Texting & driving, reality t.v., happy pills, is stupidity destroying America?

The power of stupidity is amazing, what passes for entertainment on the idiot box is becoming alarming, and our society is collapsing in on itself. There's a new public service announcement on t.v. to teach people not to text while driving, as if they needed to be told that it is a dangerous practice. How stupid will people eventually become?

Have you noticed the way our very language is disintegrating? The way people spell now? Movies appeal more and more to the lowest common denominator, toilet jokes, flatulence jokes, masturbation jokes, all designed to get the stupid into theaters and take their money.

Popular music has devolved drastically, scream rock, death metal, brainless hip hop, deification of celebrities, is it any wonder that after 8 years of the stupidest president who ever lived that America is succumbing to rampant, chronic, terminal stupidity?

Prescription drugs are becoming the new crack and heroin, and teenagers are taking pills of all kinds and the trend is very alarming. Almost everyone is on some form of anti-anxiety drug, or happy pill, or some other psychotropic drug, while marijuana is still illegal and treated as if it were poison, and the prisons are filled with pot smokers thrown in with crack heads.

How many things can we apply the word 'stupid' to? How many trends? How do the republicans succeed so well with the stupid among us? How is it possible to make millions of people believe the stupidest possible things, like Saddam Hussein bringing down the World Trade Center? How can a nation be dragged into two unnecessary wars that seem to never end?

I don't exclude myself, I'm prone to do stupid things too, everyone is subject to stupidity at one time or another, but it seems that stupidity itself is more and more becoming the dominant societal trend, and I am becoming ever more alarmed when I think about how stupid people might eventually become.

in short, we're doomed.

The message is accurate, yet it is a terribly stupid film, far below the standard for Mike Judge.

We agree on something. I was greatly disappointed in the film. It could have been so much better.

Bad as it was though, I said at the time that it would be remembered as forecasting the state of the nation.

"BIG-ASS TACO" in the ad. Wait for it, it's coming.

the long answer is: abso-fuckin-lutly.
sorry.

The rant reminds me of what every generation says about the next one and the next one and the next one with the usual cultural variations.

Even Socrates was alarmed.

but not questioners, let alone thinkers.

I taught for 30 years. Senior-high English. "American Idol" is the least of our worries.

... just color in the oval and everything will be alright. it doesn't matter that the questions they're asking are totally ludicrous, irrelevant to life skills, and most likely written from a specific ideological slant ...


:puke:

thinking. why do we leave it to schools to raise and teach our children all things.

no

i am not going to blame schools for not teaching my child critical thinking. a parent, from day one has the job of teaching their children these things.

... is told 'we teach to the test and you will fail the test and be held back' ... then what position does that put your child in?

but to get a damn hundred to raise all of the schools score. that all this is so very easy for them, that their score will help those children and schools that it is tougher for. i put immense pressure on my children to excel and do the best they can.

what does a damn test score have to do with their ability to think

are you suggesting the only knowledge, information, guidance, academics come from school, cause if you suggest this, then again i would say, ... where are the parents. why aren't they teaching the children vasts amounts of information that is provided for us like no other time in history.

You think what you want to think, let me be of my opinion also.

Thank you.

but at any point and time, yes, either of us can stop discussing.

not a matter of wanting you to think like i. a matter of sharing different positions.

and you are welcome

The stupider we are the more easily we can be manipulated.

Manipulated to buy shit we don't need, eat stuff that is no good for us, and support government policies that screw us over.

And we can also be manipulated to ridicule the few among us who have not succumbed to stupidity and demonstrate the ability to think.

A frightened population is a compliant population. For a time. It wears off. But a stupid population is compliant forever.

dismissed, irrelevant today.

and no, it doesn't have to be. spending 20's alone and not starting a family until later in life, i walked into the cartoons fed to our kids. power puffs?, ed ed and eddy, sponge bob, johnny bravo..... it was a clear wake up call on the conditioning of our children in stupid and angry. this was before bushco. bushco had helped

and started teaching kids at the youngest of age the conditioning our society does with us and it is rewarded. it is possible to guide, influence our children. my kids can well see it where as adults are blase or ignorant on the conditioning

it doesn't have to be.

I had severe anxiety attacks over a year ago and anti-depressants really helped calmed me down but more then anything Cannabis helped calmed me down more then the pills but the pills did help. I like most modern movies even the comedies but I haven't heard that I can remember flatulence jokes since Eddie Murphy's remake of The Nutty Professor but I wasn't a fan of the movie. I watch some reality TV usually because the other networks fail to put something better on. But none of the 20 people competing to get one person type of shows. I like hip-hop but not all of it as well as other genres of music because no matter what the genre only 5%-10% of it I find appealing and I like pretty much all genres even some country but I guarantee you very few people that listen to hip-hop voted for Bush. In fact most if not all of the artists hate republicans and some go after Faux News especially O'Reilly. I find Fox News in general, conservative talk radio and the corporate media in general much worse then the various things you list. However I don't text while drive, I'd crash for sure but they have PSA's for everything.

texting while driving is the dumbest thing, where did common sense go? Pull over and TALK to the person on the phone instead.

Test taking vs critical thinking is another good point. Kids need to learn these skills, parents, educators, society need to teach these children. We need to get it together, other countries are passing our kids by.

As for happy pills, there may be some folks on them that don't need to be, maybe they just need some coping skills, but there are alot more people who need to be on these medications, they are not dumb, they have a chemcial imbalance,they have a medical condition and take medication for it.

:)

Most music channels consist of reality shows and segmented shows involving D-list comedians making fun of reality shows.

In which case we'd never see Democrats anywhere and Darwin would have been an ironic figure rather than a historical one.

to text while driving, use electric appliances in water, etc, etc, etc.

Friend thinks that as long as he isn't looking down while texting, it's an OK way to spend his long interstate commute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGE8LzRaySk

My cell phone is history at the end of Aug.!

that made me cry, horribly harsh. made myself watch. i dont normally wath stuff like this. wow.

i think, as hard as it is to watch i am going ot have my workin on 15 yr old son watch this today

wow

because I am older now and it is a generation thing. I remember when I was young, the older folks saying "What is the world coming to." And folks have been saying that for years. But still - as I said - I agree and feel the same way.

Since man walked out of the jungle.

Seriously. I was having panic attacks 2-3 times a week, missing school, and worrying about absolutely everything all the time. It was hurting my relationships with people and my ability to live a happy life.

I'm not on them because it's fun. I'm on them because I want to be able to cope, to go to university in the fall without missing tons of classes like I did my last year of high school. And, of course, if I left my anxiety untreated and my studies suffered, I'd again become "stupid" in the eyes of people like you. People like me can't win.

Until you've walked a mile in my shoes, take your smug attitude and shove it.

I too, as a child, was victim to all sorts of shit - and idiot school management let bullies and others do whatever they pleased.

I too have to take "medications" for issues that came about due to ambient environment.

Never mind being smart is almost a crime in this country...

And you're right, walking a mile in the shoes helps a lot when it comes to understanding...

:woohoo:

In seriousness, the dumbing down is certainly more prevalent than ever - but if being a geek 20 years ago was bad enough...

Life is what we make of it. It's high time somebody puts their foot down and sets this country in the proper direction. And that's why we elected who we did.

I think its more comfort and lack of desire for challenging thought. We Americans, in general, are very comfortable and to critically think about ideas that question strongly held notions takes effort and requires us to remove ourselves from our comfortable situation. I hesitate to call it laziness, but I do believe we are seeing the upshot of having so much convenience and comfort within easy reach.

half of people have an IQ of 100 or less, and if you have ever had the pleasure of talking to a person w. an IQ of 100, you know they're stupid stupid stupid

of those people who start w. an IQ that's of at least reasonable intelligence, a decent percentage lose brain to accident/injury, war trauma, lead and mercury poisoning (not so much lead now but now there's more people eating fish/mercury) and of course the age-related causes of intellectual decline, including middle-age/menopause, chemotherapy, chronic fatique and other disease related fog, and the older you get the more chance you have of succumbing to stroke, dementia, and so on

so always, always, most people are frankly stupid

those who are NOT stupid need to accept some of the blame/responsibility for allowing hate-filled propragandists to take control of the mass media, yes, free speech is fine but as the germans have discovered, it needs to be limited, the nazis and the racists should NOT be allowed to pump their hate 24.7 while decent people do not have a voice because the stupid ARE the majority and we are allowing them to be hypnotized when they don't have the mental defenses to protect themselves

in short, we allow people who have less intellectual capacity to be hammered constantly with hate news and then we stand amazed that we have a nation full of hate

texting and driving is hardly the cause of the downfall of rome, it's the constant propaganda and tolerance of that propaganda that is destroying us

I hear you, I really do....it's been a long time coming - stupidity has always been with us (I remember feeling pained at the popularity of inane garbage like "Three's Company" and disco music) but I do believe the Reagan era made ignorance and stupidity fashionable.

I personally do not give a crap about defending anything else, but you are barking up the wrong tree when you say that death metal is a sign of stupidity.

I have been playing death metal since it was invented, and I can tell you that to dismiss that form of music as "stupid" is profoundly ignorant. Are you aware of the themes covered by bands such as "Death", "Lamb of God", "Carcass", "Arch Enemy" etc.? As a progressive, you might like some of this stuff, because these people write music about the wrongness of our fucked up society. They expose the underbelly of humanity with a critical and brutally-honest eye, and even offer solutions. In short, these musicians helped form me as the liberal I am today....one that doesn't take shit, I might add. Rebellion is a big theme in metal music of all forms.

Here is another thing you may not know about death metal: it is hard to play and exceedingly complex. Some bands write songs that are written to mathematical fractals (not my cup of tea, but there it is). You must be an excellent musician and have quite a bit of stamina in order to play death metal with any degree of competence....and you have to have lots of capability in concentration and memory. I should know..it is some of the most complicated music I play, right along with fusion jazz.

One last thing....people do not listen to metal music because they are stupid...they do it because it is empowering and cathartic. That goes for all walks of life. Sure, some not-so-intelligent people are metalheads, but the vast majority of them nowadays are intelligent, thoughtful, mild-mannered people (catharsis tends to do that),

Stupid my ass. You should take that back.