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PostPosted: 02/28/20 12:32 pm • # 151 
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https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/business ... Stories%29

5W Public Relations said that 38% of Americans wouldn't buy Corona "under any circumstances" because of the outbreak, and another 14% said they wouldn't order a Corona in public. The survey encompasses polling from 737 beer drinkers in the United States.

Do we need any more proof?


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PostPosted: 02/29/20 8:18 am • # 152 
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jabra2 wrote:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/business/corona-beer-marketing/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Top+Stories%29

5W Public Relations said that 38% of Americans wouldn't buy Corona "under any circumstances" because of the outbreak, and another 14% said they wouldn't order a Corona in public. The survey encompasses polling from 737 beer drinkers in the United States.

Do we need any more proof?


Nope. This makes me giggle.


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PostPosted: 02/29/20 8:58 am • # 153 
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jabra2 wrote:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/business/corona-beer-marketing/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Top+Stories%29

5W Public Relations said that 38% of Americans wouldn't buy Corona "under any circumstances" because of the outbreak, and another 14% said they wouldn't order a Corona in public. The survey encompasses polling from 737 beer drinkers in the United States.

Do we need any more proof?


Proof that no matter how dumb people get they can always get dumber.


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PostPosted: 04/30/20 5:01 am • # 154 
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PostPosted: 05/07/20 8:10 am • # 155 
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How Freedom Became Free-dumb in America
Why the World is Horrified by the American Idiot

umair haque

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“Avridamah!!” shouted Matteo, from across the park. Snowy looked up at me, quizzically. It was too early for this. I grumbled, irritated.

What was the Italian doctor trying to say this fine spring lockdown morning?

“Mate. Have you seen this?!” Ben, the grizzled London copper asked me, starting to cackle, as he handed me his iPhone.

There, I saw a picture of crowds of people gathered in Central Park. Then another, on California’s beaches. With, apparently, not a care in the world.

“What the hell is wrong with them? It’s not like there’s…a…global pandemic…or anything.” Ben laughed.

“You zee!” added Matteo. “Avridamah!!”

“What the — “, I began to ask. And then I got it. Freedom. As in: look at what these idiots think is freedom. LOL! Snowy looked up at me, grinning.

My dog park buddies had a pint. “Americans,” I said, sighing. I struggled for a moment, and then gesticulated. All that came out was: “They’re just…different.”

Ben rolled his eyes. Matteo sighed melodramatically. “We know, mate. Oh, we know.”

The American idiot is, by now, a figure that’s the stuff of myth and legend across the world. Nobody else is really quite sure: are Americans really like this? This…well…laughable? Yesterday, they were the kind of people who made their kids do “active shooter drills,” meaning masked men burst into classrooms…and pretend…to kill them. What the? Today, they’re the kind of people who happily congregate in parks and on beaches during a global pandemic…when the lunatic fringe amongst them isn’t protesting for “liberation” in the first place. What on earth?

I don’t use the term as an insult — the American idiot. I mean it in a precise way, as I try to remind people. For the Greeks, “idiot” carried a precise and special meaning. The person who was only interested in private life, private gain, private advantage. Who had no conception of a public good, common wealth, shared interest. To the Greeks, the pioneers of democracy, the creators of the demos, such a person was the most contemptible of all. Because even the Greeks seemed to understand: you can’t make a functioning democracy out of…idiots.

Now, I’m going to generalize. But I don’t mean that all Americans are idiots. I mean that, for example, more or less everyone who wants to carry a gun to Starbucks, deny their neighbours healthcare, make people beg for medicine online, and not let anyone in society ever retire…all of those people in the world, by and large, are Americans. Nobody else — nobody in the whole world at this point in history — thinks such things are remotely desirable. Hence, the American idiot. It means: the world’s largest and most hardened subset of idiots at this point, in the Classical Greek meaning of the word, is largely American.

You don’t have to think very hard to understand why my Italian friend laughed at such a person. We’ve had many serious conversations over the last few months. “How are things in Italy going”, I ask, trying to be gentle. He looks away, in grief, and says simply: “Dificile.” The dogs play. I wonder if his loved ones are OK. He tells me stories of a society pulling together, to fight a deadly disease, whose toll has been heavy and grave. Is it any wonder that, looking at Americans gathering in Central Park, on Long Beach, he’s shocked into laughter? We’re lucky he’s laughing. What he really feels, I’d bet, is a kind of horror, combined with contempt. The very same contempt the Greeks felt for…their idiots.

‘Freedom?’ I’d bet he thinks. ‘More like freedumb.’

When Matteo, when Ben, when every single person I know who’s not American, when the world looks at America, it sees the American idiot, and what it tries — and usually fails, because it’s lost for words — to express is something like this: can people really be this selfish? This oblivious? This…thankless? Why do they keep voting for less healthcare, retirement, education, income, savings, happiness, trust, year after year — even the so-called good ones? What kind of people…why are the literally the only people left in the whole world who do that? And then…complain bitterly about not having…the very things…they deny each other? Who can even make sense of this, the bizarre circular firing squad of social suicide that America has become? But all those, of course, are key traits of the idiot. The answer — sadly, I think — is: yes, people can really be this way.

Perhaps because they don’t know any other way. Maybe because it’s all they’ve ever been taught or told. That’s not an apologia for the American idiot, by the way. Or is it? Even I wonder. Still, let me try to explain as best I can — America’s strange and complicated with freedom, one so perverse that freedom became twisted into something very much like its opposite. It has to do with the way Americans think — unsubtly, narrowly, single-mindedly — about what freedom is, and means.

About half a century ago, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin divided freedom into two categories — maybe you already know them. Negative freedom, or freedom from. And positive freedom, or freedom to. The theory then went — and this became the basis of generations of American thought — that only the freedom from was worth developing and cultivating.

The freedom “to”, on the other hand, was vilified as something that only communists and socialists would want. Why? Because my “freedom to” — say to be educated, or to be healthy — requires your input, help, cooperation. But American thinking — which became obsessed with individualism — couldn’t admit or permit that, because then maybe you weren’t “taking responsibility for yourself” and all the rest of the jargon.

All this dates back, of course, to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the Uberman. It’s not too hard to see why a society that was born in slavery, and continued into segregation, in which horrors like crippling and maiming people for the color of their skin were perfectly alright — why a society like that ends up prizing freedom from. America’s obsession with freedom from dates right back to the slave-owner’s desire for freedom from government intervention, law, common decency, any tiny shred of humanity — to have the power to exploit and abuse human beings on an unthinkable scale. There’s a straight line from Nietzsche’s “master morality” naturally dominating the “slave morality” to Berlin’s “freedom from” any restraint on power — and that straight line is the one American thinking, still backwards, mired in the logic of domination and exploitation, traced.

Americans don’t like it when I make those links for them. But they are as plain as day. You only really have to look at Europe or Canada to see the contrast.

There, the idea of freedom itself evolved. Away from “freedom from” — which is what the early European revolution were about, for example, when the French abolished the formal class system, freedom from nobility and monarchy and so forth — and towards “freedom to.”

By the end of the Second World War, Europe had done something radical and transformative: written the “freedom to” into its constitutions. People would now have expansive freedoms to — freedom to have good healthcare, education, retirement, income, savings, and so forth. It’s true that today’s Europe is forgetting about that breakthrough, but it’s not true that it wasn’t history changing. The power of the freedom to gave Europe history’s highest standards of living — in just one human lifetime. Nothing has been seen like it ever before — and maybe nothing will be ever again.

You might have noticed, though, that I’m still accepting Berlin’s old dichotomy: freedom from and freedom to. I reject it. I think the dichotomy itself is a mistake — maybe the formative mistake of American ideas. Isn’t good education also just freedom from ignorance? Good healthcare freedom from illness? And so forth. I think that a century ago, trying to neatly cleave freedoms into the good kind and the bad kind, American thinking made a huge, terrible mistake. One which trapped it to circle a desert for a century — and then find itself in a dead end.

You can see that dead end everywhere today.

In the cruelty, aggression, rage, violence, hate which characterize American life as especially brutal. Americans are always trying to escape from any kind of obligation or responsibility to…anything. Each other. History. The future. Just common decency. Even just basic humanity. Who else makes their kids…pretend to die? And then pretends that doesn’t scar kids for life? What the? That’s why the world doesn’t know whether to be horrified, shocked, repelled, or astonished by America — and it laughs. Nervously, oddly, baffled. What Americans don’t know is that that laughter is a world being polite.

Here’s how extreme America’s belief in freedumb — freedom as the absence of any kind of obligation or responsibility to anything greater than narrow, immediate, infantile self-satisfaction — has gotten. Americans aren’t just congregating in parks and beaches during a global pandemic. They’re literally the only people in the world who just voted against better healthcare (from Bernie and Liz) in the middle of a pandemic. Think about the scale of such folly for a moment. What kind of people vote for worse healthcare…during a pandemic? John Cleese would struggle to make a face that expressed the surreal tragicomedy of such a thing. But that’s what Americans did…what they do, over and over and over again.

Why? Because they still believe — even if they don’t think they believe — in Berlin’s tired, weary, flawed old distinction. Freedom has only come to mean the removal of any restraint — negative freedom — on the exercise of individual desire, the satiation of individual appetite. What freedom still doesn’t mean in America is any of the following, good healthcare, retirement, education, and so forth, because what freedom has never meant is any form of collective action.

Let me put that more sharply. What if the only way that I can have decent healthcare is for you to have decent healthcare — first? What if the only for me to have a decent retirement is for us all to have one, first? You see, that logic — which is the math of public goods — makes a mockery of Berlin’s dichotomy. Then, what we don’t need is simple “freedom from” some kind of restraint — but the “freedom to”…collectively organize, coordinate, take action.

Freedom from can give us liberty as individuals, it’s true, from kings, and even governments. But only the freedom to can give us liberty as societies, groups, classes, nations. These two kinds of freedoms might exist in tension — but try to have one without the other, and the result is a spectacular collapse. Freedom to without freedom from gave us the Soviet Union. But freedom from without freedom to gave us America, the failed state, the world’s first poor rich country. Gentle Europe, wise New Zealand, humble and kind Canada — which balance the two — have found a kind of miracle in that equilibrium.

Matteo and Ben often ask me: “What wrong with Americans?” All my non-American friends do, as do everyone’s. What they really mean is: “why don’t they get it? Why can’t they change?” I tell them that Americans will never really change. They used to think I was kidding. Looking at Americans voting down better healthcare during a pandemic…then happily crowd parks and beaches…after protesting for liberation from lockdown…they’re beginning to believe me.

Change? You know about sunk costs, I’m sure. You should let them go…but you can’t. Think of a bad relationship. You know you should break up. But how can you let all that investment go? So it is with Americans and freedom. They’re too invested in the fools’ idea of freedom that wrecked their future to really begin to understand that it is a fools’ definition of freedom. They’ll go on thinking, in my estimation, that freedom means things like this.

Carrying a gun to Starbucks — so kids have to do active shooter drills. Being able to “choose” between a million health insurance plans, none of which covers you — so that you don’t have to pay higher taxes to the hated government. Making everyone stand on their own two feet — even while every force in society is cutting those very limbs away. Never taking any kind of collective action as a society — that’s socialism! That’s communism!! Those things are bad!! They’re terrible!

No, my friends. Americans will never understand the miracle of European social democracy, of Canadian investment in each other, of New Zealand making a difficult, joyous peace with a broken past. They won’t. Because they can’t? Because they don’t want to? Because nobody teaches them about the gentle and beautiful power in cooperation, in dignity, in respect for the self and others as more than a thing of appetite? Because they’re trapped by a sordid history — which they secretly care little about overcoming?

Maybe, in the end, it’s just all the above.

Freedom! Here I am, the American idiot, carrying my gun to Starbucks, before I go to Walmart, where I’ll choose between a million different flavors of the Everyday Low Price, and then I’ll dream about being Great Again, while I drive my big car down the big, empty highway, listening to some bellowing mullah of capital and individualism and cruelty telling me to hate and rage a little more. Along the way, so what if I create my very own exploitation, abuse, misery, decline into poverty, despair, degradation, dehumanization? Hey! Don’t tell me any different!

Isn’t that what freedom really is?

SOURCE


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PostPosted: 05/07/20 4:02 pm • # 156 
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A GREAT article Shift.


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PostPosted: 05/07/20 5:07 pm • # 157 
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I agree. GREAT!


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PostPosted: 06/19/20 3:21 am • # 158 
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Crossposted from Coronavirus thread

Fauci warns of 'anti-science bias' being a problem in US

By Jacqueline Howard and Veronica Stracqualursi

The White House coronavirus task force has been out of public view as President Donald Trump has shown an urgency to move past the pandemic, downplay recent surges in Covid cases in some states, and get Americans back to work.

But the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has been warning Americans about the risk of further spread of the virus.
On Wednesday, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, joined the US Department of Health and Human Services' podcast "Learning Curve" and gave his expertise on the pandemic and the vaccine development process.

He also defended the stay-at-home orders as having saved "millions of lives," and drew attention to anti-science bias and the disproportionate impact the virus is having on the black community.

On "anti-science bias" in America

Fauci said "anti-science bias" in the country can be problematic.

"One of the problems we face in the United States is that unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are -- for reasons that sometimes are, you know, inconceivable and not understandable -- they just don't believe science and they don't believe authority," Fauci said.

"So when they see someone up in the White House, which has an air of authority to it, who's talking about science, that there are some people who just don't believe that -- and that's unfortunate because, you know, science is truth," Fauci said.

"It's amazing sometimes the denial there is. It's the same thing that gets people who are anti-vaxxers, who don't want people to get vaccinated, even though the data clearly indicate the safety of vaccines," Fauci added. "That's really a problem."

Trump has frequently disregarded expert advice -- and often the guidance of ...

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vid at source


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PostPosted: 07/06/20 11:05 am • # 159 
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PostPosted: 07/18/20 4:40 am • # 160 
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This dates to 2016 but is worth a read

Why Does Education Translate to Less Support for Donald Trump?


https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/upsh ... trump.html


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PostPosted: 07/21/20 5:40 pm • # 161 
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And there's no sign of that decline stopping

America’s Innovation Engine Is Slowing
Universities are in trouble and the influx of brainpower from overseas is shrinking. The long-term consequences could be disastrous.

Caleb Watney

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Earlier this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that international students attending universities that switch to online-only courses in the fall would be required to leave the United States. By threatening student visas, the Trump administration, which has been pushing to reopen businesses and schools despite the continuing pandemic, was widely seen as pressuring colleges to resume in-person classes. If implemented, the visa policy could have driven away thousands of brilliant minds—the brainpower that, for decades, has proved essential to entrepreneurship and technological innovation in the United States.

In the end, immigration officials backed down amid legal challenges, but some damage was already done: The administration had added to the uncertainty swirling about America’s crucial higher-education sector, while also signaling to young people overseas that, should they ever want to attend an American university, they might not be welcome.

The visa debacle was only the latest of many ominous signs for the United States, long the world’s primary incubator of new technologies, new drugs, new therapies, and new business models. The coronavirus pandemic and the administration’s botched response to it are damaging the engine of American innovation in three major ways: The flow of talented people from overseas is slowing; the university hubs that produce basic research and development are in financial turmoil; and the circulation of people and ideas in high-productivity industrial clusters, such as Silicon Valley, has been impeded.

All three trends started before the coronavirus arrived, but the pandemic has accelerated them in ways that, if left unaddressed, could cripple the U.S. economy for decades. During the difficult economic recovery from COVID-19, closed businesses will be able to reopen and rehire their furloughed workers, and delayed investments will resume. But if the nation’s capacity for economic and technological innovation is diminished, Americans will feel the loss for decades to come—not just in lower GDP but in slower progress toward a vaccine for COVID-19, solutions to climate change, a cure for cancer, and more.

Over the past century, the U.S. has consistently attracted the world’s most inquiring minds and skilled workers, despite ...

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PostPosted: 07/22/20 6:50 am • # 162 
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#160

Remember PNAC?


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PostPosted: 07/25/20 1:29 pm • # 163 
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I did consider putting this in the Coronavirus thread

How the American Idiot Made America Unlivable
America is a Poor Country Now, in Ways that are Likely to be Permanent

umair haque

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New Zealand declared victory over Coronavirus yesterday. “Team New Zealand,” as Kiwis refer to themselves, celebrated having a virus free country. America, on the other hand, had close to 70,000 cases. Seventy thousand — and exploding.

What the American Idiot has done to America is to make it an impoverished country. Not just any kind of poverty — what you might call deep poverty. Let me explain.

New Zealand has zero new cases of Corona. In America, they’re spinning out of control. One way to think about it is to say that your chances of dying of this lethal pandemic are now…infinitely higher in America than in New Zealand. Compared to Europe and Canada, they’re about a hundred times higher.

That’s a kind of poverty, too. A poverty of public health. Americans have spent decades being impoverished of public health by the American Idiot — the kind of person who votes against better healthcare for everyone, including themselves, their kids, their parents. What the? What kind of idiot does that? A very, very large number of Americans.

The result of that attitude was a society poor in a gruesome and strange way — poor in public health itself. What I mean by that is that American life expectancy is the lowest in the rich world, and plummeting, that Americans have the highest rates of all kinds of preventable chronic diseases, from diabetes to obesity to heart disease. You can see it on American faces, in fact: a society poor in health is a society of unhealthy people.

We expect much, much poorer societies to be impoverished in public health. It’s a strange concept to have to think about precisely because we don’t expect it of a rich country. Perhaps one of a poor one, that’s never really developed at all. This is a syndrome unique to America — a form of poverty that Europeans and Canadians struggle to understand, because, well, they’ve mostly ...

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PostPosted: 07/25/20 3:15 pm • # 164 
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Another one that could have gone in the Coronavirus thread but, given the correlation with education and political party I decided to put it here

A look at the Americans who believe there is some truth to the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was planned

BY KATHERINE SCHAEFFER

Most Americans (71%) have heard of a conspiracy theory circulating widely online that alleges that powerful people intentionally planned the coronavirus outbreak. And a quarter of U.S. adults see at least some truth in it – including 5% who say it is definitely true and 20% who say it is probably true, according to a June Pew Research Center survey. The share of Americans who see at least some truth to the theory differs by demographics and partisanship.

Educational attainment is an especially important factor when it comes to perceptions of the conspiracy theory. Around half of Americans with a high school diploma or less education (48%) say the theory is probably or definitely true, according to the survey, which was conducted as part of the Center’s American News Pathways project. That compares with 38% of those who have completed some college but have no degree, 24% of those with a bachelor’s degree and 15% of those with a postgraduate degree.

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Less-educated Americans more inclined to see some truth in conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was planned
Partisan affiliation also plays a role in perceptions of the theory. About a third (34%) of Republicans and independents who lean to the GOP say the theory that powerful people intentionally planned the COVID-19 outbreak is probably or definitely true, compared with 18% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. It’s worth noting there is no significant difference in how likely partisans are to have heard at least a little about the theory: 72% of Republicans have heard of the claim, compared with 70% of Democrats.

Conservative Republicans are especially likely to see at least some truth in the theory: Roughly four-in-ten (37%) say it is probably or definitely true. This contrasts with 29% of moderate and liberal Republicans, 24% of moderate and conservative Democrats and 10% of liberal Democrats.

Roughly a third of Black (33%) and Hispanic adults (34%) say the theory is probably or definitely true, compared with about two-in-ten white adults (22%) and Asian Americans (19%). And women are slightly more likely than men (29% vs. 21%) to see at least some truth in the conspiracy theory that powerful people planned the outbreak.

There are some minor differences by age, too. About a quarter of adults under the age of 65 say the theory is probably or definitely true, compared with two-in-ten adults 65 and older.

SOURCE

links to survey questions and methodology at source


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PostPosted: 07/26/20 5:38 am • # 165 
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This from May 23rd

How the American Idiot Made America a Failed State
While Trump Golfs, the Nation is Descending into Death, Depression, and Chaos

umair haque

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A death toll approaching 100,000 lives. A Greater Depression on the cards. A nation “reopening” despite all that. Congress offering no real support or aid, gridlocked. A lunatic President telling people to inject bleach. Guess what he’s doing this weekend? Golfing. Do I really need to go on?

About a decade ago, I did something unusual. I warned that America was on the way to becoming a failed state, in the august pages of Harvard Business Review. Now, the reaction was swift and furious. Americans tend to react to things they don’t like in the only way they know how: with cruelty and brutality, bullying and mockery. And so among those attacking me were authors from the New York Times, Vox, the Atlantic, and more — a veritable who’s-who of American punditry. The wise of men of the establishment were not pleased with this little brown punk. Who the hell did he think he was?

As it turned out, I was…right. And no, don’t cry for me. That’s not the point. The point is this. My little warning couldn’t have been proven any truer. What does America, the failed state, look like? Like this, here, now.

These are shocking events. They stun the rest of the world. America has the world’s highest death toll, by a very long way. And there appears to still be no strategy, plan, or agenda. None. For dealing with the economic or public health consequences of the greatest catastrophe in modern history. What the?

Nothing works in America, those Americans left who are still thoughtful and reasonable people say, shaking their heads. That’s another way to say: America’s become a failed state.

Failed states tend to share a few key criteria. First, what it says on the box: governments aren’t ...

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PostPosted: 07/26/20 4:36 pm • # 166 
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Swastika masks worn at my hometown Walmart. What's going on?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/swastika-masks-worn-at-my-hometown-walmart/


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PostPosted: 07/28/20 11:18 am • # 167 
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People are idiots. In what twisted universe did that stunt make their lives batter or make them happier?


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PostPosted: 08/05/20 4:25 am • # 168 
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Hmmm ....

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Cross posted on the photo thread


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PostPosted: 08/13/20 3:05 pm • # 169 
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America and the Axis of Idiots
Is Human Civilization Doomed Because People are Just Idiots?

umair haque

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It’s easy enough to see the end of our civilization from here. We have about a decade, before climate change, mass extinction, and ecological collapse go nuclear — and cause decades of waves of depressions, pandemics, upheavals, social collapses, extremisms, and authoritarian implosions that make the last six months look like a fond memory. Imagine 2020 — but getting worse forever. That’s why things feel so bleak right now.

So I want to ask the question. Are people just idiots? Are we doomed because of human stupidity? You might imagine that I have a jaundiced view of human nature. But I don’t. I think the problem of human stupidity is indeed a grave threat to our civilization now — by which I mean aggression, hostility, cruelty, selfishness, all the kinds of idiocy. I use the word idiot not as an insult, but the way the Greeks meant it: someone who’s only interested in themselves, in private gain and advantage and wealth and power.

Isn’t that most of us? Actually, no. I also think that if we look at the world carefully, a subtler picture of human stupidity emerges.
Let’s take a brief spin around the globe.

People in Europe don’t seem to be idiots. Sure, there are idiots everywhere, but the problem of human stupidity might well have been solved — kept in check — in Europe. Why do I say that? Because by and large, Europe’s racing ahead. It’s crunched Coronavirus curves, after a nightmarish outbreak, and now, even though second waves are popping up here and there, life is returning cautiously to a post-pandemic normal.

But that’s the small picture. The big one? Europe is the only region in the world to have successfully cut carbon emissions. Middle classes aren’t in perfect health, but they’re doing reasonably well — incomes have grown over the last few decades, thanks to strong labour protections and expansive public sector jobs and income guarantees. So the middle class has ...

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PostPosted: 08/25/20 7:58 am • # 170 
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I must be living in a different reality.


Republicans see U.S. as better off now than 4 years ago ahead of convention — Battleground Tracker poll

Republicans see an America — to borrow Ronald Reagan's famous test — better off today than it was four years ago, mainly, they say, because of their confidence in President Trump.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-economy-coronavirus-opinion-poll-cbs-news-battleground-tracker/


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PostPosted: 08/25/20 10:26 am • # 171 
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PostPosted: 08/30/20 1:28 pm • # 172 
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Propaganda works – 58 percent of Republicans believe education is bad
By Rmuse

Critics of Fox News may discount the effectiveness of the right wing outlet’s effort to transform America into a fascist theocracy controlled by the ultra-rich and extremist evangelicals, but that would be a monumental mistake. Like all successful propaganda agencies, Fox broadcasts talking points crafted by evangelical and corporate activists nonstop until their mendacious messaging is considered biblical truths.

Fox News, like Republicans and Trump, could never succeed as an ultra-conservative propaganda outlet without an ignorant population. The only way to continue having success at propagandizing is convincing Americans that being educated and informed is detrimental to the nation and its citizens; something Fox and Republicans have been very successful at over the past two years.

The idea that education is bad for the country is contrary to the belief of the Declaration of Independence’s author, Founding Father and third American President Thomas Jefferson. He said:

Quote:
“An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”

Another legendary world leader, Sir Winston Churchill said:

Quote:
“The privilege of a university education is a great one; the more widely it is extended the better for any country.”

Obviously, the current administration and the Republican Party it represents wholly disagrees with the concept of a well-educated citizenry, or that it is beneficial to America if the populace is educated and informed. Likely because the less educated the people are, the more electoral support Republicans enjoy and the more success Trump has as the ultimate purveyor of “fake news.”

That being the case, it should be no surprise that since Trump’s poorly-attended inauguration there has been a concerted effort to dismantle, and eventually destroy, America’s education system; from public elementary and secondary school to colleges and universities. It is also not stunning that Trump and the GOP’s propaganda arm Fox News have played a crucial role in convincing Republican voters that education is “bad for America.”

For years conservatives have demeaned “secular” education, and over the past decade Republicans have pandered to the religious right by railing against higher education with valuable aid from the GOP and Trump’s propaganda agency Fox News. It is evident that neither Trump, Republicans, nor Fox News would exist without a fair number of the population mired in rank ignorance about everything, and that does not include the contingent religiously voting for Republicans and contrary to their best interests.

To demonstrate precisely why the people’s freedom, and democracy, are in jeopardy today, a recent poll revealed that nearly 6 out of ten Republicans sincerely believe that “education is bad for America.”

Seriously, it is beyond the pale that anyone in this country thinks ...

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PostPosted: 09/24/20 5:27 am • # 173 
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This from 2017 ....

Americans are dinosaur illiterate — and that’s bad for science
If children are still being taught about fake dinosaurs, what hope is there for science literacy?

KATHERINE DM CLOVER

In 1903, the brontosaurus was revealed to be practically fake — the skeleton dubbed “brontosaurus” was simply a more complete apatosaurus than previously discovered — but you probably wouldn’t know that if you consumed mostly children’s media. When I bought my child a board book called "Dinosaur Dance," by the popular for-toddlers author Sandra Boynton, I found to my dismay that it included the nonexistent brontosaurus. And lest you think this kind of thing is a relic of the past (don’t we all read classics to our kids that turn out to be outdated?), "Dinosaur Dance" has a copyright date of 2016.

Our scientific knowledge of dinosaurs seems like entertainment enough, but inaccurate dinosaurs for the sake of entertainment persist in media for both children and adults. From "The Land Before Time" (a pterodactylus wasn’t a dinosaur at all, and saurolophus babies didn’t have full crests like Ducky’s) to "Jurassic Park" (velociraptors were small, about waist-high), media dinosaurs seem to be more fancy than fact. The PBS show "Dinosaur Train," which is supposed to be educational, rests on the false pretense that a pteranodon is a dinosaur (just like pterodactylus, we’re talking about a winged reptile).

Evidently, pop culture is still giving kids woefully out-of-date dinosaurs, which means we’re teaching them woefully out-of-date science. And at a time when scientific literacy is so important, and scientific understanding seems to be so completely lacking, is that really a good idea?

To analogize, take a look at climate change. The experts are really very clear on what climate change is, and why it is happening. We know fairly conclusively that climate change is real, that it is caused by human beings producing large quantities of greenhouse gases, and that it’s already having an effect on weather patterns. Ninety-seven percent or more of actively-publishing scientists agree that global warming is most likely caused by humans. And yet, many people, including people with a great deal of power in this country, don’t “believe” in climate change.

I’m not the only person to be concerned about scientific literacy, and specifically scientific literacy in children. A 2015 Pew Research Center poll, aiming to measure scientific literacy, sparked conversations about what that term even means, and how important it is. According to National Academics, scientific literacy is “the knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and processes required for personal decision making, participation in civic and cultural affairs, and economic productivity.” A scientifically literate person should be able to ...

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PostPosted: 09/24/20 7:09 am • # 174 
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Actually I reckon getting "dinosaurs" wrong is the least of our worries.


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PostPosted: 09/24/20 8:48 am • # 175 
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Cattleman wrote:
Actually I reckon getting "dinosaurs" wrong is the least of our worries.

It's just symptomatic of a much bigger problem.


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