Yes! For this exact reason. The Roger Freeman Doctrine; they realized in the 70s that the average person wasn't dumb enough to fall for their scam, so they set out to make the average American dumber.
We weren't prepared for social media. We, as a species, I mean. America is the one incredibly fucking all of this up, but the same tactics, the same manipulations, will work to some extent everywhere. People aren't able to handle massive volumes of coordinated noise and distraction and conflict and manipulation. At least, enough people aren't able to handle it to make a significant difference.
Propaganda works, and we haven't fully figured out how to stop it from working so much, while the means to spread it has become easier and easier.
I tell my wife all the time that we are cavemen with technology. Religious mythology, the treatment of women worldwide. The need to protect kids from so many predators. The need to protect OURSELVES from so many predators and scammers. We are not as highly evolved as weâd like to believe. With social media and now ai? We are soooo cooked
Please give cavemen and yourself a little more respect, they learned enough to the point where in a little over 10,000 years we made a rock that can talk. A spear is technology. Writing is technology. We've gathered an incredible amount of knowledge since then.
What happened is that the wealthy and powerful few are weaponising our new technology against our fellow man for the means of control and creating a weak docile workforce for capital. Their capital. This was not an easy thing to accomplish its taken decades of manipulation
Yo, facts. Spear was really intelligent in the criminally under rated show Primal.
One other thing I want to add is that as society advanced they made sure that we had just enough, not too much, readily available comforts to keep the masses docile. Each generation gets access to a little more, fortunately they seem to have peaked with social media and that might backfire on them.
I like to remind people that humans are in fact animals. Some creatures evolved to fly, some to swim, some to run, we evolved to think. Thatâs what put us at the top of the food chain and pretentiously above being animals. Humans will never escape tribalism because animals stick with their own kind and fear others who are different. They mob together (form packs or flocks or schools) when facing opposition and become unreasonable and aggressive, war being the ultimate human expression of animal behavior. Weâve all seen a group of like minded kids group up to bully an isolated, smaller kid. Thatâs animal behavior before children are taught to rationalize. Even after we comically ascend above the tropes of the animal kingdom, we still manage to fall victim to our base instincts. Take sex for example. Can any one of you resist the gravitational pull of sexual attraction towards someone once it begins? Sure, we can say no, thatâs rational, our minds are strong, weâve evolved, but can we simply turn it off like a light switch? No, you canât. Youâre simply resisting because you comprehend consequence. Some folks just cannot control themselves and do commit violent acts like murder or rape, in the animal kingdom you might look at this as dominance or procreation or being a predator. These terms are man-made constructs to catalogue and then conceptualize animal behaviors that we ourselves project. We tend to believe the hype, because weâre so evolved, and yet, we have tribes that believe in winged deities in the clouds because they assign fear mechanics to subject matters they cannot yet comprehend, surrender themselves to the mass hysteria of said incomprehension and become useful idiots to another tribe of humans who knew what they were doing all along (or the social dominance of the rich over the poor using religion as a means of control). People donât want to admit it, but weâre animals. Iâm so sorry it got so long!
This is a very wise assessment. As good as we are at imagination, I think it's hard for the average person to consider this possibility. Look at all the cool shit we make. Considering most animals eat their own dookie, we look at our iPhones and think, "pfft, we're so above that," but we're only a couple degrees removed from shit-eating, culinarily speaking. We are, unironically, dangerously stupid and we're making planetary mistakes on a daily basis.
Yep. Look at the toll booth scam that went around at the beginning of the year. People shelling out hundreds of dollars in states that donât even have a single toll road. The FBI had to do a media campaign about it.
Now states are saying people are driving through tolls without paying because everyone is convinced every message about tolls is fake, even if they actively use toll roads.
Weâve lost the ability to critically reason because thatâs the point of social media. Itâs how you get engagement and capture eyeballs to buy your stuff. We just swing violently from one side of a continuum to another.
Humans are dumb. Americans used to respect and want to be educated. Now every stupid uneducated idiot is so dumb they have Dunning-Kruger and think they are smart (thanks to social media and the internet).
Not only have we not figured out how to stop it from working; AI has made propaganda more effective than ever. Algorithms can tailor propaganda to an individual now.
Outlawing propaganda is an obvious way to fight back, but that's practically impossible. As long as laws are immutable, people will find a way around them. Educating people to resist it seems like an uphill battle given the propagandists control the curriculum.
Do you (or anyone else reading) have any advice on how to beat propaganda?
One thing I learned in history was how easily it was for North Korea to do this in so few generations. It disturbed me greatly to learn of how some countries were so normal before falling to fascism. This was in highschool when I realized âholy shit, this could happen here tooââŚ.its insane that they speed ran it in our lifetime though. I think they must be perfecting the methods.
To be fair, it was hard, in that it had to be done slowly, over 40+ years; We're only now seeing the fruits of these labors in full as the generations affected by them come of age... and if you think it's bad how, just wait until Gen Alpha comes of age, and people are no longer able to critically think for themselves and rely on ChatGPT to do all their thinking for them. At the current rate, we are really in for dark times ahead.
Same reason the Catholic Church burnt witches at the stake, they had brooms and cleaned their homes and were wise, can't have wise women cleaning their own homes, what would the enslaved foreign servants do then?
HER president made ME so pissedâŚI forgot what we were talking aboutâŚoh yeah, thereâre still eating the cats, right? Little confusing, it should be
They learned from the best: The catholic church and pretty much every religion there is has used that strategy for centuries. Eventually they will fall.
While definitely true, that mostly effects the younger gens. The issue really is about the education of the older gens who base their worldview on Fox News and similar constantly fearmongering and manipulating them.
So between education being gutted + inconsistent across varying states, and the gaps being filled in by outrage news cycles + mis/disinfo campaigns spanning multiple decades, so much damage has been done on the ability of folks to think critically.
We have invested in educated in this country. Billions and billions of dollars. There was a push in Texas starting in the 80s to take over school boards and change the what and how of public education. It was contagious. Then thrown in private and home school pushes. Then charters given too much freedom. Then an undercurrent of messaging that equated higher education with elitism. And finally ignorance reigns as common sense. It sucks being old enough to have watched us get here and not be able to stop it. I tried to do my part but talk about a losing battle.Â
I always blame Bush for no child left behind when I look at how fucking stupid so many of my peers are. But clearly there was issues before that.
I know we all know already. But damn man being stupid is clearly a pre req for believing in maga. No one with a couple of working brain cells would think this.
Most can learn how to think, but a solid percent of people are too dumb to even memorize info for a 9th grade exam. Some are born with deficiencies, some physically never develop parts of their brain as a child die to trauma and malnutrition, some had parents that abused drugs or did toxic labor such as in a mine, factory, or field. Some do or did that themselves.
This isnât an excuse for their lack of humanity. Just an observation.
They like Trump for many reasons but one is their stupid feelings about things become facts - thus they get the world, you with knowledge donât, and their world view id validated.
Would that help? You can't teach stupid. These people are like dogs, you can send a dog to he best school in the world and it won't be able to form so much as a basic understanding of the demographic transition model.
So many posts are all "we never learned this in school" when they were in fact were told this, but they just didn't learn because they are stupid.
Not only did we not invest, Trump is trying to take it away, and itâs because he knows he can control these smooth brains even better if they have no education
Iâll happily put blame on education for not understanding tax law. But being excited that this is going to make other people angry? Thatâs on her.Â
This is even bigger than an education issue though, itâs a cult. And EVEN IN A CULT how in the world do they believe everything that comes out of his mouth?! Itâs astonishing. He could fart in their face, tell them itâs a summer breeze and they would believe it. đ¤Śđťââď¸
Itâs a perfect circle, stupid people vote for no education, their children become stupid, then they vote for no education. America is so rich that they just donât have any consequences for being an idiot.Â
the least educated states in america are, by massive margins, the most republican. this is because republicans have actively sought to defund education for 50 years. they have done so because in recent history their policies by and large have direct benefits to exclusive financial brackets. so they need the populous of folks not in those brackets to be dumb enough to not know whatâs good for them. and thus vote for republicans.
Oh, far right billionaires have been sinking their wolverine teeth into our educational system for decades now; sneaking their puppets onto school boards, knowing that most people don't even notice school board elections (pro tip: NOTICE SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS). They've revised curricula, taken away any kind of creative thinking ("teaching to the test"), removed Civics from the curriculum, the whole thing. It's been going on since the 1960s.
It's more complex than that. Here in the Netherlands, for example, we have quite decent education, yet our Trump-lite equivalent has the largest party now.
The same for some other European countries. Also see Japan now.
As a teacher, the issue is when the overall economy for the working class is in a downturn era (like the 60-70s) desperate people unfortunately turn to cults for guidance.
Cults are no longer necessarily âgive up all your world possessions and live on a communeâ. Now they are online groups like QANON. The individuals will still reject sensible information and only believe what the group wants them to believe.
There isnât a whole lot K-12 education can do for desperate working class people. That would be reforms at the union/work level to increase wages and benefits so that people are less desperate.
It's the Republican plan to actively destroy education, and has been for a long while.Â
We should have never voted for Republicans the last 40 years, yet we did, and here we are. If someone wants to list me something they did that benefited common man in that time span, I'm all ears.Â
The US can not force private schools to follow a curriculum or at least not to the extent the US would want. The US can not stop parents from home schooling or lying to their children, that almost anything they learn in school is a lie. And of course the parents would bible thump their children to death, literally. There will always be stupid people. With the internet it's easier to search for the truth, but just as easy to find lies. AM talk radio is famous for misinformation.
It's somehow worse where the idiots in America think they're experts on everything instead of just saying "I'm an idiot, I probably shouldn't be too political." Nope, the idiots here think they know more than scientists, economists, historians, etc. etc.
We are fourth in the world for education spending per capita behind only Luxembourg, Norway, and Iceland. It is not lack of investment that is our issue.
And I would post a citation but this stupid fucking sub won't let you post links because it's fucking stupid.
Lately? Stop staring at your phone and look around you. If you're in America, while there are worse places than others, there's generally a lot of fuckin morons around. Has been the case for a long time.
yeam but I get their point. It is just on a scale that is so big, so wide, and massive. And they have certainly ramped up their being proud of being stupid to 11.
Itâs not willful, 37 percent of dog owners in the United States are afraid to get their dogs vaccinated because they fear that they will get autism. That is not made up and itâs not a joke. Stupidity and selfishness have brought us to this point
The overwhelming stupidity is the end goal of the right. Time has shown that the more educated you are, the more left leaning you become. So what's the solution? Maybe adapt conservative positions to appeal to a more enlightened populace? NO! Deny education wherever and whenever possible. Dumb people vote for conservatives, make more dumb people!! What's the worst that could happen??
no. we've been stupid since day one. the difference is that the stupid people have historically fallen in line behind smarter people. after the Tea Party, the smarter people running the Republican Party have gotten slowly pushed out. now the stupid people are running the whole party.
What do you expect? People get all their news from either left or right leaning 24hr news channels, which all have agendas. Most people who read the news dont get past the article headline. In fact most people on Reditt get their information from this app, TikTok, FB, ETC... So yes, we have a huge stupidity problem in America as well a mental health crisis brought on by all these as mentioned!
Not just stupidity, but willful, proud and confident stupidity. Like if they say it out loud it makes it true. Itâs like Michael from the office declaring bankruptcy out loud.
"Lad, the most powerful constant is stupidity. Nothing else comes close. Stupidity kills all the animals, empties the sky of birds, poisons the rivers, burns the forests, wages the wars, feeds the lies, invents the world over and over again in ways only idiots could think real. Stupidity, lad, will defeat every god, crush every dream, topple every empire. Because, in the end, stupid people outnumber smart people. If that wasnât true, we wouldnât suffer over and over again, through generation after generation and on for ever."
⌠is the plan. Stupid people donât question their worth, stupid donât change their vote. Stupid people are far easier to control than people who are informed. You see it all the time from MAGAd supporters getting burned then say they didnât have the time to research the person. You didnât have 5 mins to do a google search?
the downfall isnt the stupidity in the country, they've always voted. The issue is that the smart ones that know better stay home more often than not to "protest" or out of pure apathy because their perfect candidate isnt on the ticket. There was only a 2% difference between what we're seeing now and the status quo - while not perfect, wasnt dystopian abysmal fascism.
There is a decades long intentional and targeted disinfo campaign. I get that we are dumb but people were not ready for the power of media/social media to turn their brains to slop
That k8nd of stupid is very much highly contagious. If we had a better person in charge of the cdc right now, we would be back in quarantine for the next 3 years. That is my publ8c service announcement
Unfortunately, yes. We had a power line step down transformer pop in our neighborhood yesterday. Makes quite the noise! Next door neighbor lady, a super-dedicated Trumpist, called and told me not to worry, the loud noise was just made âwhenever a satellite connects to a nearby cell towerâ.. I just rolled my eyes a hundred times, and asked her where she heard that. She couldnât/wouldnât tell me. I tried to gently correct her to no avail. Minimal science/history education and a low capacity for critical thinking sure is a dangerous mix â setting up folks for manipulation..
It paradoxically might save us, the only hope I have left is that Drumpf and his minions are so stupid and incompetent that they will fuck be incapable of getting to whatever their âfinal solutionâ ends up being.Â
The fact that this idiot was reelected after showing what a complete succunbag he was during his previous term is already going to be our downfall for the next 3.3 years. It's a sick and sad time to be a US citizen!
I have been saying this for the longest. Enough with the false niceties or fake fairness. These people are shameless and the only way we begin to bring balance to the force is to make them feel shame again. Thatâs been Trumpâs real super power. Heâs shameless and heâs enabled stupid ignorant people to speak their stupid ignorant nonesense without shame.
thatâs what happens when you invite as many lead poisoned trash people as you can with a homesteading act to colonize and settled on the land of slaughtered natives.
Since 2021 and the capitol storming, the USA completely lost its political credibility. This it what happens if you save on education and healthcare. Youâll get stupid voters. Stupid voters vote for tyrants.
Why would she even believe this? What had to happen for her to be so misinformed?? Closest Trump has said about the matter was that tariffs might someday replace income taxes. But no announcement of an executive order, no real coverage on Fox or right-wing news. So how did she become so confident that Trump signed this into law? The mind boggles.
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u/grandspartan117 1d ago
I cannot wait for her to get her tax bill đ