Dumbing down of USA... Thanks media outlets?

[thundersnow]

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/20/age-of-ignorance/

[Oh Shoot]

You made no comment, but you realize the article is calling uber right wingers the "dumbest" segment of America, right?

 

All of these points, according to article, are examples of "ignorant bigoted delusions":

 

"Christians are persecuted in this country.
The government is coming to get your guns.
Obama is a Muslim.
Global Warming is a hoax.
The president is forcing open homosexuality on the military.
Schools push a left-wing agenda.
Social Security is an entitlement, no different from welfare.
Obama hates white people.
The life on earth is 10,000 years old and so is the universe.
The safety net contributes to poverty.
The government is taking money from you and giving it to sex-crazed college women to pay for their birth control."

 

Myself, I only see one of them as completely beyond the intellectual pale ("10,000 years"), and all the rest as either quite valid in toto or at least to a degree allowable under the blanket of effective linguistic overstatement, meaning that the trend of the statement is more valid that not in an extended sense.

 

- OS

Edited December 31, 2013 by Oh Shoot

[thundersnow]

Well the author is of the typical college professor mindset. I found it interesting to see how an leftish outsider views what he considers the right. Specifically from the standpoint on incoming freshmen students. The argument is that with the current media culture it is really easy to spread misinformation. And as a result the younger folks are losing their ability to discern the facts.

IMO some feel that there is just an overall bias that any information can't be trusted as truthful so there's not any point in finding out the facts.