B. The secondary reason is a much better reason for cancelling/delaying: Too many mass shootings by deplorable excited, as it were, by POTUS’ rhetoric. It takes on special meaning when a POTUS promotes racism, hate, etc.
C. To paraphrase Willy Shakespeare, kill all the deplorable. It would be a fine start to getting the nation back to normal and decency.
D. The war against knowledge started with Reagan, enabled by a “liberal” who never had a serious issue with any shitty thing done by the GOP.
It does feel like people are getting dumber, and it doesn’t help that our Leader is a babbling chimp who can only form one or two coherent sentences on a good day. Part of it is a failure of education – most public school curriculum hasn’t included civics or the basics of logic/critical thinking for a while now – and part of it is shrinking attention spans due to the internet and how it shapes our consumption of information and media. You need to be able to focus and think about an issue or problem for more than 10 seconds to avoid having a kneejerk reaction to it, which people are less and less likely to do.
One of the reasons the risk of fascism is so high is not only Trump’s rightwing politics, but the sheep-like tendency of people who want someone else to tell them what to think, and just gulp down the sound bites they are being spoon fed without examination or thought. The ability to reason and think critically is kryptonite to propaganda.
These people are able in what seems like a few minutes to accomplish destroying whatever they put their minds to. Whereas it take liberals decades to get some advertisers to withdraw their stuff from Limbaugh. We are screwed.
I have to say that "a Skinner box of grievance propaganda" is a great metaphor. Clearly the internet has vastly expanded the number of people who can make their views and "alternative facts" known to everyone and often not for the greater edification of the public. While I mainly live in a large metropole, several years ago we bought a run-down farm to restore in the Shenandoah Valley of VA. Talking to local people, you can encounter some pretty amazing things. For example, many of the local people (young, old, male, female) simply take it for granted that ghosts exist and regularly interfere with their lives. Their notions of the size of the US budget and what it's used for are sometimes bizarre. One well-educated local complained that we were giving trillions of dollars to India in foreign aid. Trillions! Most of them (but not by any means all) are Trumpistas and I see some of his grotesque ignorance reflected in some of these folks (though we have yet to meet anyone as nasty and depraved as he is).
Is the stupid percentage of the population larger than ever before, or are we just more readily exposed to them via the Internet? And do they, being more exposed to each other, derive more tribal confidence and self-righteousness in their stupidity? Of course it's cold comfort either way. One interesting thing will be to see who (and, really, what) the GOP sends out to replace Trump when he's gone. It's hard to believe the orc army will follow a leader lacking Trump's, um, mystique. That Mussolini-like gloating and preening can't be as easy as it looks.
I wish I could remember who it was that said that critical thinking was a component largely left out of High school and college education in the U.S. It certainly seems that percipience, discrimination and intuition are sadly lacking in the voting electorate. Also, there are around 51 million (or so) people in the U.S. with an IQ of 85 or below and this percentile can be counted on to be easily influenced by jingoism and Foxy propaganda.
Apparently, many of these folks are motivated to take up blogging for the GOP.
The premise of the film seems distantly reminiscent of the late George Hitchcock’s 1960 story “Invitation to the Hunt.” In the mid-seventies Hitchcock, who at that time was a lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz (he was my faculty advisor, and related this tale to me over dinner) received a letter from a French law firm. Their client, the noted director Claude Chabrol, had adapted the story as “Une invitation à la chasse” for television a few months earlier. Some tardy due diligence having been undertaken, M. Chabrol was devastated to learn that upon its original and subsequent publication, film and television rights had been reserved by the author. No trespass upon M. Hitchcock’s intellectual property had been intended, and would the sum of US $10,000 satisfy honor? Monsieur Hitchcock told them that this would be an eminently satisfactory arrangement.
So far as I can determine, no controversy attended the airing of the production, but of course the French are more broad-minded about these things. (Aside: Your “visceral let’s-beat-up-Poindexter anti-intellectualism we all know from high school” bit put me in mind of an exchange I once had with my wife’s nephew, then sixteen, who used to summer with us. He was in his “goth” phase in those years, and on one occasion pulled an object out of his pocket that caused me to ask “Is that a makeup compact?” “Yes,” he replied. “And why do you carry a compact on your person?” “Do you really want to know?” “I suppose not,” I sighed, “but back when I was in high school, once the jocks got done beating you up, the Honor Society would have taken a turn.”)
Sir, I am forced to "like" this essay; you honor our strumpot by your mention. I do believe DEVO predicted this years ago by pointing out the human tendency towards de-evolution. Little did we know how far back we would go, or how quickly.
1. "They can’t even imagine that there might be a turnabout or other surprise in the plot, or maybe even that the actors don’t just make up what they say on screen. Instead, their brains rush right to THING BAD."
2. "...they were suffering from the same stupidism that engendered the controversy around The Hunt — and so was Twitter itself, on an organizational basis, in deciding these tweets could only be what a five-year-old raised in a Skinner box of grievance propaganda would say they were." OR
3. "It’s like the flagpole sitters of a hundred years ago except the sitters are also shitting on themselves and everyone below them."
Stupidity is being encouraged by the increasing ability to reproduce images and sounds in the environment. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm _convinced_ that I believe absolutely everything I see and hear were real the moment I see and hear them, and then some rational and reality-testing processes intercede. Back on the Serengeti this made sense…and a paranoid mind-set in accepting sounds and images also was selected-for
Text, on the other hand, has to have processing from the start to be absorbed.
As I watch my "retirement" "savings" go down the tariff tubes I can't help but ponder: When the country gives a lying, corrupt, bankruptcy-prone imbecile the power to almost single-handedly destroy the global economy based on nothing but his narcissistic nose for failure, I guess you could say stupidism is kind of out of control.
A. The movie will be inevitably released.
B. The secondary reason is a much better reason for cancelling/delaying: Too many mass shootings by deplorable excited, as it were, by POTUS’ rhetoric. It takes on special meaning when a POTUS promotes racism, hate, etc.
C. To paraphrase Willy Shakespeare, kill all the deplorable. It would be a fine start to getting the nation back to normal and decency.
D. The war against knowledge started with Reagan, enabled by a “liberal” who never had a serious issue with any shitty thing done by the GOP.
It does feel like people are getting dumber, and it doesn’t help that our Leader is a babbling chimp who can only form one or two coherent sentences on a good day. Part of it is a failure of education – most public school curriculum hasn’t included civics or the basics of logic/critical thinking for a while now – and part of it is shrinking attention spans due to the internet and how it shapes our consumption of information and media. You need to be able to focus and think about an issue or problem for more than 10 seconds to avoid having a kneejerk reaction to it, which people are less and less likely to do.
One of the reasons the risk of fascism is so high is not only Trump’s rightwing politics, but the sheep-like tendency of people who want someone else to tell them what to think, and just gulp down the sound bites they are being spoon fed without examination or thought. The ability to reason and think critically is kryptonite to propaganda.
These people are able in what seems like a few minutes to accomplish destroying whatever they put their minds to. Whereas it take liberals decades to get some advertisers to withdraw their stuff from Limbaugh. We are screwed.
I'm pretty sure now that our future will look like an amalgamation of 'Idiocracy', 'Children of Men,' and any half dozen episodes of Black Mirror.
I'll be hiding in my basement with my LPs and a crate of off-brand Scotch, thank you very much...
Okay, society is getting dumber. So what do we DO about it?
I have to say that "a Skinner box of grievance propaganda" is a great metaphor. Clearly the internet has vastly expanded the number of people who can make their views and "alternative facts" known to everyone and often not for the greater edification of the public. While I mainly live in a large metropole, several years ago we bought a run-down farm to restore in the Shenandoah Valley of VA. Talking to local people, you can encounter some pretty amazing things. For example, many of the local people (young, old, male, female) simply take it for granted that ghosts exist and regularly interfere with their lives. Their notions of the size of the US budget and what it's used for are sometimes bizarre. One well-educated local complained that we were giving trillions of dollars to India in foreign aid. Trillions! Most of them (but not by any means all) are Trumpistas and I see some of his grotesque ignorance reflected in some of these folks (though we have yet to meet anyone as nasty and depraved as he is).
Is the stupid percentage of the population larger than ever before, or are we just more readily exposed to them via the Internet? And do they, being more exposed to each other, derive more tribal confidence and self-righteousness in their stupidity? Of course it's cold comfort either way. One interesting thing will be to see who (and, really, what) the GOP sends out to replace Trump when he's gone. It's hard to believe the orc army will follow a leader lacking Trump's, um, mystique. That Mussolini-like gloating and preening can't be as easy as it looks.
I've never seen the film "Idiocracy" but my two sons have repeatedly told me that it's basically a documentary about how the US operates these days.
I am going on strike until " Blues Before Sunrise" is mentioned in the newsletter.
I wish I could remember who it was that said that critical thinking was a component largely left out of High school and college education in the U.S. It certainly seems that percipience, discrimination and intuition are sadly lacking in the voting electorate. Also, there are around 51 million (or so) people in the U.S. with an IQ of 85 or below and this percentile can be counted on to be easily influenced by jingoism and Foxy propaganda.
Apparently, many of these folks are motivated to take up blogging for the GOP.
The premise of the film seems distantly reminiscent of the late George Hitchcock’s 1960 story “Invitation to the Hunt.” In the mid-seventies Hitchcock, who at that time was a lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz (he was my faculty advisor, and related this tale to me over dinner) received a letter from a French law firm. Their client, the noted director Claude Chabrol, had adapted the story as “Une invitation à la chasse” for television a few months earlier. Some tardy due diligence having been undertaken, M. Chabrol was devastated to learn that upon its original and subsequent publication, film and television rights had been reserved by the author. No trespass upon M. Hitchcock’s intellectual property had been intended, and would the sum of US $10,000 satisfy honor? Monsieur Hitchcock told them that this would be an eminently satisfactory arrangement.
So far as I can determine, no controversy attended the airing of the production, but of course the French are more broad-minded about these things. (Aside: Your “visceral let’s-beat-up-Poindexter anti-intellectualism we all know from high school” bit put me in mind of an exchange I once had with my wife’s nephew, then sixteen, who used to summer with us. He was in his “goth” phase in those years, and on one occasion pulled an object out of his pocket that caused me to ask “Is that a makeup compact?” “Yes,” he replied. “And why do you carry a compact on your person?” “Do you really want to know?” “I suppose not,” I sighed, “but back when I was in high school, once the jocks got done beating you up, the Honor Society would have taken a turn.”)
Sir, I am forced to "like" this essay; you honor our strumpot by your mention. I do believe DEVO predicted this years ago by pointing out the human tendency towards de-evolution. Little did we know how far back we would go, or how quickly.
Poll: was the best line in this essay,
1. "They can’t even imagine that there might be a turnabout or other surprise in the plot, or maybe even that the actors don’t just make up what they say on screen. Instead, their brains rush right to THING BAD."
2. "...they were suffering from the same stupidism that engendered the controversy around The Hunt — and so was Twitter itself, on an organizational basis, in deciding these tweets could only be what a five-year-old raised in a Skinner box of grievance propaganda would say they were." OR
3. "It’s like the flagpole sitters of a hundred years ago except the sitters are also shitting on themselves and everyone below them."
Voting for (3) myself.
Stupidity is being encouraged by the increasing ability to reproduce images and sounds in the environment. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm _convinced_ that I believe absolutely everything I see and hear were real the moment I see and hear them, and then some rational and reality-testing processes intercede. Back on the Serengeti this made sense…and a paranoid mind-set in accepting sounds and images also was selected-for
Text, on the other hand, has to have processing from the start to be absorbed.
Alfred Jarry Cornelius, the Messiah for the Age of Science and Idiocy
As I watch my "retirement" "savings" go down the tariff tubes I can't help but ponder: When the country gives a lying, corrupt, bankruptcy-prone imbecile the power to almost single-handedly destroy the global economy based on nothing but his narcissistic nose for failure, I guess you could say stupidism is kind of out of control.