “Americans are idiots” problem, however. Lately, our country has taken an even more severe turn towards the Land of Right Wing Political Idiocy where facts are optional and yelling at one another is the accepted norm. A few years ago I assumed the far-right conservatives within the United States were simply experiencing something akin to hormone-driven teenagers going through an anger and lashing-out phase (as happens every 20 years or so). Now… I’m not so certain. I think “Americans are Idiots” has become a permanent affliction.
Denying facts and embracing conspiracy theories are defining characteristics of modern extreme right wing culture in America. This conspiracy-faith in Republicanland reality is required for admission into extreme right-wing circles – as if they’re trying to Sabotage our future by flogging people with an American flag while throwing them into prison and shouting “Freedom! Freedom! USA! USA!” The rallies are often surreal in their detachment from facts and accepted definitions.
Traveling around the country I’ve met a lot of people who pride themselves on being ignorant – like the right to be so is a badge of honor like being a war veteran. It’s terribly bizarre. At this point I’ve met too many of these sort of chest-puffers to believe there is a legitimate argument against American idiocy.
When Did Americans Become Social and Political Morons?
We can’t precisely pinpoint at what point this plucky gun-toting faction of our country mutated from a relatively stable crowd that liked to wear funny hats into a horde of masquerading nitwits totally incapable of understanding hypocrisy, irony, contradiction, and manipulation. The birthday of “right wing idiots” isn’t as easy as looking up Obama’s birth certificate. From what we can tell, it basically happened progressively since the dawn of the conservative blog, and hit high gear when Obama first reached the national stage. It’s a result of the constant, unbridled barrage of hate speech and republican conspiracy theories created in the far right republican information bubble.
In past decades we’ve always seen upticks in the extreme right-wing militia, prepper paranoia, and “government is the devil” movements, but this recent crop is much more wide-spread and mainstream within the GOP. In Republicanland it’s cool to hate and acceptable to ignore facts. Denialism is the brick, and anger is the mortar of every Tea Party (bunker) clubhouse. Right-wing America has become a group of Tweedledees and Tweedledumbs who refuse to admit that 2 + 2 = 4… unless Alex Jones or Glenn Beck tells them so… and if they buy Glenn’s patriotic pants, or Rush Revere children’s books.
GOP Trinity: Echo Chamber, Faith, Fear.
The GOP got itself Too Close to overtly greedy businesses, evangelical faith businesses, and gerrymandered political businesses to be a legitimate political party. Republicanland is now little more than Dollywood – but its rides are laser focussed on monetizing the ignorance, distrust, and fear within the far-right republican voter base.
The current modern GOP and all it’s career presidential hopefuls / Fox News hosts exist solely for profit and purification… which is, Tweedledee-ironically, more “un-American” than socialized healthcare is alleged to be. Unfortunately, when we confront someone living on the far-right inverted plane about such contradictions, all we get in return are squinting deer eyes in headlights… followed by a pregnant pause… (no contraception allowed)… and capped with a random, far out of context, verbal-blurt like, “Obama doesn’t believe in real America! Black helicopters! War on Christmas! Job killer!”
Anger (which 99% of the time is the sum result of fear and bad information) makes people say and do pretty bizarre things. We lose reason when angry. We all know that. That’s why the GOP leaders find it helpful to keep the Tea Party constantly angry. In the United States the far-right wing factions have been angry for so long that it has changed the way they think on a fundamental level. It’s like depression: if someone is sad for a long time, the chemical make-up of the brain gets stuck that way. The neurons in Republicanland brains have created permanent connections between “bad, evil, threats, danger, take my child” and “democrats, Obama, government, and UN”.
Reason and logic haven’t merely been lost in a brief moment of anger by the far right… they’ve fallen Into Dust due to the sustained anger created by their media machine. It’s the same problem for policy-idiots who blame Obama for everything that happens in Washington (or better yet, the majority of republicans who blame Obama for FEMA’s terrible response to Katrina). It’s the same problem for a very large part of the country who say they like the ACA, but hate Obamacare.
You have to work to not be an American Idiot. Being well-informed is not an American entitlement we get at birth – it’s a mandate of good citizenship that most of us are failing miserably.
Americans are idiots because we generally choose to be ignorant. It’s easier that way. But within the far right they don’t just choose to do dumb things, they have literally become dumb things – and many are even proud about it. That’s a vital part of the right wing media equation: promote ignorance, then tell them to be proud of being ignorant because it’s their God given right as a human being. Being a moron by choice is how one exercises American Freedom. Like any other animal, humans generally believe what they see and hear. Just Because we have larger brains doesn’t mean we’re automatically more intelligent in the long run of evolution than a cockroach. We’ll eventually blow off our own thumbs while Gregor shakes his head and moves on his merry way.
Why All Americans Are Idiots (not just the extreme right-wing).
Most Americans tend to prance around as entitled, arrogant, under-educated, zombie-fied, morons. I’m included on that list, and yes, sometimes ignorance is bliss. The flashing red light, however, is that we’re sustaining this grand empire on the short spurt of post-war successes of times past. Our schools rank lower than most Western countries, our infrastructure is falling apart, and our personal greed overrules any hope of moral repair. In government, facts are optional and Money casts the deciding vote.
The nation’s wealth is dangerously concentrating into a small percentage of American nobility… and to top it off (with cherries on top): 1 in 3 adults are obese, while simultaneously 1 in 5 children go hungry each day … … Yet we shout loudly – proudly – with a flag pin on our breasts and guns in both hands, “America is the best country in the world!!” … Yes, indeed, Americans are idiots.
America a fertile a land with a strong history, but at this point in history, America is occupied by very stupid, very selfish, and very ignorant Boys & Girls shouting, “Hey Ya! You’re super special!” into every mirror they see while posting six selfies a day to facebook. The selfie… don’t get me started on what the selfie says about Humanity. The rest of us (the “not totally bat-crap insane” in America) allowed it to happen. Yes… we’re at fault, too. Just because you might not believe the right wing balderdash doesn’t give you a free pass to good citizenship. Looking the other way doesn’t make us innocent. 
In America we can’t censor stupidity. Nor can we ever consider sweeping into law that the extreme right stop defining only their own beliefs as “Real American” beliefs. We can’t shut off people like Glenn Beck or the screaming “false flag” guy who swears the US government is behind every natural and man-made disaster since 2008. We can’t kick off the floor those self-righteous senators who are Missing Pieces of their brains – those who use their time on the floor to give speeches that perpetuate the right wing fear for no other reason than it makes campaign contributions roll in at record levels. From elected representatives we hear things like: the UN is taking over churches (and the world), Obama causes tornadoes, the White House planned the Boston Bombing, Obamacare kills women, early education is designed to turn children into socialists, Obamacare is the same as the Nazi Party… this isn’t hyperbole… this is what is said inside the right-wing echo chamber. When left alone too long, they start to believe it. Just look at the protest signs. Listen to their radio. Read the bumper stickers… it seeps.
Republicanland believes these things because the rest of us have not yet felt it necessary to counter the insanity being spewed from the right-wing monetization machine. Those of us who have been ignoring the extreme right-wing problem are just as much to blame as the conspiracy theory embracing, war-mongering, über-socially-conservative movement. All of us own the blame to these United States. We can’t stop idiot speech. We should not. But we must counter it. We can at least work to educate using foreign things like facts and logic.
We ought to be throwing policy fact sheets around like flyers in a war zone; help make people more aware of how their unbridled hatred has caused them to turn into zombies of the right. We cannot stop the hate-ranting, but we must counter it with Truth. 
We all share responsibility for the grandstanding USofA becoming a nation of idiots. A recent poll found that 44% of republicans think that “an armed revolution” might be necessary in the next couple years. That one’s your and my fault, too, for being very bad educators. I know this because when asked, a revolution against what, exactly?
Those who want to revolt against the government have no answer. All they say is Obamacare, or Guns, or something about blue helmets. When asked for details… we get nothing. Ask them about “Universal background checks for gun purchases” and they support it. Ask them about specific policies in the Affordable Care Act and they embrace them… but hint at Obama or democrats, and their eyes Glenn-Beck-Glaze, and their blood pressure rises. ALL they know is hating the Other and parroting what the right-wing media tells them… because those who know better didn’t show and teach them otherwise.
For many, their all-encompassing hatred of all things President Obama and Democrat is a medical condition similar to alcoholism. Where does that leave us, then? Intervention. When someone is losing control, the family needs to intervene and help them admit they have a problem. That means that all of us who have been sitting on the sidelines and thinking, “Can you believe how Crazy that is?!” have to stop being dumbfounded into inactivity and start doing something to fix it. Intervention & Education. That’s the only hope we have. Someone has to stop the stupidity cycle… if you actually made it to the end of this ranting post… well, then, you’ve qualified for the “Stop American Idiocy” team. Now get out there and do something.
Published: by | Updated: 08-07-2015 06:48:14
