You can see the country dumb down as people were drinking down the RW talk Koolaid. You would go to gatherings of people and the conversation was a regurgitation of what they heard or saw on Limbaugh's show (Limbaugh also had a tv show at one time). I didn't put up an argument until I was seeing how far apart their comments were from reality.
And now the republican are all concerned about how Trump is affecting the presidential race, not because how it's destroying the country with an empowered population of voting idiots but because the idiots are not backing the anointed persons they want to run the country. They created the monster, now they need to deal with it. Unfortunately it's taking the whole country down with them.

I've had people say stuff that I was amazed at how out-of-this-world stupid it was. Now, I often see it coming because I've heard some version of it before. I don't listen constantly but I do check in regularly, then (thanks to smart technology) I can do a quick search to find the Genesis or know the counter to it.

It's quite amazing not only what is being said but how it is received and processed by the conditioned listener.

luckily, it is only about a 20 minute drive. I do this so I know what bullshit I will be hearing the next day.

and in some cases, worse, yet they think of themselves as the normal candidates. There are no normal choices in the repuglican party. RW hate radio made this bed and now we all have to lay in it and listen to total stupidity all day.

as well to make us believe that Hillary is for the people and has our best interests at heart. What a crock of poo! They do it because it has worked! Now they are getting push back because Bernie is letting the cat out of the bag. He has never been one of their team players, but they have usually been able to isolate him
It's ironic to see a Hillary supporter make fun of those ignorant red neck Trump supporting Morans, while at the same time they are being taken advantage of THE SAME EXACT WAY!!!

..

I may be a RW demagogue but I will solve your problems - how I will do that is not something you should concern yourselves with - by the force of my brilliance and strongman appeal.

Trump is appealing to those ignorant soles by playing on their racial animus. He blames all their economic ills on minorities. Nixon did this in 1968. To the extent that any Democrats pass over, I will consider it a purge of racists from our Party that has built up since 1968. I say good riddance to them.

with very few exceptions.

Found this gem in the comments section of this WaPo article:

That's how products are sold on Madison Avenue and how presidents are sold to the public.

the same idiots who yell and cheer as the GOP demands small government are the same people seen crying and moaning that they need federal help from the storm that destroyed their community. It's like the woman with the sign that famously read, "Keep Government Out of My Medicare."

How can people be so stupid?

and George Wallace. Wallace labeling the educated as pointed headed liberals and Agnew referring to the educated as effete snobs in their ivory towers.
Reagan takes this and runs with it. The educated were running down the country and he was going to make it great again, "that shining city on the hill."
The poorly educated gravitated to the Republicans because the Republicans made them feel validated by pandering to ignorance.
The reasoning behind this strategy is that the ignorant and those lacking critical thinking skills are easier to manipulate and exploit for cheap labor.

So true and so sad.

the elites only want people smart enough to run the machines. Who among those who control this country (politicians, big business leaders and the media) benefits from a well-educated, well-informed populace? None of them.

Last edited Sat Mar 19, 2016, 06:13 PM - Edit history (1)

My sister lives in New Hampshire. She supplements her income with a part-time gig bar tending at the American Legion Hall. She had to fill in for another bar tender after her shift, so she told us to just meet her at the bar. We did. What an eye-opener! It was, and am not making this up, "Wheel of Meat" night. Raffle tickets for $5 a block, and they spun the big wheel for rib eyes, fillets, ground beef and even some venison. Lots of very drunk old men wearing their old military baseball caps, drinking $2 Bud Lights and spending every last penny on pull-tab lottery tickets (something I had never seen before — 50 cent lottery tickets with five pull tabs which reveal a prize, or more often than not, no prize). This is a cash cow for the bar. They even have special table-top trash bins they'll give you in which to toss your hundreds of losing tickets. Seriously.

Anyway, one of my sister's regular bar patrons was seated next to me. A very friendly old woman, kept hitting on me despite my wife sitting right next to me. She bought me drinks. "You're new here! We don't see many guys like you in this place!" WTF? I'm 56 years old! Maybe it was the blond hair.

She asked me were I was from. Keep in mind, this was only New Hampshire. New England is a pretty small place, overall. I told here I was visiting from Connecticut and the woman literally gasped, sat up straight and gave me the stink-eye. "Connect--ee--cut! Ooh, he's from Connect-ee-cut! We don't get many of you rich people up here!" The hell? Huh? We were barely 150 miles away, and I was suddenly a snob-ass pointy-head from "Connect-ee-cut."

The Trump thing is real. Most of my family and friends reside down south, in Florida. We didn't use to think of Florida as "the South," but it is now. Deep south, and I get the same thing from them, even old friends. "We don't care 'bout what you Yankees think about Rick Scott!" They seem to take great pride in being ignorant hillbillies. Just like in New Hampster.

She threw their bigot closet doors open so the 'real Murikans' could come out.

A well educated populace tends to not vote for Republicans and sees right through their horseshit.

as well as other intellectual pursuits. They run the gamut from "liberals want you to go to college" to the high prices/loans, to putting money in the hands of liberal professors who can't get a real job, to softening people up so badly that they can't survive "in the real world" and other such nonsense. That college makes you a sensitive weak liberal failure and that those lazy entitled millennials go to college to get raped and real Americans should know better. Men and women who don't go to college are tougher, more resilient, and more American.

The people writing these publications all have multiple degrees and make their living in writing.

They know that less educated people are easier to control. That's why Fox News has blonde women and hate radio is so appealing to help get people worked up over those other people who are stealing our jobs and ruining our lives.

Why would they admit to what they have done? Republicans don't do that, ever. No...when damage is done, it is roundly ignored and made worse by negligence. The M$M will walk over the corpse of the GOP to find their next big paycheck, without batting an eyelash.

Trump is their greatest invention and now he is terrorizing their established pay masters. Funny that they are not scrambling to vilify Trump and strangly enough give him billions worth of free air time.

The OP absolves the media which is wrong when it is the media is the key factor in this dumbing down. The media controls the information. It is the media that has been trumpeting Trump. In ever single major media outlet it has been all Trump all the time.

without his supporters, tRump is just another loud mouth.

He is literally the reality TV candidate. Nothing has dumbed down the country more than the move away from scripted dramas and comedies with trained actors and actresses to pulling nobodies from nowhere and making them somebody's for exhibiting some sort of bad behavior.

they are ignorant. Willfully ignorant. Comfortably ignorant. The media, with their self-censorship on some issues and willingness to serve as right-wing corporate megaphones on others...are totally complicit.

And Trump-like politics has always had a large and often violent "base" here, too. The media will not like the white mob so well this time once it gets a head of steam up. The Civil War is still unfinished business.

"Tell them they are being screwed and lied to by both pubs and Dems. "

That this is a fact has led us to where we are. People are not as stupid as congress thinks and Trump is their middle finger to the whole system, one that has been lying to and looting them for 3-4 decades now.

For the life of me, anyone that doesn't understand why Trump and an unknown senator Bernie are doing so well must live under a fucking rock.

about 30% of the population are unapologetic racists.

Our tame and ratings-hungry media are just more people doing pretty much what Little Donald wants, and vice-versa.