for European peasants, namely my Scottish and Irish ancestors the myth that was real, was that in America you could own your own farm - which in the old country was impossible, because all of the land was owned by the feudal system
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ~ Isaac Asimov
Glam Barbie Re false notion etc etc etc Going on 225 years continuity. On the way we produced more creationist then all other advanced nations combined, as well as the most technologically advanced civilization in all human history. I have the idea you want to fix all that in some way? Tell us the plans you might have in mind for improvement.
David Smith re trained consumers One of the more serious health problems among our poor people is morbid obesity. I count that as colateral damage. The consumer societies also seemed selfishly work for life extension too, I suppose, buy more stuff. So antibiotics, vacines, Weight Watchers so you could watch yourself get fat. DAMNED miseable place! Give me feudalism!
It’s gotten to the point where I just don’t talk about politics with certain family members and friends. It’s hard to argue with someone who is not dealing in reality.
@@universalsoldier2293 When one side believes the Democrats are cannibalistic pedos who control the “New World Order”, and that the guy from “The Apprentice” is the savior who will deliver us from evil, there’s no conversation to be had.
It's distressing to me, having grown up in the 50's an 60's to see so many people completely separated from knowledge, science and critical thinking. I was taught to study things thoroughly in order to find truth. Nobody seems to do that now.
I don't know about education and democracy. All I know is taxes are rising, regulations are making it more and more impossible to truly create a competitive buisness, and industries are moving overseas were they don't have to deal with those issues. Oh and I'm expected to be a wage slave to fund your "greater good". And I'm expected to just smile, say nice things, and just be happy. While bottling up my hatred for elitist degenerates.
@@m0ther_bra1ned12 I haven't noticed taxes rising. They were higher when I was younger. The tax breaks for the rich has ballooned the deficit. This is what Republican administrations always do...
@@compteofficiel4112 Big capitalist companies don't hire "scientists" to "save the Earth" Big oil corporations hire real scientists to help them find the oil they sell us in order to make profits and some fake ones to tell the idiots that they really don't want to find this oil and sell it to eager customers. Customers like "climate cultists who' need oil by the boatload to jet off to their next climate gala held at some exotic tropical beach resort instead of freezing their asses off at home with their snot nosed kids and paying for their own crummy meals.
Sometimes I cannot get past the immense irony that we have become an Idiocracy right in the middle of The Information Age. The collective knowledge of humankind is at our fingertips, yet . . .
Knowledge: Yes. Wisdom: No. Let me put it this way: Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put one in a fruit salad. The problem isn't that people don't have enough information; the problem is that people don't know _which_ information to follow.
@@schwarzwolfram7925 Yes, there's plenty of information and disinformation. You need to sift out the disinformation to the best of your ability, and then interprete the good information to draw conclusions. The sifting and interpreting is where I see most problems, just look at the covid-19 vaccinations.
Pursue intelligent disagreements, maybe gamify it for yourself. Part of the problem is that smart people have isolated, leaving the blabbing idiots to shape people's (kids' in particular) beliefs. Be a mentor, upload to TH-cam, volunteer with a kid-focused organization, coach people into being better thinkers. Don't give up. It's hard and thankless work, but you'll know when you've scored a goal.
I know what your saying I hardly will let anyone in my life anymore. I find the foreigners are better to talk to. I post things on the internet from time to time. I try to educate people. It is hard to see all this insane bull crap all the time. I have gotten through to a few people.
David Schibilla You might benefit from what seems like meaningless engagement with people. Leave the teaching behind and just take the time to get to know people, you know, figure out with questions what they think of themselves, what makes them tick, how they tick like you and his they don't. At the very least, you'll garner some teaching skills by understanding some analogies that will click with them, what sorts of thought processes people tend to have, that kind of thing. People may be pretty dumb, but each is so in a unique way. I've found that approach insightful into my own stupidity. You'll also find out how much people will adore you just by listening to them, plus, you'll catch a gem here and there from surprising sources. It might be good, too, if you started writing your thoughts down. You never know when your ideas might lead to a culture-rocking book. Lots of smart people just journal to help them cope with... well... yeah, that. ("The foreigners?" It could be y'all just feel like outsiders in a pretty sick subculture. That's not a bad thing.)
@@brucefrykman8295 .... Bubba. What's better for your job; Rugged individualism consumerism and monopolies chugging up all the resources leaving your customers broke Or. Social safety net programs, anti-monopoly programs, higher minimum wage (BTW, the amount of loans citizens take out decides inflation, not minimum wage. That's just how money is printed in the usa) and a slightly higher tax rate, leaving 99% of your customers with spare cash? Ya... Its the latter. That's what democrats do. Thats why Democrat ran states pay more in taxes then they receive in federal aid most years. And Republican ran states take more in federal aid then they pay in taxes.
@@allhumansarejusthuman.5776 I was a 'rugged individual' who parleyed 160 grand a year (back when it was real money) with high a school education working as a project engineer and engineering manager for a variety of data comm firms. As such I have nothing against individual achievement. Teams don't do shit, they sit on their asses and try to find who was at fault for their failure to produce anything of value. Social safety nets are what is fueling our drug addiction pandemic, they are hammocks. No one who is of sound mind and body should get a dime of help by robbing those who get up off their asses and try to find a way to scratch out a living no matter how difficult. This is the American ethic and our ideal, not useless cancerous socialism. Why would I or anyone hire anyone whom they would have to pay more than he or she can produce? That's just nutty. Driving up minimum wages make people like me richer and you poorer. You see I'm the guy who designs systems that replace people who demand more than they can produce. They buy my machines instead, (that work 24/7 and never complain) rather than an army of useless whiners - it very true and nothing can stop this. I wont pay people more than they are worth. I'll farm my jobs out to whomever gives me the best value just as they to in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark where they have no minimum wage. They just have more equal taxation than we do. They tax the first dime (kroner) as well as the last. Sweden has far more billionaires per-capita than the USA does. Wise up. Wages have nothing to do with inflation; we have debt based currency, this is what produces inflation and the US government is by far the the most indebted spendthrift driving up this mountain of debt. 26 Trillion and growing - by trillions per year. This is what is making those with no skills like you impoverished. When I was you age the world was my oyster with no way to go but up. What do you think has reduced you to putting your hand out begging for money? I think we need less government and less taxation, most of it is wasted when the DC monkeys reallocate productive resources to the non productive. The federal government spends more in Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia than they they do in Massachusetts New York and New Jersey for exactly the same reason that Toyota and Boeing does: They get far more value for their money. Why would any self respecting young man live in these Northern socialist shit holes? Beats me.
@@brucefrykman8295 I usually don’t jump into back and forth discussions like this but you sir, fired me up. I (like you, as you seem to indicate) don’t have a 4 year college degree. I finished HS then got a 2 yr degree in EE tech. I was born in 1960, so I’m coming up on 60 now. I’m also an IT instructor who has been moderately successful and consistently earned 200k+ a year. You talk about rugged individualism but you fail to understand that you had a lot of luck along the way to help you get to where you’re at, as did I. If I would have been born in a different time, like maybe 10/20 years later, I’d probably be nowhere near as successful. What we’re (I’m talking progressives - don’t like right/left labels) trying to accomplish is to level the playing field. Just because you were born to a particular situation/time period/generation, shouldn’t determine your lot in life. Everyone should get free (taxpayer funded) K-12 (just like it is now) and based upon your desire to continue on improving yourself, should get free higher education. Switching gears, In your post you mentioned robotics. So let me ask you, in a functional society should humans be replaced by robots/automation when doing so would result in a catastrophic economical impact to those being replaced with goal being only to raise shareholder value and increase profit margin? So let’s be empathetic for a moment if you can. I’m a worker, of limited means/education, who’s been doing a great job for the last 20 years, never call in sick, just show up everyday and do my menial job to the best of my ability, then someone invents automation that can do what I do so subsequently I get laid off never to be called back again, lost my income any health benefits I might have had all in the name of unbridled laissez-faire capitalism, and I should be happy about it deal with it in my own rugged individualistic way? If so, you sir are deluded. People like you and I were born in the right place at the right time like the saying goes. Many were not. What we should all be fighting for is a more egalitarian society where everyone starts at the same starting line. To quote a line from an old song from a group called Everlast which I think succinctly captures what I’m saying: “You know where it ends Yo, it usually depends On where you start” Think about that before you start acting so “superior” to all those “lazy moochers” around you who just want a handout from the government.
Sheesh... ever get the feeling idiots love being morons? I think most Aussies have highly developed BS recognition skills... unlike many Americans who seem to believe science is merely a tool for determining exactly how to piss off your political rivals
Thanks, Call Sharpening, for posting this comment. I've often thought about exactly that situation, but never realized you guys down under had a quote about it!
I am from the UK and visited the US many times. In Europe, we are allowed to discuss and question religion and politics. In the US these topics seem to be topics not to be discussed in bars or workplaces. Which is very strange. I was a catholic but talking with other people and opinions you begin to question things. This is the joy of conversation. I am now an atheist and proud. My parents accept this also because we openly discuss my journey. I don't think this journey could happen in the US
It's cause you're likely gonna start a fight if you do, most people would rather avoid that. Pretty much keep those conversations to good friends and family
The UK is a pathetic crumbling island. Most of it's people don't take their future seriously, so why would such topics really be of great concern to most of you? I'm also not just saying that because you outed yourself as unbearabling naive like most foreigners who stay in one onclave of the country not your own.
@@TheGoldenBoot-cz1do It sounds good except that even family members and people who used to be friends are now divided as conspiracy cults like Qanon get worse and worse. Reddit has a site for sane family members who have been forced to protect the family's remaining assets as some Qanons become "doomsday preppers". They blow the family's entire savings on combat gear and buying up crypto and leave the rest of their family members with nothing. One poor woman had to sneak out with all of her kids because her husband had threatened to kill all of them because they didn't believe that Trump was the second coming of Jesus. How can you even reason with something like that?
@@compteofficiel4112 The commenter is referring to the general untruth (lower case t) not THE which would imply a specific. Capitalization is important.
"How exactly did it get so bad?" Simple; we began to conflate 'notoriety' with 'significance', and worse yet, through that conflation imply that non-notoriety makes you INsignificant.
What blows me away, this anti-intellectualism movement, has gained the traction it has. How in the world, seeking knowledge, in all things, can be spun as a negative is beyond me.
Anti-intellectualism has been happening for much longer than that. It's kind of funny. We have yet to convince scientists to study anti-intellectualism to learn how to combat it. The best we can do is get intellectuals, like this guy, to complain about anti intellectualism in an anti-intellectual way. Seems like a fitting end.
@@jerrod7019 how you combat it is you engage in civil discourse and present valid argumentation to actually change people's mind with evidence and reasoning, instead of trying to figure out the ideal propaganda campaign formula to "combat" the claims people choose to accept on rational grounds.
@@TheJacklwilliams Spoiler alert: the people in power who aren't getting their books censored like the guy in the video are the ones preventing learning
Carl Sagan was part of the Jewish diaspora, and he had no respect for the people's and cultures of the world, and downplayed human significance just because of a stupid photos of the earth taken from space. How small we are in the universe has absolutely no relevance to how we should perceive our existence. Do you think a tiger or bear cares about the Milky Way's collision with Andromeda, and is gonna have some existential crisis over how small a component it's territory is? Utter nonsense. I love Carl Sagan's science documentaries, but he's a scientist, not a historical philosopher, historian, politician, economist, psychologist. He was a physicist, which requires no competency in things relevant to the intelligent management of Earth's resources
Holy shit as an American I find this analysis disturbingly true; a succinct summary of my problems with the society I don't feel I live in, but rather one I feel forced to endure.
If I was an American....I would not want to be smart or intelligent. It would make me feel depressed, angry and afraid. A real dumb hillbilly is the only reasonable person I would want to be over there😅
Reality shows are not about reality. Most seem to be about scheming, lying and selfishness. OK, we do have that, but when the shows started being on TV I had hoped for something better than that. I do like that British baking show. Its amazing when the contestants help each other and are sad when one of them has to leave the show. It's so uplifting and positive.
Lol, as if Churchill were a liberal. Churchill would be called a Fascist by today's standard my love. He personally killed several people of color who were just defending their homeland you know. Their reality was very very different from ours.
This thing (at least where it relates to politics) reminded me of the scene in "Back to the Future" where Marty meets Doc Brown in 1955 after traveling back in time and their initial conversation, which is based on Doc Brown's denial and Marty's attempts to convince him goes something like this: Doc says "So tell me, future boy, who is president in 1985?" When Marty responds "Ronald Reagan" Doc sees this as proof that the whole story about coming from the future is a lie, he goes from annoyed to agitated and exclaims 5 inches away from a heart attack: Ronald Reagan, the actor..? And who is vice president? Mickey Mouse?
I have always appreciated how uncertain the future is, but my goodness, in 2012 I would never have even begun to anticipate the following decade. I'd have thought you were pulling my leg.
Two minutes in and this thing is riddled with anachronisms. It didn’t take 20 years for the colonists in Virginia to figure out there wasn’t much gold to be found. Even then, “gold” was only one motivation for settling Virginia in the first place (and wasn’t unfounded considering the Spanish were carting enough gold away from the Americas to cause currency devaluation in the Spanish Empire over the course of a couple of centuries). The main reason why the English settled North America was because everyone else was settling the continent. The Spanish, Dutch, and French were also attempting to settle the continent, meaning that, if England wanted to remain a relevant power, they would have to jump in as well. So, they did and founded Jamestown after at least one previous attempt to the south on Roanoke Island. It didn’t take them long to figure out there wasn’t gold in the region they’d settled. That is why, within the span of a decade, they turned towards tobacco cultivation and successfully entrenched themselves in Virginia’s rich, fertile soil. The reason why it took as long as it did had nothing to do with some false notion of Gold, but because they were constantly being assaulted by the Powhatan Confederacy and nearly starved to death in the winter of 1609-1610. It wasn’t until the Powhatan Confederacy and the English settlers came to a long-term peace agreement that the colonists could begin growing crops - like tobacco - for export back to England. However, The most important error committed in this entire video is this: you are assuming that the skepticism towards “experts” is not rational and logical from the perspective of Americans. We are skeptical of authority because authority figures, right from the beginning, had absolutely no idea of the reality of the situation at hand. If we go back to Jamestown, the colonists who first arrived were explicitly ordered not to build a fort so as to not provoke the native population. However, the colonists were _forced_ into making a fort at Jamestown because the natives were hostile towards them from the get-go. They figured out early on that the authority of England could not be trusted whatsoever in the affairs of managing the New World. So, in 1619, once all of the previous crises had been dealt with, Jamestown and the surrounding colonies in Virginia (Henricus and the plantations along the James River) came together and formed a legislature for governing the colony and it’s affairs; the House of Burgesses. This government was the first democratic government in the New World and it came about because they could not rely upon the authority figures to make reliable decisions to best mitigate any crises that would crop up. This skepticism of central authority has carried on throughout the centuries because, every single time an authority seeks to assert what they think is best, it almost always conflicts with the reality of the situation on the ground. In truth, the reason for the skepticism of authority and the doubt placed upon “experts” is perfectly rational. After all, what is best for a given region is best determined by the people living in that region. An elite living in Silicon Valley does not have the knowledge of the conditions and environment in Central or Southern Virginia. That person does not know what is best for that region, but the local population - people who have worked the land for generations and have lived there for hundreds of years - do know what is best.
Interesting argument which means you must accept your own corollary: farmers from the midwest do not have the knowledge of the conditions and environment of California or the east coast , and therefore do not know what is best for the local populations ...
And it's not rooted to one aisle of the spectrum. Both parties have their own sci fantasy of why they didn't actually lose Presidential elections. You have to go back to 88 the last time a party lost and accepted defeat respectfully and didn't accuse the other side of cheating or blaming 3rd parties.
“The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”-Theodore Roosevelt.
Bruce Lee said, Don't pray for an easy life but the strength to to endure a difficult one. As well as don't take someone else's success and try to duplicate it. I also remember that if you really love life then you shouldn't waste time because that is what life is made of.
What the public allows others in their community to do is the basis for self rule. When we don't like their rules we leave their company; the ultimate form of self rule. Smashing Nancy Pee-Low-See's teeth down her throat also infringes on my freedom, as much as I would like to I am forbidden to do so by the rules I have agreed to live by.
@@brucefrykman8295 I'm curious. Why do you hate her so much? I'm really ignorant on American politics these days...and I'm not trolling either, I'd just like to know.
Divorced from reality describes this video perfectly...misinformation is not a uniquely American problem (because of course it isn't). Nor are conspiracy theories a uniquely American phenomenon (it spans history). He mentioned the attitude of southern slave holders, they didn't deny slavery, but they did say blacks were made for slavery (a perfectly nonsensical view seeing how they were doing fine before European involvement and the start of the transatlantic slave trade). Seeing the time you live in as uniquely disastrous happens to every generation. People typically behave rationally, those who get caught up in misinformation have a reason to believe it...it might not be a good reason, but it also isn't nothing.
My dad has some saying that it’s hardest to get someone to understand a thing when their money comes from not understanding it. That’s what I see as the cause of a lot of stupidity. People choose what makes them money over what benefits human life. Unfortunately that doesn’t account for all harmful beliefs.
The south didn’t deny slavery was bad. What they argued against was what the abolitionists were doing and the northern posturing towards a position of greater centralization of powers into the hands of the Presidency and the Federal Government. Your assessment is nothing more than a narrative that attempts to place the south in the position of “defending slavery” when, in reality, they didn’t want to “defend” it. The south wanted to deal with the matters that concerned them on their own terms. They did not want the federal government to dictate to them how they ought do things because, though that, they saw tyranny.
@@MatthewChenault the southern confederate states had a more centralized government than the north. The vice president of the confederate states famously said "slavery is the foundation of the confederacy". Pretty weird actions if they just wanted to handle how to dismantle slavery on their own, but of course that isn't what they wanted. This is one of the stupidest arguments I have ever heard. If they didn't deny slavery was bad, then why not end slavery? Why form their own government in order to protect and expand the institution of slavery? Your average everyday southern didn't veiw slavery as bad because they had convinced themselves that the black man was to immature for freedom (something like that, it was stupid so 🤷). The argument was slavery was a way of bringing enlightment to the black man, but as I said this was stupid. It was a justification not a real belief founded in anything save greed.
@@jdblanch1172, “if they didn’t deny slavery was bad, then why not end slavery? Why form their own government in order to protect and expand the institution of slavery?” Firstly, you can think something is bad, but also object to outright abolishing it. If we follow that line of logic, because I think alcohol consumption is bad, that means it should be illegal. The entire problem stems from the reasoning behind the action (a form of tyranny) and the consequences of those actions taken. Just because I think something is bad and make it illegal based on that belief does not mean that the consequences will be positive. Prohibition, for example, ended up being a terrible idea that resulted in absurd levels of organized criminality. The rapid abolition of slavery resulted in the upending of an established social order without properly establishing a new, functional one in turn. It was abolition and it’s consequences that resulted in the societal problems within the south rather than slavery itself. Secondly, you automatically presume that the south’s entire goal was only that of the preservation and expansion of slavery, which is demonstrably false. The south seceded from the union because they saw the north as tyrants who sought to _dictate_ politics for the South rather than let the south govern itself. The entire slavery debate is nothing more than a facade to the reality of the situation: the south’s secession, and the war, was one over the sovereignty of the states to determine what was best for them; it was the cause of _self-determinism._
He is spot on. I feel like I'm living in a detached world where it's glaringly obvious that any attempt to bring reality to the table is met with a brick wall where nobody wants to hear anything bar their reality. I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing this. Even some very intelligent people seem incapable of dealing with anything that doesn't confirm their bias. It's absolutely frightening and something I spotted years ago. Ai is not the bogey man it's alternative realities is happening now.
@@erinthesystem9608 very worrying that the so called intelligent ones go along with the fantasy. Orwell looking more and more correct. As horse racing folk say when assesing how good they are,believe what your see with your eyes not what others say is true.
@@michaelrafferty2482 Thats the fault of the unregulated internet. Or at least to some big degree its part of the problem. People always seek likeminded people. Before the internet, they needed to be conform with their family/friends to not be alone. Nowdays, they need like 10 minute to find people who are as stupid as they themselfs and there starts an echochamber of idiocy. But here in austria it's the same. The is happening in every western country to some degree. A good old "slap the idiot some common sense in their head" would help too maybe...
guy comes off a unhinged socialist who's pissed off that it's really hard to implement nationalised socialism like it has been in the past. He seems to have forgotten the levels of propaganda the American system has engaged with throughout its history. In the past all the papers would be on the literal same page. If we were going to war with some country, all the papers would demonise them and give reasons as to why its okay to put their citizens into camps. All the businessmen who wouldn't contribute to the coming war effort were seen as the enemy. The Bipartisan nature of American politics enabled National Socialism when the elites needed to "rally" the troops or mobile a population in to collectivised action. You trusted your "party's paper". So when when there was consistent message between both "party's paper", you assumed it to be total truth. And it's not just traditional war... also think Anti-Black/Asian/Muslim/Jew/Slavic/German/Italian/etc racism, Pro-leaded gasoline propaganda, McCarthyism, Pro-Consumerism propaganda, Anti-Drugs propaganda, etc, etc
I think American public schools and education in general seriously need critical thinking and discernment of information classes. I am alarmed at the lack of these skills in American society.
*RE: "I think American public schools and education in general seriously need critical thinking and discernment of information classes. I am alarmed at the lack of these skills in American society."* Don't confuse my remarks as ever coming close to endorsing any education offered by government - government is run by politicians which are the lowest form of life among the human species; any product they offer must be considered defective. I hear your sort of comment regarding "critical thinking" skills and I genuinely believe it has never been uttered by someone who actually has any understanding of what is meant by the phrase. Education is the antithesis of "critical thinking" and no one can be taught how to critically think about anything without violating this fundamental concept. Here is an example definition that I accept as close to hitting the mark: *_"The key critical thinking skills are: analysis, interpretation, inference, explanation, self-regulation, open-mindedness, and problem-solving."_* Notice that all of these processes are internally focused and cannot possibly be taught in any school from the very best to the very worst. Unfortunately, the very primary requirement for gaining critical thinking skills is "problem solving" and was listed last. One who cannot successfully solve problems (problems not involving adherence to "procedure") is incapable of critical thinking. It's like asking a fish to ride a bike. In the world of mathematics, this would be solving some riddle for which no previous procedure ever existed. Such people often win the "Fields Medal" As one might accurately surmise, very few people are capable of critical thinking and least likely to be capable of it are successful PhD candidates whose minds have been cluttered with decades of someone else's procedures that you might call learning, I would called it training. Circus seals are trained, thinkers are never trained.
@@dianemitchell1717 *RE: "Absolutely. Texas removed Critical thinking courses a few years ago. Who wants people who know how to fact check and use their reasoning skills?"* I think you have just proven that you don't have the slightest idea of what is meant by the phrase. Critical thinking cannot be taught, the idea is preposterous, all that can be taught is merely prejudice Neither do they use "fact checkers: Critical thinkers are stand alone "fact checkers" and they don't "check facts" by "googling them." Max Plank (in summary) held that science advances one funeral at a time. Apply all of your critical reasoning skills to attempt an explanation of the concept behind this summary.
@@dianemitchell1717 yeah we don't even teach "critical thinking" in UK schools. This would be incredibly controversial in Europe. Thanks to all the awful political experiments run throughout the 20th century, Europeans are hyper sensitive to brainwashing children and biased teaching. Critical thinking can never be taught in an unbiased way unlesd the children are taught by a robot with no view either way
I remember as a child I was always interested in finding out about new things and learning about other people and their cultures. (the best part of growing up in New York). I watched PBS a lot. I have dropped off of Facebook and stopped watching television.I like You Tube because I can pick and chose the content at the same time learning and watching people who are like minded. I've always told my Daughters "you should learn something new everyday".
I can no longer listen to commercial radio or tv. I watch netflix movies that I select and I watch videos and make comments on youtube. I also read several newspapers online just to stay in touch.
One of my best life lessons came from my grandfather, who told me " You'll learn something new everyday, if you pay attention." It's the last part that's hard for most of us. Learning to listen.
Wow, that felt like I was reading about myself! I was also into learning other languages as well as different cultures. I would always bug my bilingual friends to teach me stuff! I was just insatiably curious and read a ton of books as well as watched PBS a lot. I must have driven my family crazy bc every sentence started with “why” or “how”. Lucky for me, they always encouraged that. I’m jealous that you grew up in New York though! My smallish town in So. Cal. was not terribly diverse and pretty boring. I always wanted to hang out on the front stoop, like on Sesame Street. Glad you encourage your daughters to learn...I really believe that ignorance breeds hatred, and this country needs a lot less of both!
"In this softer age where people aren't going to probably die tomorrow as a result of believing fantasies and untruths, we became freer to believe in." Wow, if only he knew.
@@christiantaylor1495 OK, so your N=1 anecdote is an exception to the general pattern. In general, people who didn't get vaccinated were far more likely to get COVID, to get serious cases of it, and to die from it. People in the most pro-Trump counties (and thus anti-vax and anti-mask counties) died of COVID at SIX TIMES the rate of people in the most pro-Biden counties. Masks, social distancing, and vaccines all worked.
@@HealingLifeKwikly the statistics you're saying are a complete lie. It's like trusting Chinese statistics in Muslim in concentration camps. I personally know FIVE PEOPLE who died of the vaccine, but ZERO people who died of covid. People who support Trump are more old and more White. White People have a higher average age due to lack of breeding. Younger people tend to be more left wing. So Trump supporters dying more of covid is obviously just them dying because they are older 🤡 Me and all my friends are zoomers and didn't take the vaccine and non of us died or even got very ill. My best friend who also likes Trump got covid and after three days all his symptoms were gone and he said it was a joke and that he's had more difficult shits than that virus. Non of us died because we aren't 80 years old 🤡 Died at six times the rate, but the total number of deaths was no different when accounting for age. When you show the government that you will let them do anything during a crisis, you give them incentive to fabricate crises.
Amazing how COVID has added the "dieing for your beliefs" back into this assessment. And amazing how even when there is a horrible price to pay, people still cling to their unfounded beliefs.
Yes, please give me the fake vaccine (they changed the definition of vaccine for it to be considered a vaccine) that the FDA doesn't want to release data on for 55 years. If you genuinely think these things aren't dangerous it's because you're either ill informed or you're an idiot.
@@BTsMusicChannel no it's most likely the folks that insist America must have this squeaky clean noble history that you can worship. Watched people go nuts over being shown the real physical size of the US vs the continent of Africa to show how much flat maps fool us.
During my whole life, I don't believe America has bothered to find out what the reality is that underpins the reality of all other countries, regions or cultures, they just don't care. This indifference, smugness and ignorance about the world, is not a problem limited to the right or left of politics in America but a nationwide problem of hubris and arrogance as well as emotional immaturity and lack of reasoned logic applied to most common intellectual challenges. The world is so tired of this teenage mentality and wonder when America will grow out of its adolescence, because if they don't, their lack of general education and understanding of things such as differences in social structure and cultural morays in other countries etc will result in the world continuing to mercilessly bullied.
Remember we are a diverse and interesting people. Not a stereotype. If the American people had one man one vote democracy consent would have ruled, and if we had a sharing economy we probably would have had the time and wealth to educate ourselves conversationally, instead of indoctrination confined in classrooms. Knowledge about the world is great, but wisdom from conversations is more important. Young in school, girls had the wisdom. Male brats had none. Curiosity is where happiness came from good surprises. Kids had more and that's why they are happy. Egotistic authoritarian assholes (brats screwed it up.) Countless egotistic authoritarian assholes are clustered in the Republican party. (Bosses and businessmen) Businessmen have the wealth and time to go into legislatures where they make their greedy decisions. It is the same with royalty.
Big Red - You are TRULY clueless! The USA has it's finger on the pulse of every country in the world - which is why we're the most powerful nation on the planet. BTW, while most of the world continues to increase CO2 emissions, America reduced emissions by more than the rest of the world combined. If that's being "adolescent" we'll take that over the irresponsible behavior of the rest of the world.
I think what you have to understand is that there’s always been a huge element of ‘patriotism’ being taught in schools. In the 40’s and 50’s it was because of WWII, in the 60’s came the space race, in the 70’s and 80’s we had the Cold War and arms race. After the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia things calmed down a bit, but then we had 9/11. As a well educated person (I’m 40 and grew up in the 80’s) it really took the internet to open my eyes to the propaganda I was fed my entire educational existence. When i think about being taught about how Russia and North Korea used propaganda to control their population i remember thinking ‘why didn’t people realize they were being lied to? I’m smart, I’d definitely know!’ We’ll, it’s not so easy, especially when critical thinking is very much discouraged in US classrooms....
@@amijohnson8987 I don't know where you got your education, but we were NEVER taught "patriotism" in school. It doesn't take a genius to recognize America is a pretty great place to live. We have it better than any other country when it comes to personal liberties, opportunity and quality of life. If you disagree, you've probably never traveled abroad.
C Y? On the contrary I travel abroad frequently, and it’s this more than anything that opened my eyes to America’s potential, but we’re wasting SO much money on needless wars and congressional infighting that the needle never moves. Btw, I never said America wasn’t great,but it’s certainly it ‘the shining city on the hill’ envied the world over either. Our education system is pretty shameful, it’s a disgrace we have children living in poverty and homelessness, and right now there’s actually debate about what truth is, actual facts are now being questioned by seemingly normal people, like the Earth being flat. So America can still be great, and certainly have incredible potential, but it’s not perfect and there are many places deemed happier than the US, which mostly stems from financial security.
I love how the American dream is basically a scam so people think it’s their own fault they’re poor when in reality, most of the times it’s the system’s fault. This brings gaslighting to a whole new level.
@ripurring alr let’s see you try to buy a house while making minimum wage and you can’t switch jobs because you couldn’t afford a college education while your landlord raises the rent on your apartment and you can’t move out because everything else is too expensive..we’ll see how that experiences enlightens you because you sound like the type of people the lower class hates with a passion
@ripurring my mother had a valuable job making responsible financial decisions and lived in a small studio apartment that could bearly fit both of us for 11 years and we still couldn’t move because a majority of our money went to rent, food, basic electricity, transportation and more and some months we had to rely on my father to pay some of the bills or else we would get evicted or lose an essential service so please go and find someone else to tell off about “not understanding the poor”
Long ago, the way people were disabused of their false beliefs, mistaken notions or downright stupidity was either being killed by an enemy, a big animal, or an accident. These days, people are fairly safe from these things, and the internet kindly brings scattered groups of the like-minded into a kind of community, so it kind of reinforces the notion that "Hey, I believe X and all my friends believe X and nothing bad is happening to us... so X must be TRUE!" If this continues, I fear that the old way of correcting stupidity may make a comeback to remind us that bad things happen when you are willfully stupid!
As a middle school student I did have my emotional problems, however I had an undying curiosity to better understand reality. I had a better time talking personally to adults in their 40s and 50s instead of kids within my age group. Kids within my age group were boring to me because they only seemed interested in taking up and repeating tropes from pop culture assuming that it makes them impressive or worthy of fitting into social circles. To me, this was just ridiculous. I’m almost 30 years old and I’m noticing that there are adults in their 40s and 50s who actually look like they’re rolling backwards to the stage of being only 13 and 14 years old. Having no sense of looking for credibility in any claim, brushing away any credible knowledge as part of the elite, claiming that they are victims of whatever “the establishment” is. Some of them gravitate toward a cult like mentality, in other words a sort of clique where they can feel special and validated. They can fit into a group where they can share the same belief with everyone else there and never have to worry about being challenged. Perhaps the largest indicator of immaturity is the idea that voting for specific president or leader or whoever will fix our problems quickly. This is the how children try to get help, by asking for help from a parental figure or a teacher because they don’t fully understand their surrounding reality. They rely on adults who have knowledge and authority. If we’re all adults here then why even bother to try relying on some sort of parental figure representing tens of thousands of people across a very large and diverse country? In order to really grow up, we need to find it in ourselves to break down our own emotional attachment to beliefs, our origin of bias and learn to analyze information, rather than remain uncertain about everything and rely on some sort of group or leader to coddle and perpetuate whatever we’re comfortable with believing.
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”-T. S. Eliot
Interesting, Danielle. Very interesting. I can remember from when I was around 10-12 talking with a neighbouring lady. She talked with me as an adult, about all sorts of things. I don't remember about what, but I do remember being talked with as an (almost) equal. Oddly enough, I remember riding a bus here in Toronto several years ago. A middle-aged lady had 2 or 3 little kids (maybe aged 3-5) with her. As the kids looking out the windows noticed all sorts of things passing by and commented, she validated their observations and questions, and added a bit more info about each. Those kids are getting a wonderful head start in life.
That’s a Very insightful comment. Personally, I consider myself politically homeless, so I can watch the left vs right drama unfold, and see a shocking number of otherwise intelligent and sane people, so eager to divorce themselves from critical thought and have a political brand image at the core of their identity. Apparently it’s been like this since the 1800s, probably even before that, but I haven’t read that far back yet.✌️
I am Ulster Scot. That culture created the English speaking South and later, after the CW, the SW and Rocky Mountain state cultural areas. Crazy ideas and pathological resistance and fatalism is what drives it into being crazy. The GOP incorporated it decades ago and look what happened. It is a cultural area primed for Fascism. It always feels humiliated by the broader world and under siege. Why? The ancestors from Northern Britain felt the same way for a thousand years.
Remember when Castro emptied his prisons and sent them all to the US? The Cuban crime wave? I always thought that was a brilliant move on his part. The same happened in America´s birth. England sent the worst of the worst, because they knew the chances of survival of those initial expeditions were very low. So they sent the religious zealots, the fanatics, the poor and destitute, the winos and the bums off the street. In essence, the dumbest of the dumb, the rif raf, low quality stock. And the consequences are showing. If you start a nation with a bad gene pool, the end result will always be a sore sight to behold. The american success can be atributed to the use of cheap/slave labour. The economic success atracted more uneducated manual labour work horses that worked for peanuts. A boom taken advantage of by a select few inteligent characters, that built their empires on the back of these human beasts of burden. And by the 19th century, the money earned was used to outright purchase the brain power they lacked. They used, and continue to use their economical power to drain other countries of their brain power, and relocate them to the US. But now that trend is reversing. These "brainiacs" are returning home, leaving the US in a pretty pickle. The home grown brains are few and far between, the US education system is not conducive to a healthy supply of inteligent graduates. So the industry is starting to crack. We now see the hubs of reserch and development have relocated to places like China, India, and Japan. Placing even more hurdles in the path of immigrants is hurting the american industry even more. Some more enlightened american analists have already began to notice the problem. Just like the empires of old, the american empire is on the decline, and is resorting to its military forces more and more, to tilt the scale back in its favour. But eventually the empire will self destruct. The foundations are rotten, sinking in the sand. And electing imbeciles like Trump to run it is speeding its demise. It´s only a matter of time until we begin to see americans emigrating out en masse! We see quite a few choosing to go abroad already.
Darth Mucus The Pilgrim Fathers left Boston, Lincolnshire, to go to Holland because they wanted to live in a country with a Calvinist state church. Some of these people then left Holland because it wasn't hardline enough for them, stopped off at Plymouth to pick up some Brethren, then sailed off to the New World. That's how British North America got started.
I've always thought that the Vietnam War and the associated post-WW2 "fall from glory" sent American society into a collective depressive episode from which it had yet to fully emerge by 9/11. That became the final nail in the nation's quest for sanity.
I've had similar thoughts about the Vietnam War. Both sides of the political spectrum destroyed American's faith in the government and faith in expertise with lies and a clear disinterest in the welfare of the citizenry. This has been exacerbated by the economic changes since then. The obsession with GDP and the "efficiency" of the market system, especially as that relates to foreign exchange has impoverished the bulk of the American working class while enriching a diminishing number of the very richest Americans. How complex is it? A company fires it's workers and moves jobs overseas; prices stay the same, labor costs drop by large factors, company managers take credit and give themselves big bonuses. Companies use profits generated by American workers, buy electronic goodies to replace workers. Managers give themselves big bonuses. We have created entire cohorts of Americans who have no place in the economy. Democrats want to solve the problem with welfare checks. Republicans want to solve the problem with tax cuts focused on the very richest. The rest of the dilemma I have to blame on Republicans. During the Johnson years civil rights legislation was passed. Johnson said "We've lost the south for a generation". Worse, the Republicans, starting with Nixon, gathered up the racist south with dog whistle racism and have held unto racists nationwide for over 50 years. Meanwhile they have realized that there is short term gain to be had by discrediting science. So environmental, safety, medical and any other science that interferes with short term profitability is denounced until half of the country doesn't believe any expert on any subject. Of course demagogues need enemies and Republican expertise in this arena is historical. It's no coincidence that Joe McCarthy's mentor, attorney, was Trump's mentor. Adding to the established White-against-Black racism Republicans now have added Latino women and children, all of Islam (except those with oil) and George Soros. Trump was the beneficiary of this madness. Almost all the rest of the country are the losers.
I read commentary that called post WW2 years as "post war euphoria" and I grew up in the '50s having swallowed a lot of the feelings. It began to wear off rapidly when the contrasts of Vietnam emerged and our soldiers came home to some ugly demonstrations against them. We've been living a poison within ourselves and letting it be taken out of our systems is painful, no way around it or short cuts.
@@pparker768 It's important to remember that Democrat "quiz kids" ('intellectuals') dreamed this this complete disaster. They were as always completely ignorant of how the world works, having living most of their lives in an artificial bubble unwillingly supported by taxpayers. Nothing ever really changes in government.
@@grantjohnson5785 You conservative little peanut heads are so easily TRIGGERED. That guy Sinjin just climbed halfway up your ass and took a dump. Keep those keyboard warrior threats coming in! (he actually thinks that scares people) DRY YOUR TEARS SNOWFLAKE !!!!!!!!!!
@@paloma5704 If recent events (such as BLM being a front for Marxists to seize control through rioting, the quick kowtowing of most states to fear and panic over Covid) are any indication, YES, correct the country. It's currently on a self-destructive course.
Gaius Julius Caesar said a couple of thing that I believe are pertinent here: "What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also" and "men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true." All of this is nothing new. In fact it just goes to show that people as a whole haven't really changed in over 2000 years.
There is a video which was written and video taped from a former member of the Westboro Baptist church in Fla. in which he said,"We look at others hoping to only see ourselves." What a most true statement.
People have changed very little in a hundred thousand years. The toys that have been invented are different, but our minds and bodies are essentially the same. Tribalism, xenophobia, greedy conquest to ensure the prosperity of you and yours at the expense of others - these are VERY old habits and hard to break.
Caesar reportedly chided his doom-saying prophet with: Well' the Ides of March are here and I'm still very much alive" as he headed off to the Senate. To which his prophet replied: "Yes Caesar, the Ides of March have come, but they are not yet gone"
"I don't trust the government, the leaders or the elite, but I'll overthrow democracy because I believe in a government run by an elite ruler who sends out decrees sitting on a golden toilet." Makes perfect sense.
@@jocktulloch3499 Russia isn’t even capitalist, though, it’s a democratic socialist federation. Not great, but a step in the right direction from what the soviet union was
@@nataliesteiner COVID was the slowest, easiest, baby-mode difficulty virus Nature could've thrown at us and we completely failed that challenge. I now dread to think what will happen when Nature decides it's time to actually throw something serious our way. An outcome similar to something you see in The Division or Contagion now seems optimistic at best.
@@ParagonFury I just hope monkeypox doesn't get to that point or other shit like polio. We came so freaking far only to have anti-vaxxers throw us back in the well. Like whole families have been wiped out. Our morgues are bursting at the seams and people still think it's fake.
@@ParagonFury Yes because now our great great great grandchildren are gonna pay the price of our idiotic tyrannical restrictions for generations and that's somehow a good thing. Imagine thinking that fear of catching a cold is more rational than fear of literally handing over your right to fresh air to the government while it wants to restrict it and completely shut down your economy.
I am a gen z, and modern-day America, and honestly its real historia is just terrifying. I am glad that my "mythical" route lead me to explain magic (like in books, games, plays, movies, etc.) through science and thinking science is magic while loving nature. Just...the amount of people who are separated from reality and just empathy towards other people astounds me. It is one thing to struggle and not have time or resources to gather factual knowledge and realistic views or to be ignorant--but there are SO many people that are willfully ignorant, which is what I could call stupid. The ones who are nationalistic and bordering on fascism.
I'm not American but I can tell you that your description fits perfectly with European Western countries too. The key: the last 20 years. Before these 20 years maybe things were different but since these 20 last years is just everywhere this not-dealing-in-reality.
Magnus Kvalvik, That is an awful lot of speculation to read into a simple declarative statement. But to set you straight, the answer is "no" I have known since the genre began. I work in film and TV so I have seen first hand how the producers set-up and manipulate the narratives. Even on Trump's major claim to fame, The Apprentice, it was the producers that decided who to boot each week and Trump found out who that was to be minutes before they taped the elimination scenes. Then there is wrestling, which was doing 'reality entertainment' long before the term caught on in the modern vernacular.
Le Green Boat, Perhaps 'assumptions' would have been a more appropriate term since he obviously didn't put much thought into his post. As for my post, please be so kind as to educate all of us on where I speculated or made assumptions.
burtosis, So true. Between the "reality" shows and the "I'm not saying, I'm just asking a question" religious crap about 80% of the Discovery network content is unwatchable. I do have a guilty pleasure in History Channel's "Forged In Fire" though. You can see some influence of the producers manipulating the narrative but it is still primarily about making the blades.
America has never been invaded, hence the concept of pain and suffering from war is unknown. The US is so detached from war torn Europe of WWII or Vietnam.
@Ann Linley America's cities were never bombed down or had people murdered in the most inhumane way possible. They've never suffered from poisonous gas or unexploded bombs.
You must be an idiot! America was heavily involved in both WWII and Vietnam. We paid a great price for wars we didn't even need to be a part of - but we came to the rescue of allies at our own expense. Practically every country in the world still owes America for war debts.
@@r.t.7626 Yeah, but that OP probably talking about millions of deaths like in WW2, not 3,00 in WTC. Or Europe in general, or old civilizations like India. Kings have always been fighting for thousands of years.
This is more relevant now, then it was four years ago. facts are becoming harder to distinguish from lies. It’s almost impossible to even find facts when they’re shrouded by all these layers of media you need to dig through first. We need to drop any biases we have and search objectively for truth, or else critical thinking dies.
@@jimmydean123123 now more and more people are recognizing that gender identity is more complex than just genes alone. Even if gender was just confined to the objective reproductive structures of a person, the binary is just plain inadequate to describe intersex people. People are learning that the existing model is inadequate and we are leaving it behind. You don’t have to follow, but you should at least be able to see why people are looking for other models.
I think Individualism is also to be blamed here, it is a great idea, except when we imprison ourselves by just being in ourselves all the time. Community is important and we need to create some distance between our thoughts and ourselves. Not every thought that pops up in our mind is worthy of being carved in stone. But we do tend to over emphasize useless thoughts and emotions.
I would say collectivism is at fault. For example, an individualist will see idiots on reality TV and change the channel. A collectivist will be duped into thinking that it's worth watching by other collectivists who have already been duped. Prove me wrong.
@@grantjohnson5785 The audience of reality TV and other brain damaging media is made up of millions of individualists. A collective that cared about the health of all over the pleasure of a single individual would not let such poison flourish.
In my reading of history we have little to fear from individuals engrossed in their own self-promotion. When armies of the like-minded collectively march to a singular vision of Utopia, then run for your very life.
As detestable as a lot of things he says are to me, I have to applaud and thank this channel for truly presenting a full spectrum of viewpoints. As willing as Kurt Anderson here is to point his finger at "the right, and the entire republican party," I have to wonder why he's only telling one side of the story. I think he's onto a good start when he's talking about the Fantasy Industrial Complex, and it certainly does manifest centrally in America, but I think that insisting that these problems are largely American and specifically right wing/Republican is negligent at best. These are Human Problems, and ignoring how either side might be committing these sins against reality itself only exacerbates the problem.
And so demonstrates the magical thinking. "The other side is just as wrong as mine, so pointing out errors on my side only shows your bias." Bullshit. That's just typical right-wing whataboutism. The left doesn't deny reality to the extent that the right does, which was exactly his point when he says it's not necessarily limited to the right, but does there does in fact seem to be a tremendous amount of stupid nonsense coming from that direction.
@@forge20 You just proved my point. One could swap out "left" and "right" in your statement there and end up with essentially a word-for-word quote from any of the pundits on either side. We're all accusing each other of the same exact sins, and then responding with more accusations of projecting, lying, gaslighting, etc. We all need to change our attitudes and our approach, or there's no saving us.
Canada burning down the white house would be hilarious if the guy wasn't in control of hundreds of nuclear weapons. I was wondering maybe that I was an idiot for not knowing that Canada burnt the white house down but then I realized it was Trump saying it. -All he does is talk out of his ass, he even contradicts himself in the same sentence. The other day he said he read the letter from Kim Jong Un saying it said great things and a few minutes later he said he hadn't read it yet. The truly disgusting thing is that so many idiots out there follow him blindly with everything he says and take his word over anything, it's almost like a cult.
The solution is to be patient with one another and encourage learning. To many good minds are shamed away from science and critical thinking. Please don't attack others for thinking differently. That is sadly the first step in the long process of restoring trust in common sense and genuine discernment. Carl Sagan had a lot of wonderful insight to foster education for humanity.
and, on a smaller scale, it is unusual for 5 people to die because the outgoing president lies about the outcome of the election, and a mob believes him :-(
@Mendoza Juan speaking of untruths, 2020 death toll overall in the US was at least 12% higher than in 2019. And if we look beyond statistical averages as a way to pretend that we somehow AREN'T in a pandemic (see: lying with statistics), most COVID-19 deaths are preventable if hospitals have the adequate capacity, which most did not in 2020. The death tolls weren't because of people's personal choices (well, some were) so much as a lack of preparedness, which was because of bad planning and policy. The big lie here was that we have such a good healthcare system that no more investment was required. We now know these were deliberate policy choices made by people who were fine risking everyone else's lives to save some money on the budget.
It depends. We could conduct a cruel social experiment where believing an untruth and lacking critical thinking skills results in certain death. We could create something worse than Covid that kills way more idiots.
Funny thing about reality TV. I built scenery for the first one on MTV. The scenery I built was to hide all the cameras. It wasn't scripted per se, but every show was entirely contrived. That's why the acting was /is so shitty on these programs, they're basically doing improv, badly.
He may not be a good speaker, but the thing to pay attention to is the historical background and overall message of describing why America developed it's problems.
Daniel Winfrey you can say that again. Halfway through this rambling and I'm still not sure what he's talking about. Hasn't talked about any of the points in the title. He should have written something down and rehearsed to prepare for this video.
We need to figure out a way to get these reality deniers out of power and out of our way as we seek to address real problems. Delusion is a serious threat to our health and well being and even our continued existence.
Wow, and to think that it's gotten so much worse since this was made. Who would have thought in 2017 that we would start questioning basic medical knowledge and would ignore an immediate global pandemic. So, even the claim here that we won't get better until we suffer the consequences turned out to be too optimistic.
The people questioning basic medical knowledge are the ones who pushed the narrative of a dangerous pandemic. The average age of people killed by covid is literally just the same as the average life expectancy 🤦🏻
Thing is, the media pointed fingers at everyone except themselves, same with politicians. The reality is that the media, politicians, government, and many corporations 100% created the environment for people to distrust and fall down rabbit holes. They commit mass atrocities, wreck the environment, alter truth for profit, and push propaganda to cover their hides. Then they turn around and go "oh look at these dumb people, it's their fault". These are criminals, without a doubt, who will be entirely safe from the wreckage they cause, and the majority of the population will suffer while believing that their neighbors are the enemy, or that 1 politician is the issue. Donald Trump merely overtly took advantage of the abusive system that many others created and have been abusing for decades. Even the public distaste for him made people astronomical amounts of money, while distracting people from real issues.
9:29 - "Political parties had their own newspapers, their own magazines." They do once again. And we're headed down the same road again. Those who are unaware of the past are condemned to repeat it.
That's a flawed argument. I am among those who are aware of the past, but I'm doomed to repeat it anyway! When the majority are unaware the aware suffer the same consequences.
@@karenryder6317 Yeah, it's bound to be an unpopular sentiment, but I've always kind of doubted that individual awareness of history can do much of anything to affect contemporary sociopolitics.
@@karenryder6317 it usually is directed to anyone in power or control like, the Captain who didn’t know the past is doomed to repeat it or something like that
@@Skaldewolf just blindly follow some clearly bias publicist with no PhD on the matters he speaks of... you really know what's going on in the world bud lol
@@briankenyon1543 I'm not a "trumper"... you wanna actually talk we can talk, but yeah this man has no PhD on the matters he is educating all of you on ..
@@jesusiii6732 sure! We can talk. Do granted this prize winning author is no PhD.. But I wasn't so much commenting on his credentials, rather your obvious dispute of the thread material!? Given your aversion to the claims made.. I made the assumption that you must find yourself on the extreme right of the subject, hence the "Trumper" assertion. Apologies if that's off the mark. It is However always hard to swallow.. the active denial of how this country has become so mired in the absurd... But! I am starting to understand just how successful the propaganda machine has been here. Having come from an actual free country. Meaning SQUARLY, free from fear.. first and foremost. And second and equally as important, free from rampant Christan/chest pumping blind patriotism.. ie, we are our own harshest critics. (Not needing to be "CORRECT" at every turn. Now good sir. You may defend your great and heroic nation... If you dear?
Very interesting; thank you for sharing. As a Canadian, I've always watched our closest neighbour with both great fascination and puzzlement over how such (relatively) strange systems of operation continue to function. This helped to clear up some of that confusion, so thank you. :-)
Your government froze the bank accounts of peaceful protestors and your PM said on live tv that you don’t have a right to defend yourself. And most Canadians applauded. Trust me, we are the puzzled ones.
It's exactly that sort of astoundingly biased an ignorant thinking that is the problem. The inability to think critically exists in absolute abundance in both the left AND the right. Both sides have logically incoherent, insane ideas. No doubt people like you buy into all the "left" ones and fail to critically analyse your basket of views individually, allowing your tribal mind to block out dissenting thoughts. This happens on BOTH sides.
Only liberals and Democrats manifest Idiocracy! It's like they're trying to make it happen! The rest of Americans hate them for being so utterly stupid.
@@cy8685 My friend, you are already a part of the Idiocracy! Conservatives who overwhelmingly believe the magic man in the sky should dictate our policies for starters. Those that believe being gay is like a hobby or some magic sin that sky daddy will punish you for. Anyone who unironically watches Alex Jones. People who don't understand the difference between Weather and Climate. Lower to middle class individuals who believe in trickle down economics. People who think ayn rand was a genius. Civil War Revisionists. Those who spout states right except when its something they don't like. All of this and more is yours to be had.
@@Go4Noctis 😂😂😂 Thank you for making it abundantly clear that *YOU* are part of the Idiocracy! NOTHING in your comment is accurate! You obviously received a liberal "education" (indoctrination) and have an extremely warped perspective of reality. I'll bet you even support AOC idiocy! Stick with your video games and leave "grow-up" discussions to the adults. 😂😂😂
@@cy8685 I actually grew up and was educated in a highly conservative and wealthy area. We were not wealthy (in fact we were on government assistance while my mother went back to school) but we had the house from a few generation back. This allowed me to get some of the best education in the country. The high school I went to was #5 in the state and 596th in the country out of over 35,000. I do play video games as do many people lovely of you to try and make a hobby into some sign of lack of mental acuity. I'm also 31 BTW who knows if you are just denigrating me to a child because you feel some sort of superiority or you just think I have baby face which I have gotten before. Everything I said is 100% accurate. Could you explain how anything I said was inaccurate. Does the conservative philosophy not have quite a few members like this. The Mormon church and evangelicals are conservative. Anti gay sentiment while not exclusive to political conservatives it is to rooted in social conservatives. What part of what I have said is inaccurate and why? Also I'd try to make claims about you but the only one I can make is that you are not confident enough in your claims to have any connection to them. I'm guessing the main purpose for your account is to "rek the libtards" while being able to completely divorce yourself from it.
@@Go4Noctis 😂😂😂 "rek the libards", huh? I NEVER used the term "libtards". You just keep striking out with your identity politics, don't you? I never assumed you were a kid, but I *do* know that playing video games is a great way to divorce yourself from reality, which you do so well. Keep up the "good" work.
@@theobserver9131 Those are things that could have been fixed. Bad things happened, but it was never necessary to continue the mistakes. Some medicine tastes bad, but it could have been taken in time. People fought very hard to make that happen, and other people worked even harder to prevent it. Choices were made, and in the end, people decided that the American Dream was actually pretty low in their list of priorities.
@@ribbitgoesthedoglastnamehe4681 I agree with you. I’m still an optimist in that if the people got their shit together we could reverse most of our issues… I mean we’ve done it before. I am also, however, at a loss as to how I can expect for that condition to actually happen
He had me completely, until he started talking about politics still using a rigid scientific infrastructure when discussing the very nuanced realm of politics and society. He stresses so much that your private beliefs should remain private and divorced from a public platform, but then turn around and quite vocally states his own beliefs, which seems awfully hypocritical. Although I don’t think this was malicious or intentional because he genuinely seems to believe his stances, but it just proves that his theory that private and public opinions can be completely separated is quite faulty. Human interpretations of reality are really so fundamental to their interactions that it is impossible to truly shed those biases in particular circumstances.
His primary problem is that he sniffs his own farts and is, himself, a so-called "elite" leftwing twat who thinks he's got it all figured out and can tell everyone else exactly how they should live and what they should be "allowed" to think and say. Little better than the self righteous hardcore bible-thumpers who have it "all figured out". He talks about how Trump isn't a proper "good" entrepreneur, but I would almost bet my life that this man has never built a business, nor changed a tire, nor worked any kind of blue collar job. He probably thinks msnbc and cnn are actual sources of news and that they conduct journalism.
We were taught in school that the pilgrims were heroic victims that left Europe for the new world to escape religious persecution. As an adult, learning how the early settlers such as the pilgrims and Puritans worked, my belief is that the Europeans actually kicked them out because they were preachy assholes.
@Leon lionhardt number one in what? Highest GDP per capita? Excellent universal healthcare? Good quality of living? Scientifically literate population? None of these. All you guys have going on for you is "no goberment gonna take away muh guns!!1!" Instead of wasting time here on TH-cam, go plot up the next school you're gonna shoot up
to be religious is to be a blind man in a pitch black room looking for a black cat that isn't there. And finding it. and people use it to set policies, rules and laws. They would be The American Taliban. and they are waiting. verry, very near to power.
Completely agree with what you are saying here, BUT I'm almost 100% sure that you are knocking on an open door, since I doubt it that any of those people living in an alternate reality watch a video clip such as this one. The big question is how can we convey this kind of a message to the people from the "other side"?
Ive been thinking a lot lately about The Ironic Quantum: the space where fiction and reality blur and objective truth loses its value. I hadn’t considered how reality TV plays a role in that: it really did predate social media in establishing and reinforcing malignant narcissism as a norm rather than the toxic minority
I’ve been screaming about this ever since my blogs in the MySpace days. I could see what reality tv was doing to the minds of our society, and I feared it would lead to our downfall. This is before Facebook was even a thing.
*RE: "The Ironic Quantum: the space where fiction and reality blur and objective truth loses its value. "* Our politicians are our "servants" How does that work where the servants turn out their masters?
There is no such thing as prescience. What he does is taking facts, they follow a trend, and he just continues following where that trend goes. No magic there, everyone can do it, every day. Ignorance and following believes is just so prevalent, that he seems like a miracle worker. Same as the bishop who was called a wizard for being able to read without moving his lips.
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:224
This historical context behind this quote is intriguing. I'd just like to add what Jefferson said before this: "To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, 'by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.' Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers." Sadly it seems just as true today as it was back in Jefferson's day.
Trevin and Sand We are all creatures of our time and adjust our outrage meters accordingly. Only people like you and perhaps me know there is nothing new under the sun. I came of age in the 1960-70s and these days are like paradise on earth. And I mean that in all sincerity. I do not mean it metaphorically.
" ...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." Thomas Jefferson oll.libertyfund.org/quote/302
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. Isaac Asimov
Darrell Rees you wrote: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been." Let us examine the result. The most prosperous, powerful, scientifically advanced civilization in all of human history. I suspect you may have noticed USA has more creationists then than all the rest of the advanced nations combined. Am I right? I submit to you this is no coincidence. I surmise you have no idea how this could happen. But I do know why. And with a bit of false charity I smile indulgently at your manifest ignorance.
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Smarter faster... From this joke of pseudo intellectual thought?
Present more fact and less editorialized history.
No one is as dangerous as a highly educated person of ill intent!
*I am a Poor White Racist & I HATE Lib-Tards!!!! & I BeLive in the LORD Jesus Christ!!!*
*Guess Who I VOTED for????*
for European peasants, namely my Scottish and Irish ancestors the myth that was real, was that in America you could own your own farm - which in the old country was impossible, because all of the land was owned by the feudal system
@@moroniflake8724 AGREED!!!
“Whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” Voltaire
That saying should be tattooed on this guys forehead
He can also get rich off you and even become the POTUS.
Translation: MAGA
@@ohiowatha 100%
MAGA, Qanon..
"The Americans always do the right thing - after they have tried everything else" - W. Churchill
Fuck Winston Churchill!!! 💩🙄
@@pavelm.gonzalez8608 why?
@@ben5073 Him stopping the US and Canada from shipping food to India during a famine because he wanted them to starve to try to break them?
@@Waywardpaladin when? Are you talking about the Bengali Famine of 1940s?
His mother was American! 😒
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ~ Isaac Asimov
Glam Barbie Re false notion etc etc etc
Going on 225 years continuity. On the way we produced more creationist then all other advanced nations combined, as well as the most technologically advanced civilization in all human history. I have the idea you want to fix all that in some way? Tell us the plans you might have in mind for improvement.
GlamazonBarbie damn. That's brilliant
David Rapalyea - You shouldn't say "technically advanced civilization," It's more like a culture of almost-humans trained to be consumers.
GlamazonBarbie - Asimov also said, "I'm sure that there is intelligent life in the universe. They're just too intelligent to come here."
David Smith re trained consumers
One of the more serious health problems among our poor people is morbid obesity. I count that as colateral damage. The consumer societies also seemed selfishly work for life extension too, I suppose, buy more stuff. So antibiotics, vacines, Weight Watchers so you could watch yourself get fat. DAMNED miseable place! Give me feudalism!
It’s gotten to the point where I just don’t talk about politics with certain family members and friends. It’s hard to argue with someone who is not dealing in reality.
You’re soooo right!!’
Funny thing is, they think the exact same thing about you...but at least they're willing to have a conversation.
@@universalsoldier2293 When one side believes the Democrats are cannibalistic pedos who control the “New World Order”, and that the guy from “The Apprentice” is the savior who will deliver us from evil, there’s no conversation to be had.
We can't be silent. They certainly are not. It's difficult to not become angry, but they need to hear fact from rational ppl.
Agreed. When ur cousin believes men can have periods there really isn’t much else to talk about
It's distressing to me, having grown up in the 50's an 60's to see so many people completely separated from knowledge, science and critical thinking. I was taught to study things thoroughly in order to find truth. Nobody seems to do that now.
I don't know about education and democracy. All I know is taxes are rising, regulations are making it more and more impossible to truly create a competitive buisness, and industries are moving overseas were they don't have to deal with those issues. Oh and I'm expected to be a wage slave to fund your "greater good".
And I'm expected to just smile, say nice things, and just be happy. While bottling up my hatred for elitist degenerates.
@@m0ther_bra1ned12 I haven't noticed taxes rising. They were higher when I was younger. The tax breaks for the rich has ballooned the deficit. This is what Republican administrations always do...
@@m0ther_bra1ned12 "I don't know much about education and democracy." THAT'S the problem!!
Great! I see you're not a Democrat.
@@johnscanlan9335 You're right. I'm a Democratic Socialist.
It’s Easier to Fool People Than to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled
The bigger the lie the harder they fall. Never trust priests or scientists in the pay of corrupt Marxist politicians.
@@brucefrykman8295 how about scientists in the (direct or indirect) employ of big capitalist companies, of which nearly all of them are?
@@compteofficiel4112
Big capitalist companies don't hire "scientists" to "save the Earth" Big oil corporations hire real scientists to help them find the oil they sell us in order to make profits and some fake ones to tell the idiots that they really don't want to find this oil and sell it to eager customers. Customers like "climate cultists who' need oil by the boatload to jet off to their next climate gala held at some exotic tropical beach resort instead of freezing their asses off at home with their snot nosed kids and paying for their own crummy meals.
@@brucefrykman8295 so who hires real scientists that want to just do science and find out about the world?
@@compteofficiel4112 Can't trust scientist ? I guess you don't realize we live by science... from toilet paper to the space shuttle.
Sometimes I cannot get past the immense irony that we have become an Idiocracy right in the middle of The Information Age. The collective knowledge of humankind is at our fingertips, yet . . .
the movie just keeps getting better with time.
Knowledge: Yes.
Wisdom: No.
Let me put it this way: Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put one in a fruit salad. The problem isn't that people don't have enough information; the problem is that people don't know _which_ information to follow.
covidiocracy
@@schwarzwolfram7925 Yes, there's plenty of information and disinformation. You need to sift out the disinformation to the best of your ability, and then interprete the good information to draw conclusions.
The sifting and interpreting is where I see most problems, just look at the covid-19 vaccinations.
Amen.
It's grown to the point where I've isolated myself from most people. It's impossible to have an intelligent disagreement. Yes, it's really that bad.
Tj Knight I fully agree. It seems one has to wade through a lot of shit to find the one turd worth talking to.
Pursue intelligent disagreements, maybe gamify it for yourself. Part of the problem is that smart people have isolated, leaving the blabbing idiots to shape people's (kids' in particular) beliefs. Be a mentor, upload to TH-cam, volunteer with a kid-focused organization, coach people into being better thinkers. Don't give up. It's hard and thankless work, but you'll know when you've scored a goal.
I know what your saying I hardly will let anyone in my life anymore. I find the foreigners are better to talk to. I post things on the internet from time to time. I try to educate people. It is hard to see all this insane bull crap all the time. I have gotten through to a few people.
If you find somewhere to escape to, let me know.
David Schibilla You might benefit from what seems like meaningless engagement with people. Leave the teaching behind and just take the time to get to know people, you know, figure out with questions what they think of themselves, what makes them tick, how they tick like you and his they don't. At the very least, you'll garner some teaching skills by understanding some analogies that will click with them, what sorts of thought processes people tend to have, that kind of thing. People may be pretty dumb, but each is so in a unique way. I've found that approach insightful into my own stupidity. You'll also find out how much people will adore you just by listening to them, plus, you'll catch a gem here and there from surprising sources. It might be good, too, if you started writing your thoughts down. You never know when your ideas might lead to a culture-rocking book. Lots of smart people just journal to help them cope with... well... yeah, that. ("The foreigners?" It could be y'all just feel like outsiders in a pretty sick subculture. That's not a bad thing.)
The problem is reality isn't punishing people fast enough for being stupid.
How about the people of our major US cities picking Democrats to rule them.
I'd say the punishment for such stupidity is swift and sure.
@@brucefrykman8295 You, sir, have just proved the OP's point! Well played!
@@brucefrykman8295 ....
Bubba.
What's better for your job;
Rugged individualism consumerism and monopolies chugging up all the resources leaving your customers broke
Or.
Social safety net programs, anti-monopoly programs, higher minimum wage (BTW, the amount of loans citizens take out decides inflation, not minimum wage. That's just how money is printed in the usa) and a slightly higher tax rate, leaving 99% of your customers with spare cash?
Ya... Its the latter. That's what democrats do. Thats why Democrat ran states pay more in taxes then they receive in federal aid most years. And Republican ran states take more in federal aid then they pay in taxes.
@@allhumansarejusthuman.5776 I was a 'rugged individual' who parleyed 160 grand a year (back when it was real money) with high a school education working as a project engineer and engineering manager for a variety of data comm firms. As such I have nothing against individual achievement. Teams don't do shit, they sit on their asses and try to find who was at fault for their failure to produce anything of value.
Social safety nets are what is fueling our drug addiction pandemic, they are hammocks. No one who is of sound mind and body should get a dime of help by robbing those who get up off their asses and try to find a way to scratch out a living no matter how difficult. This is the American ethic and our ideal, not useless cancerous socialism.
Why would I or anyone hire anyone whom they would have to pay more than he or she can produce? That's just nutty. Driving up minimum wages make people like me richer and you poorer. You see I'm the guy who designs systems that replace people who demand more than they can produce. They buy my machines instead, (that work 24/7 and never complain) rather than an army of useless whiners - it very true and nothing can stop this.
I wont pay people more than they are worth. I'll farm my jobs out to whomever gives me the best value just as they to in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark where they have no minimum wage. They just have more equal taxation than we do. They tax the first dime (kroner) as well as the last. Sweden has far more billionaires per-capita than the USA does. Wise up.
Wages have nothing to do with inflation; we have debt based currency, this is what produces inflation and the US government is by far the the most indebted spendthrift driving up this mountain of debt. 26 Trillion and growing - by trillions per year.
This is what is making those with no skills like you impoverished. When I was you age the world was my oyster with no way to go but up. What do you think has reduced you to putting your hand out begging for money?
I think we need less government and less taxation, most of it is wasted when the DC monkeys reallocate productive resources to the non productive.
The federal government spends more in Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia than they they do in Massachusetts New York and New Jersey for exactly the same reason that Toyota and Boeing does: They get far more value for their money.
Why would any self respecting young man live in these Northern socialist shit holes?
Beats me.
@@brucefrykman8295 I usually don’t jump into back and forth discussions like this but you sir, fired me up. I (like you, as you seem to indicate) don’t have a 4 year college degree. I finished HS then got a 2 yr degree in EE tech. I was born in 1960, so I’m coming up on 60 now. I’m also an IT instructor who has been moderately successful and consistently earned 200k+ a year.
You talk about rugged individualism but you fail to understand that you had a lot of luck along the way to help you get to where you’re at, as did I.
If I would have been born in a different time, like maybe 10/20 years later, I’d probably be nowhere near as successful.
What we’re (I’m talking progressives - don’t like right/left labels) trying to accomplish is to level the playing field.
Just because you were born to a particular situation/time period/generation, shouldn’t determine your lot in life.
Everyone should get free (taxpayer funded) K-12 (just like it is now) and based upon your desire to continue on improving yourself, should get free higher education.
Switching gears, In your post you mentioned robotics. So let me ask you, in a functional society should humans be replaced by robots/automation when doing so would result in a catastrophic economical impact to those being replaced with goal being only to raise shareholder value and increase profit margin? So let’s be empathetic for a moment if you can. I’m a worker, of limited means/education, who’s been doing a great job for the last 20 years, never call in sick, just show up everyday and do my menial job to the best of my ability, then someone invents automation that can do what I do so subsequently I get laid off never to be called back again, lost my income any health benefits I might have had all in the name of unbridled laissez-faire capitalism, and I should be happy about it deal with it in my own rugged individualistic way?
If so, you sir are deluded. People like you and I were born in the right place at the right time like the saying goes. Many were not. What we should all be fighting for is a more egalitarian society where everyone starts at the same starting line.
To quote a line from an old song from a group called Everlast which I think succinctly captures what I’m saying: “You know where it ends
Yo, it usually depends
On where you start”
Think about that before you start acting so “superior” to all those “lazy moochers” around you who just want a handout from the government.
Old Australian saying...you got the puritans...thank christ we got the convicts..
Lol
Sheesh... ever get the feeling idiots love being morons? I think most Aussies have highly developed BS recognition skills... unlike many Americans who seem to believe science is merely a tool for determining exactly how to piss off your political rivals
A totally splendid comment - and look how well the convicts did....even to beating the Poms at cricket often
Call Sharpening - wow!!!! Awesome!!!! I'm so envious right now!!!! Long live Australia!!!!
Thanks, Call Sharpening, for posting this comment. I've often thought about exactly that situation, but never realized you guys down under had a quote about it!
I am from the UK and visited the US many times. In Europe, we are allowed to discuss and question religion and politics. In the US these topics seem to be topics not to be discussed in bars or workplaces. Which is very strange. I was a catholic but talking with other people and opinions you begin to question things. This is the joy of conversation. I am now an atheist and proud. My parents accept this also because we openly discuss my journey. I don't think this journey could happen in the US
It's cause you're likely gonna start a fight if you do, most people would rather avoid that. Pretty much keep those conversations to good friends and family
To question in America is to invite combat.
The UK is a pathetic crumbling island. Most of it's people don't take their future seriously, so why would such topics really be of great concern to most of you? I'm also not just saying that because you outed yourself as unbearabling naive like most foreigners who stay in one onclave of the country not your own.
If you're an Atheist, that probably indicates you're lacking any form of critical thinking skills yourself.
@@TheGoldenBoot-cz1do It sounds good except that even family members and people who used to be friends are now divided as conspiracy cults like Qanon get worse and worse. Reddit has a site for sane family members who have been forced to protect the family's remaining assets as some Qanons become "doomsday preppers". They blow the family's entire savings on combat gear and buying up crypto and leave the rest of their family members with nothing. One poor woman had to sneak out with all of her kids because her husband had threatened to kill all of them because they didn't believe that Trump was the second coming of Jesus. How can you even reason with something like that?
"Americans are passionate believers of the untruth." Perfect summary.
And you of course in contrast are a believer only in "truth" I hope no one is unfortunate to ever have you serve as their juror.
THE untruth? Which one do you refer to?
Yeah there are some of us stupid enough to think government works.
@@compteofficiel4112 The commenter is referring to the general untruth (lower case t) not THE which would imply a specific. Capitalization is important.
@@brucefrykman8295 What is the alternative?
"How exactly did it get so bad?" Simple; we began to conflate 'notoriety' with 'significance', and worse yet, through that conflation imply that non-notoriety makes you INsignificant.
Beautifully stated.
D Snodgrass
MEDIA - owned by Rothschild and application of teaching ideas that evoke paranoia for ability to manipulate.
Next Question?
Beth Bartlett -Rothschild is dead, or nearly so; it's Mercer and Murdoch that I consider the threat. But you do you.
Accurate and succinctly put.
Mike Schnobrich - you're definitely thinking! I would love to hear a scholar answer your questions.
I am going to read his book. Anti-intellectualism has been happening since I was in college in 67. Carl Sagan predicted this.
What blows me away, this anti-intellectualism movement, has gained the traction it has. How in the world, seeking knowledge, in all things, can be spun as a negative is beyond me.
Anti-intellectualism has been happening for much longer than that. It's kind of funny. We have yet to convince scientists to study anti-intellectualism to learn how to combat it. The best we can do is get intellectuals, like this guy, to complain about anti intellectualism in an anti-intellectual way. Seems like a fitting end.
@@jerrod7019 how you combat it is you engage in civil discourse and present valid argumentation to actually change people's mind with evidence and reasoning, instead of trying to figure out the ideal propaganda campaign formula to "combat" the claims people choose to accept on rational grounds.
@@TheJacklwilliams Spoiler alert: the people in power who aren't getting their books censored like the guy in the video are the ones preventing learning
Carl Sagan was part of the Jewish diaspora, and he had no respect for the people's and cultures of the world, and downplayed human significance just because of a stupid photos of the earth taken from space. How small we are in the universe has absolutely no relevance to how we should perceive our existence. Do you think a tiger or bear cares about the Milky Way's collision with Andromeda, and is gonna have some existential crisis over how small a component it's territory is? Utter nonsense. I love Carl Sagan's science documentaries, but he's a scientist, not a historical philosopher, historian, politician, economist, psychologist. He was a physicist, which requires no competency in things relevant to the intelligent management of Earth's resources
Holy shit as an American I find this analysis disturbingly true; a succinct summary of my problems with the society I don't feel I live in, but rather one I feel forced to endure.
We’re really forced to play a part in something we want nothing to do with… hard to feel motivated
If I was an American....I would not want to be smart or intelligent.
It would make me feel depressed, angry and afraid. A real dumb hillbilly is the only reasonable person I would want to be over there😅
Agreed! We need fewer Reality Shows and more Reality Checks.
The reality checks in the mail.
@@ge2623 With today's reality, the check bounced.
Death is a reality check 😂
So true
Reality shows are not about reality. Most seem to be about scheming, lying and selfishness. OK, we do have that, but when the shows started being on TV I had hoped for something better than that.
I do like that British baking show. Its amazing when the contestants help each other and are sad when one of them has to leave the show. It's so uplifting and positive.
"You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else"- Winston Churchill
Yet another quote.
CHURHILL'S MOTHER WAS AMERICAN FIRST AND FOREMOST! AND YOU ARE WELCOMED AND HE WAS RIGHT !
Lol, as if Churchill were a liberal. Churchill would be called a Fascist by today's standard my love. He personally killed several people of color who were just defending their homeland you know. Their reality was very very different from ours.
😂
Idiots
This thing (at least where it relates to politics) reminded me of the scene in "Back to the Future" where Marty meets Doc Brown in 1955 after traveling back in time and their initial conversation, which is based on Doc Brown's denial and Marty's attempts to convince him goes something like this:
Doc says "So tell me, future boy, who is president in 1985?"
When Marty responds "Ronald Reagan" Doc sees this as proof that the whole story about coming from the future is a lie, he goes from annoyed to agitated and exclaims 5 inches away from a heart attack: Ronald Reagan, the actor..? And who is vice president? Mickey Mouse?
He said "And who is vice president? Jerry Lewis?" Actually, it was George H.W. Bush, but he was close enough. 😆
It was as much of a joke in 1980 as it was in 2016.
Same with Selensky in the Ukraine...
With the power the Mickey Mouse Company Controls, he is actually Chief of Staff.
I have always appreciated how uncertain the future is, but my goodness, in 2012 I would never have even begun to anticipate the following decade. I'd have thought you were pulling my leg.
Two minutes in and this thing is riddled with anachronisms.
It didn’t take 20 years for the colonists in Virginia to figure out there wasn’t much gold to be found. Even then, “gold” was only one motivation for settling Virginia in the first place (and wasn’t unfounded considering the Spanish were carting enough gold away from the Americas to cause currency devaluation in the Spanish Empire over the course of a couple of centuries).
The main reason why the English settled North America was because everyone else was settling the continent. The Spanish, Dutch, and French were also attempting to settle the continent, meaning that, if England wanted to remain a relevant power, they would have to jump in as well. So, they did and founded Jamestown after at least one previous attempt to the south on Roanoke Island.
It didn’t take them long to figure out there wasn’t gold in the region they’d settled. That is why, within the span of a decade, they turned towards tobacco cultivation and successfully entrenched themselves in Virginia’s rich, fertile soil.
The reason why it took as long as it did had nothing to do with some false notion of Gold, but because they were constantly being assaulted by the Powhatan Confederacy and nearly starved to death in the winter of 1609-1610. It wasn’t until the Powhatan Confederacy and the English settlers came to a long-term peace agreement that the colonists could begin growing crops - like tobacco - for export back to England.
However, The most important error committed in this entire video is this: you are assuming that the skepticism towards “experts” is not rational and logical from the perspective of Americans.
We are skeptical of authority because authority figures, right from the beginning, had absolutely no idea of the reality of the situation at hand. If we go back to Jamestown, the colonists who first arrived were explicitly ordered not to build a fort so as to not provoke the native population. However, the colonists were _forced_ into making a fort at Jamestown because the natives were hostile towards them from the get-go. They figured out early on that the authority of England could not be trusted whatsoever in the affairs of managing the New World. So, in 1619, once all of the previous crises had been dealt with, Jamestown and the surrounding colonies in Virginia (Henricus and the plantations along the James River) came together and formed a legislature for governing the colony and it’s affairs; the House of Burgesses. This government was the first democratic government in the New World and it came about because they could not rely upon the authority figures to make reliable decisions to best mitigate any crises that would crop up.
This skepticism of central authority has carried on throughout the centuries because, every single time an authority seeks to assert what they think is best, it almost always conflicts with the reality of the situation on the ground.
In truth, the reason for the skepticism of authority and the doubt placed upon “experts” is perfectly rational. After all, what is best for a given region is best determined by the people living in that region. An elite living in Silicon Valley does not have the knowledge of the conditions and environment in Central or Southern Virginia. That person does not know what is best for that region, but the local population - people who have worked the land for generations and have lived there for hundreds of years - do know what is best.
Interesting argument which means you must accept your own corollary: farmers from the midwest do not have the knowledge of the conditions and environment of California or the east coast , and therefore do not know what is best for the local populations ...
@@forge20, but are the Midwest farmers dictating politics for you or are you dictating politics for them?
@@forge20 Farmers should be making the rules for everybody. They are the only ones left who still have any common sense.
Finally, some truth
Truth is not popular... Most want fantasy
Just look at the amount of television the average person watches every night.
Entertain me or else!
And it's not rooted to one aisle of the spectrum. Both parties have their own sci fantasy of why they didn't actually lose Presidential elections. You have to go back to 88 the last time a party lost and accepted defeat respectfully and didn't accuse the other side of cheating or blaming 3rd parties.
Most want to believe fantasy is true
True, fantasy all day, every day. Wherewolves, vampires, zombies, elves, Yawn. Reality is so much more interesting. And compelling.
“The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”-Theodore Roosevelt.
Hear Hear
Bruce Lee said, Don't pray for an easy life but the strength to to endure a difficult one. As well as don't take someone else's success and try to duplicate it. I also remember that if you really love life then you shouldn't waste time because that is what life is made of.
Amen!
@@thatoneguy7603 not just the strength to endure a tough life but the Felicity to make it seem easy
"This tendency of people to post nearly random quotations in comments sections is getting fucking boring." Mahatma Gandhi
"You can't make me put brakes on my car. That infringes on my freedom."...
Brilliant!
What the public allows others in their community to do is the basis for self rule. When we don't like their rules we leave their company; the ultimate form of self rule. Smashing Nancy Pee-Low-See's teeth down her throat also infringes on my freedom, as much as I would like to I am forbidden to do so by the rules I have agreed to live by.
@@brucefrykman8295 you are an idiot
@@amyjbennett Brilliant. Why don't you make it the thesis of your climate change research paper.
I like your profile picture. I know Captain Terror appeared for like 30 seconds in a 50+ year old anime but I feel like he's underappreciated.
@@brucefrykman8295 I'm curious. Why do you hate her so much? I'm really ignorant on American politics these days...and I'm not trolling either, I'd just like to know.
Divorced from reality describes this video perfectly...misinformation is not a uniquely American problem (because of course it isn't). Nor are conspiracy theories a uniquely American phenomenon (it spans history). He mentioned the attitude of southern slave holders, they didn't deny slavery, but they did say blacks were made for slavery (a perfectly nonsensical view seeing how they were doing fine before European involvement and the start of the transatlantic slave trade). Seeing the time you live in as uniquely disastrous happens to every generation.
People typically behave rationally, those who get caught up in misinformation have a reason to believe it...it might not be a good reason, but it also isn't nothing.
My dad has some saying that it’s hardest to get someone to understand a thing when their money comes from not understanding it. That’s what I see as the cause of a lot of stupidity. People choose what makes them money over what benefits human life. Unfortunately that doesn’t account for all harmful beliefs.
The south didn’t deny slavery was bad. What they argued against was what the abolitionists were doing and the northern posturing towards a position of greater centralization of powers into the hands of the Presidency and the Federal Government.
Your assessment is nothing more than a narrative that attempts to place the south in the position of “defending slavery” when, in reality, they didn’t want to “defend” it. The south wanted to deal with the matters that concerned them on their own terms. They did not want the federal government to dictate to them how they ought do things because, though that, they saw tyranny.
@@MatthewChenault the southern confederate states had a more centralized government than the north. The vice president of the confederate states famously said "slavery is the foundation of the confederacy". Pretty weird actions if they just wanted to handle how to dismantle slavery on their own, but of course that isn't what they wanted. This is one of the stupidest arguments I have ever heard. If they didn't deny slavery was bad, then why not end slavery? Why form their own government in order to protect and expand the institution of slavery?
Your average everyday southern didn't veiw slavery as bad because they had convinced themselves that the black man was to immature for freedom (something like that, it was stupid so 🤷). The argument was slavery was a way of bringing enlightment to the black man, but as I said this was stupid. It was a justification not a real belief founded in anything save greed.
@@jdblanch1172, “the southern confederate states had a more centralized government than the north.” *Proceeds to eat rocks.*
@@jdblanch1172, “if they didn’t deny slavery was bad, then why not end slavery? Why form their own government in order to protect and expand the institution of slavery?”
Firstly, you can think something is bad, but also object to outright abolishing it. If we follow that line of logic, because I think alcohol consumption is bad, that means it should be illegal. The entire problem stems from the reasoning behind the action (a form of tyranny) and the consequences of those actions taken.
Just because I think something is bad and make it illegal based on that belief does not mean that the consequences will be positive.
Prohibition, for example, ended up being a terrible idea that resulted in absurd levels of organized criminality. The rapid abolition of slavery resulted in the upending of an established social order without properly establishing a new, functional one in turn. It was abolition and it’s consequences that resulted in the societal problems within the south rather than slavery itself.
Secondly, you automatically presume that the south’s entire goal was only that of the preservation and expansion of slavery, which is demonstrably false. The south seceded from the union because they saw the north as tyrants who sought to _dictate_ politics for the South rather than let the south govern itself. The entire slavery debate is nothing more than a facade to the reality of the situation: the south’s secession, and the war, was one over the sovereignty of the states to determine what was best for them; it was the cause of _self-determinism._
He is spot on. I feel like I'm living in a detached world where it's glaringly obvious that any attempt to bring reality to the table is met with a brick wall where nobody wants to hear anything bar their reality. I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing this. Even some very intelligent people seem incapable of dealing with anything that doesn't confirm their bias. It's absolutely frightening and something I spotted years ago. Ai is not the bogey man it's alternative realities is happening now.
qq
@Howardsend88 Scottish if you please. Loads of folk in scotland with their heads on a different planet. Quite scary actually.
It's the otherwise-intelligent people who mystify me.
@@erinthesystem9608 very worrying that the so called intelligent ones go along with the fantasy. Orwell looking more and more correct. As horse racing folk say when assesing how good they are,believe what your see with your eyes not what others say is true.
@@michaelrafferty2482 Thats the fault of the unregulated internet. Or at least to some big degree its part of the problem.
People always seek likeminded people. Before the internet, they needed to be conform with their family/friends to not be alone.
Nowdays, they need like 10 minute to find people who are as stupid as they themselfs and there starts an echochamber of idiocy.
But here in austria it's the same. The is happening in every western country to some degree. A good old "slap the idiot some common sense in their head" would help too maybe...
This has aged so well.
I agree---I just wish he would have cleaned up his delivery a bit. Great message but fumbling, stumbling delivery of it.
aged like milk lol
Calling 'a giant blue trowel art' seems to fit the bill too.
It will age even better. Come back every year until the american collapse ;)
guy comes off a unhinged socialist who's pissed off that it's really hard to implement nationalised socialism like it has been in the past. He seems to have forgotten the levels of propaganda the American system has engaged with throughout its history.
In the past all the papers would be on the literal same page. If we were going to war with some country, all the papers would demonise them and give reasons as to why its okay to put their citizens into camps. All the businessmen who wouldn't contribute to the coming war effort were seen as the enemy.
The Bipartisan nature of American politics enabled National Socialism when the elites needed to "rally" the troops or mobile a population in to collectivised action. You trusted your "party's paper". So when when there was consistent message between both "party's paper", you assumed it to be total truth.
And it's not just traditional war... also think Anti-Black/Asian/Muslim/Jew/Slavic/German/Italian/etc racism, Pro-leaded gasoline propaganda, McCarthyism, Pro-Consumerism propaganda, Anti-Drugs propaganda, etc, etc
Some people want to be fooled because to admit they were fooled would make them feel like fools. And that's foolishness. A neverending cycle.
I believe Carl Sagan said something like that.
@@dalethelander3781 did he? Interesting. He was a brilliant man. He certainly was a visionary.
Stay well. Stay strong. Stay 😎😎😎.
@@sheilalopez3983 Look up Sagan's "bamboozle" interview.
@@dalethelander3781 okay!
Very nicely put- and a terrific observation
" Nothing concerns me more than the Glorification of ignorance "
Carl Sagan
I think American public schools and education in general seriously need critical thinking and discernment of information classes. I am alarmed at the lack of these skills in American society.
*RE: "I think American public schools and education in general seriously need critical thinking and discernment of information classes. I am alarmed at the lack of these skills in American society."*
Don't confuse my remarks as ever coming close to endorsing any education offered by government - government is run by politicians which are the lowest form of life among the human species; any product they offer must be considered defective.
I hear your sort of comment regarding "critical thinking" skills and I genuinely believe it has never been uttered by someone who actually has any understanding of what is meant by the phrase.
Education is the antithesis of "critical thinking" and no one can be taught how to critically think about anything without violating this fundamental concept.
Here is an example definition that I accept as close to hitting the mark:
*_"The key critical thinking skills are: analysis, interpretation, inference, explanation, self-regulation, open-mindedness, and problem-solving."_*
Notice that all of these processes are internally focused and cannot possibly be taught in any school from the very best to the very worst. Unfortunately, the very primary requirement for gaining critical thinking skills is "problem solving" and was listed last. One who cannot successfully solve problems (problems not involving adherence to "procedure") is incapable of critical thinking. It's like asking a fish to ride a bike.
In the world of mathematics, this would be solving some riddle for which no previous procedure ever existed. Such people often win the "Fields Medal"
As one might accurately surmise, very few people are capable of critical thinking and least likely to be capable of it are successful PhD candidates whose minds have been cluttered with decades of someone else's procedures that you might call learning, I would called it training. Circus seals are trained, thinkers are never trained.
Absolutely. Texas removed Critical thinking courses a few years ago. Who wants people who know how to fact check and use their reasoning skills?
@@dianemitchell1717 *RE: "Absolutely. Texas removed Critical thinking courses a few years ago. Who wants people who know how to fact check and use their reasoning skills?"*
I think you have just proven that you don't have the slightest idea of what is meant by the phrase. Critical thinking cannot be taught, the idea is preposterous, all that can be taught is merely prejudice Neither do they use "fact checkers: Critical thinkers are stand alone "fact checkers" and they don't "check facts" by "googling them."
Max Plank (in summary) held that science advances one funeral at a time.
Apply all of your critical reasoning skills to attempt an explanation of the concept behind this summary.
@@dianemitchell1717 yeah we don't even teach "critical thinking" in UK schools. This would be incredibly controversial in Europe. Thanks to all the awful political experiments run throughout the 20th century, Europeans are hyper sensitive to brainwashing children and biased teaching. Critical thinking can never be taught in an unbiased way unlesd the children are taught by a robot with no view either way
@@dianemitchell1717 we've already gotten rid of the necessity of decent spelling, reading and mental math abilities too sooo
I remember as a child I was always interested in finding out about new things and learning about other people and their cultures. (the best part of growing up in New York). I watched PBS a lot. I have dropped off of Facebook and stopped watching television.I like You Tube because I can pick and chose the content at the same time learning and watching people who are like minded. I've always told my Daughters "you should learn something new everyday".
I can no longer listen to commercial radio or tv. I watch netflix movies that I select and I watch videos and make comments on youtube. I also read several newspapers online just to stay in touch.
One of my best life lessons came from my grandfather, who told me " You'll learn something new everyday, if you pay attention."
It's the last part that's hard for most of us. Learning to listen.
@@JamesRichardWiley same here!
Wow, that felt like I was reading about myself! I was also into learning other languages as well as different cultures. I would always bug my bilingual friends to teach me stuff!
I was just insatiably curious and read a ton of books as well as watched PBS a lot.
I must have driven my family crazy bc every sentence started with “why” or “how”. Lucky for me, they always encouraged that.
I’m jealous that you grew up in New York though! My smallish town in So. Cal. was not terribly diverse and pretty boring. I always wanted to hang out on the front stoop, like on Sesame Street. Glad you encourage your daughters to learn...I really believe that ignorance breeds hatred, and this country needs a lot less of both!
@@ltraina3353 same.
"In this softer age where people aren't going to probably die tomorrow as a result of believing fantasies and untruths, we became freer to believe in." Wow, if only he knew.
ouch.
What do you mean
I never took a vaccine and didn't even get covid the whole time
@@christiantaylor1495 OK, so your N=1 anecdote is an exception to the general pattern. In general, people who didn't get vaccinated were far more likely to get COVID, to get serious cases of it, and to die from it. People in the most pro-Trump counties (and thus anti-vax and anti-mask counties) died of COVID at SIX TIMES the rate of people in the most pro-Biden counties. Masks, social distancing, and vaccines all worked.
@@HealingLifeKwikly the statistics you're saying are a complete lie. It's like trusting Chinese statistics in Muslim in concentration camps. I personally know FIVE PEOPLE who died of the vaccine, but ZERO people who died of covid.
People who support Trump are more old and more White. White People have a higher average age due to lack of breeding. Younger people tend to be more left wing. So Trump supporters dying more of covid is obviously just them dying because they are older 🤡
Me and all my friends are zoomers and didn't take the vaccine and non of us died or even got very ill. My best friend who also likes Trump got covid and after three days all his symptoms were gone and he said it was a joke and that he's had more difficult shits than that virus. Non of us died because we aren't 80 years old 🤡
Died at six times the rate, but the total number of deaths was no different when accounting for age.
When you show the government that you will let them do anything during a crisis, you give them incentive to fabricate crises.
Thank you for your perspective and insight. The ability to articulate facts and evidence in narrative form…
Amazing how COVID has added the "dieing for your beliefs" back into this assessment. And amazing how even when there is a horrible price to pay, people still cling to their unfounded beliefs.
COVID has been completely hyped, and you won’t even ask yourself why. Keep believing everything politicians tell you.
Watch me not die of CoVid just fine, thanks. 🙄
Hey Sylvia.. health professionals, and scientists world wide..👍
Keep politicising it though.. please🤤. This vlog was made just for you.
@@briankenyon1543 - Do you mean the politicized career bureaucrats, or the others who better shut up if they want to keep their job?
Yes, please give me the fake vaccine (they changed the definition of vaccine for it to be considered a vaccine) that the FDA doesn't want to release data on for 55 years.
If you genuinely think these things aren't dangerous it's because you're either ill informed or you're an idiot.
The amount of dislike is scary. People are really disconnected from reality!
How do you know that they don't agree with him, but rather dislike the way he says it? Quit reading into it.
If I had to venture a guess, those are mostly Christian dislikes. Don’t challenge their version of “reality!”
@@BTsMusicChannel no it's most likely the folks that insist America must have this squeaky clean noble history that you can worship. Watched people go nuts over being shown the real physical size of the US vs the continent of Africa to show how much flat maps fool us.
@@storm14k What is the 'it' that you are talking about?
@@BTsMusicChannel the reason behind the dislikes addressed by the OP.
During my whole life, I don't believe America has bothered to find out what the reality is that underpins the reality of all other countries, regions or cultures, they just don't care. This indifference, smugness and ignorance about the world, is not a problem limited to the right or left of politics in America but a nationwide problem of hubris and arrogance as well as emotional immaturity and lack of reasoned logic applied to most common intellectual challenges. The world is so tired of this teenage mentality and wonder when America will grow out of its adolescence, because if they don't, their lack of general education and understanding of things such as differences in social structure and cultural morays in other countries etc will result in the world continuing to mercilessly bullied.
Remember we are a diverse and interesting people. Not a stereotype. If the American people had one man one vote democracy consent would have ruled, and if we had a sharing economy we probably would have had the time and wealth to educate ourselves conversationally, instead of indoctrination confined in classrooms. Knowledge about the world is great, but wisdom from conversations is more important. Young in school, girls had the wisdom. Male brats had none. Curiosity is where happiness came from good surprises. Kids had more and that's why they are happy. Egotistic authoritarian assholes (brats screwed it up.) Countless egotistic authoritarian assholes are clustered in the Republican party. (Bosses and businessmen) Businessmen have the wealth and time to go into legislatures where they make their greedy decisions. It is the same with royalty.
Big Red - You are TRULY clueless! The USA has it's finger on the pulse of every country in the world - which is why we're the most powerful nation on the planet. BTW, while most of the world continues to increase CO2 emissions, America reduced emissions by more than the rest of the world combined. If that's being "adolescent" we'll take that over the irresponsible behavior of the rest of the world.
I think what you have to understand is that there’s always been a huge element of ‘patriotism’ being taught in schools. In the 40’s and 50’s it was because of WWII, in the 60’s came the space race, in the 70’s and 80’s we had the Cold War and arms race. After the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia things calmed down a bit, but then we had 9/11.
As a well educated person (I’m 40 and grew up in the 80’s) it really took the internet to open my eyes to the propaganda I was fed my entire educational existence. When i think about being taught about how Russia and North Korea used propaganda to control their population i remember thinking ‘why didn’t people realize they were being lied to? I’m smart, I’d definitely know!’ We’ll, it’s not so easy, especially when critical thinking is very much discouraged in US classrooms....
@@amijohnson8987 I don't know where you got your education, but we were NEVER taught "patriotism" in school. It doesn't take a genius to recognize America is a pretty great place to live. We have it better than any other country when it comes to personal liberties, opportunity and quality of life. If you disagree, you've probably never traveled abroad.
C Y? On the contrary I travel abroad frequently, and it’s this more than anything that opened my eyes to America’s potential, but we’re wasting SO much money on needless wars and congressional infighting that the needle never moves.
Btw, I never said America wasn’t great,but it’s certainly it ‘the shining city on the hill’ envied the world over either. Our education system is pretty shameful, it’s a disgrace we have children living in poverty and homelessness, and right now there’s actually debate about what truth is, actual facts are now being questioned by seemingly normal people, like the Earth being flat. So America can still be great, and certainly have incredible potential, but it’s not perfect and there are many places deemed happier than the US, which mostly stems from financial security.
I love how the American dream is basically a scam so people think it’s their own fault they’re poor when in reality, most of the times it’s the system’s fault. This brings gaslighting to a whole new level.
@ripurring alr let’s see you try to buy a house while making minimum wage and you can’t switch jobs because you couldn’t afford a college education while your landlord raises the rent on your apartment and you can’t move out because everything else is too expensive..we’ll see how that experiences enlightens you because you sound like the type of people the lower class hates with a passion
@ripurring my mother had a valuable job making responsible financial decisions and lived in a small studio apartment that could bearly fit both of us for 11 years and we still couldn’t move because a majority of our money went to rent, food, basic electricity, transportation and more and some months we had to rely on my father to pay some of the bills or else we would get evicted or lose an essential service so please go and find someone else to tell off about “not understanding the poor”
@ripurring also funny you say that since my family is dark skinned and we never got benefits, only unemployment during the pandemic for a year.
Long ago, the way people were disabused of their false beliefs, mistaken notions or downright stupidity was either being killed by an enemy, a big animal, or an accident. These days, people are fairly safe from these things, and the internet kindly brings scattered groups of the like-minded into a kind of community, so it kind of reinforces the notion that "Hey, I believe X and all my friends believe X and nothing bad is happening to us... so X must be TRUE!" If this continues, I fear that the old way of correcting stupidity may make a comeback to remind us that bad things happen when you are willfully stupid!
As a middle school student I did have my emotional problems, however I had an undying curiosity to better understand reality. I had a better time talking personally to adults in their 40s and 50s instead of kids within my age group. Kids within my age group were boring to me because they only seemed interested in taking up and repeating tropes from pop culture assuming that it makes them impressive or worthy of fitting into social circles. To me, this was just ridiculous. I’m almost 30 years old and I’m noticing that there are adults in their 40s and 50s who actually look like they’re rolling backwards to the stage of being only 13 and 14 years old. Having no sense of looking for credibility in any claim, brushing away any credible knowledge as part of the elite, claiming that they are victims of whatever “the establishment” is. Some of them gravitate toward a cult like mentality, in other words a sort of clique where they can feel special and validated. They can fit into a group where they can share the same belief with everyone else there and never have to worry about being challenged. Perhaps the largest indicator of immaturity is the idea that voting for specific president or leader or whoever will fix our problems quickly. This is the how children try to get help, by asking for help from a parental figure or a teacher because they don’t fully understand their surrounding reality. They rely on adults who have knowledge and authority. If we’re all adults here then why even bother to try relying on some sort of parental figure representing tens of thousands of people across a very large and diverse country? In order to really grow up, we need to find it in ourselves to break down our own emotional attachment to beliefs, our origin of bias and learn to analyze information, rather than remain uncertain about everything and rely on some sort of group or leader to coddle and perpetuate whatever we’re comfortable with believing.
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”-T. S. Eliot
Interesting, Danielle. Very interesting. I can remember from when I was around 10-12 talking with a neighbouring lady. She talked with me as an adult, about all sorts of things. I don't remember about what, but I do remember being talked with as an (almost) equal.
Oddly enough, I remember riding a bus here in Toronto several years ago. A middle-aged lady had 2 or 3 little kids (maybe aged 3-5) with her. As the kids looking out the windows noticed all sorts of things passing by and commented, she validated their observations and questions, and added a bit more info about each. Those kids are getting a wonderful head start in life.
o/' I believe the children are our future... o/'
QUESTION EVERYTHING EXCEPT YOUR OWN INTUITION.
That’s a Very insightful comment. Personally, I consider myself politically homeless, so I can watch the left vs right drama unfold, and see a shocking number of otherwise intelligent and sane people, so eager to divorce themselves from critical thought and have a political brand image at the core of their identity. Apparently it’s been like this since the 1800s, probably even before that, but I haven’t read that far back yet.✌️
2017, This Guy: Get back in touch with reality America!
2020, America: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am Ulster Scot. That culture created the English speaking South and later, after the CW, the SW and Rocky Mountain state cultural areas. Crazy ideas and pathological resistance and fatalism is what drives it into being crazy. The GOP incorporated it decades ago and look what happened. It is a cultural area primed for Fascism. It always feels humiliated by the broader world and under siege. Why? The ancestors from Northern Britain felt the same way for a thousand years.
When England was sending it's people, they didn't send their best people, folks.
Viren vs "and some of them, I'm assuming, are good people ."
That’s what they said about Australia, and I’m thinking England didn’t know what they had...
th-cam.com/video/RK1zmWGTHoc/w-d-xo.html
Any Hitchhikers around?
Seems rather familiar.
Remember when Castro emptied his prisons and sent them all to the US? The Cuban crime wave? I always thought that was a brilliant move on his part. The same happened in America´s birth. England sent the worst of the worst, because they knew the chances of survival of those initial expeditions were very low. So they sent the religious zealots, the fanatics, the poor and destitute, the winos and the bums off the street. In essence, the dumbest of the dumb, the rif raf, low quality stock. And the consequences are showing. If you start a nation with a bad gene pool, the end result will always be a sore sight to behold.
The american success can be atributed to the use of cheap/slave labour. The economic success atracted more uneducated manual labour work horses that worked for peanuts. A boom taken advantage of by a select few inteligent characters, that built their empires on the back of these human beasts of burden. And by the 19th century, the money earned was used to outright purchase the brain power they lacked. They used, and continue to use their economical power to drain other countries of their brain power, and relocate them to the US.
But now that trend is reversing. These "brainiacs" are returning home, leaving the US in a pretty pickle. The home grown brains are few and far between, the US education system is not conducive to a healthy supply of inteligent graduates. So the industry is starting to crack. We now see the hubs of reserch and development have relocated to places like China, India, and Japan.
Placing even more hurdles in the path of immigrants is hurting the american industry even more. Some more enlightened american analists have already began to notice the problem. Just like the empires of old, the american empire is on the decline, and is resorting to its military forces more and more, to tilt the scale back in its favour. But eventually the empire will self destruct. The foundations are rotten, sinking in the sand. And electing imbeciles like Trump to run it is speeding its demise. It´s only a matter of time until we begin to see americans emigrating out en masse! We see quite a few choosing to go abroad already.
Darth Mucus
The Pilgrim Fathers left Boston, Lincolnshire, to go to Holland because they wanted to live in a country with a Calvinist state church. Some of these people then left Holland because it wasn't hardline enough for them, stopped off at Plymouth to pick up some Brethren, then sailed off to the New World. That's how British North America got started.
I've always thought that the Vietnam War and the associated post-WW2 "fall from glory" sent American society into a collective depressive episode from which it had yet to fully emerge by 9/11. That became the final nail in the nation's quest for sanity.
I've had similar thoughts about the Vietnam War. Both sides of the political spectrum destroyed American's faith in the government and faith in expertise with lies and a clear disinterest in the welfare of the citizenry.
This has been exacerbated by the economic changes since then. The obsession with GDP and the "efficiency" of the market system, especially as that relates to foreign exchange has impoverished the bulk of the American working class while enriching a diminishing number of the very richest Americans. How complex is it? A company fires it's workers and moves jobs overseas; prices stay the same, labor costs drop by large factors, company managers take credit and give themselves big bonuses. Companies use profits generated by American workers, buy electronic goodies to replace workers. Managers give themselves big bonuses. We have created entire cohorts of Americans who have no place in the economy. Democrats want to solve the problem with welfare checks. Republicans want to solve the problem with tax cuts focused on the very richest.
The rest of the dilemma I have to blame on Republicans. During the Johnson years civil rights legislation was passed. Johnson said "We've lost the south for a generation". Worse, the Republicans, starting with Nixon, gathered up the racist south with dog whistle racism and have held unto racists nationwide for over 50 years. Meanwhile they have realized that there is short term gain to be had by discrediting science. So environmental, safety, medical and any other science that interferes with short term profitability is denounced until half of the country doesn't believe any expert on any subject. Of course demagogues need enemies and Republican expertise in this arena is historical. It's no coincidence that Joe McCarthy's mentor, attorney, was Trump's mentor. Adding to the established White-against-Black racism Republicans now have added Latino women and children, all of Islam (except those with oil) and George Soros. Trump was the beneficiary of this madness. Almost all the rest of the country are the losers.
Yes. Vietnam began the decline.
@@jjhpor you were good up until the third paragraph and then you just spun completely off what is true
I read commentary that called post WW2 years as "post war euphoria" and I grew up in the '50s having swallowed a lot of the feelings. It began to wear off rapidly when the contrasts of Vietnam emerged and our soldiers came home to some ugly demonstrations against them. We've been living a poison within ourselves and letting it be taken out of our systems is painful, no way around it or short cuts.
@@pparker768 It's important to remember that Democrat "quiz kids" ('intellectuals') dreamed this this complete disaster. They were as always completely ignorant of how the world works, having living most of their lives in an artificial bubble unwillingly supported by taxpayers.
Nothing ever really changes in government.
Started with the weakening of the educational system.
@@grantjohnson5785
You conservative little peanut heads are so easily TRIGGERED.
That guy Sinjin just climbed halfway up your ass and took a dump.
Keep those keyboard warrior threats coming in!
(he actually thinks that scares people)
DRY YOUR TEARS SNOWFLAKE !!!!!!!!!!
Giving leftists control of education has had devastating results
@@grantjohnson5785 correct the country?
@@paloma5704 If recent events (such as BLM being a front for Marxists to seize control through rioting, the quick kowtowing of most states to fear and panic over Covid) are any indication, YES, correct the country. It's currently on a self-destructive course.
Technically, it started with the removal of the fairness doctrine.
It's not only America. Actually, the whole world is detaching itself from reality.
No... only "western" capitalist society ... please go somewhere and see for yourself.. .
Gaius Julius Caesar said a couple of thing that I believe are pertinent here: "What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also" and "men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true." All of this is nothing new. In fact it just goes to show that people as a whole haven't really changed in over 2000 years.
Cesar Garcia - Well done Cesar. You get it 👍🏻
There is a video which was written and video taped from a former member of the Westboro Baptist church in Fla. in which he said,"We look at others hoping to only see ourselves." What a most true statement.
People have changed very little in a hundred thousand years. The toys that have been invented are different, but our minds and bodies are essentially the same.
Tribalism, xenophobia, greedy conquest to ensure the prosperity of you and yours at the expense of others - these are VERY old habits and hard to break.
Caesar reportedly chided his doom-saying prophet with: Well' the Ides of March are here and I'm still very much alive" as he headed off to the Senate.
To which his prophet replied: "Yes Caesar, the Ides of March have come, but they are not yet gone"
So when socialists wish government rules us all, they need to believe in some fairy tale like "the climate crisis" (hysterical laughter)
"I don't trust the government, the leaders or the elite, but I'll overthrow democracy because I believe in a government run by an elite ruler who sends out decrees sitting on a golden toilet." Makes perfect sense.
@Eternity's End Yes. like how Putin has turned Russia from a communist hell to a capitalist paradise. LOL
@Eternity's End no, more a passive observer
I don't get it.
War is Peace, Slavery is Freedom, Everything is On Sale
@@jocktulloch3499 Russia isn’t even capitalist, though, it’s a democratic socialist federation. Not great, but a step in the right direction from what the soviet union was
When Saint Reagan did away with the fairness in media doctrine that was the beginning of the end for this country.
🤔
Agree. Reagan did more harm to the USA, just as Maghie Thatcher did to the UK.
"We were started by the puritans in New England" - the native Americans would like a word
He basically predicated the Covid-19 fiasco in the US...
And Q-Anon... And the Capitol Insurrection...
We're you trying to say "predicted"? To predicate is to merely make a statement.
@@zshadows How it's an insurrection if they believed the election was stolen?
I used to agree with his points until COVID.
COVID proved that people will hold onto their fantasies even when it has a real chance of killing them.
Even when it is *literally* killing them on their deathbeds 😭
COVID was a very sobering event, it killed any false hope I had.
@@nataliesteiner COVID was the slowest, easiest, baby-mode difficulty virus Nature could've thrown at us and we completely failed that challenge.
I now dread to think what will happen when Nature decides it's time to actually throw something serious our way. An outcome similar to something you see in The Division or Contagion now seems optimistic at best.
@@ParagonFury I just hope monkeypox doesn't get to that point or other shit like polio. We came so freaking far only to have anti-vaxxers throw us back in the well. Like whole families have been wiped out. Our morgues are bursting at the seams and people still think it's fake.
@@ParagonFury Yes because now our great great great grandchildren are gonna pay the price of our idiotic tyrannical restrictions for generations and that's somehow a good thing. Imagine thinking that fear of catching a cold is more rational than fear of literally handing over your right to fresh air to the government while it wants to restrict it and completely shut down your economy.
I am a gen z, and modern-day America, and honestly its real historia is just terrifying. I am glad that my "mythical" route lead me to explain magic (like in books, games, plays, movies, etc.) through science and thinking science is magic while loving nature.
Just...the amount of people who are separated from reality and just empathy towards other people astounds me. It is one thing to struggle and not have time or resources to gather factual knowledge and realistic views or to be ignorant--but there are SO many people that are willfully ignorant, which is what I could call stupid. The ones who are nationalistic and bordering on fascism.
People who are nationalistic are stupid really the one thing never asked is the fact presented is true or not
How did “nature” come into existence?
Good luck...
So disagreement with your perceptions are stupid and those who adopt your views are intelligent?
@Andy Echeandia Sky daddy made it in Santa’s work shop?🎅🏽
I'm not American but I can tell you that your description fits perfectly with European Western countries too. The key: the last 20 years. Before these 20 years maybe things were different but since these 20 last years is just everywhere this not-dealing-in-reality.
There is nothing real about reality TV.
Magnus Kvalvik,
That is an awful lot of speculation to read into a simple declarative statement. But to set you straight, the answer is "no" I have known since the genre began.
I work in film and TV so I have seen first hand how the producers set-up and manipulate the narratives.
Even on Trump's major claim to fame, The Apprentice, it was the producers that decided who to boot each week and Trump found out who that was to be minutes before they taped the elimination scenes.
Then there is wrestling, which was doing 'reality entertainment' long before the term caught on in the modern vernacular.
You call one sentence "an awful lot of speculation"? Look at your own reply.
Le Green Boat,
Perhaps 'assumptions' would have been a more appropriate term since he obviously didn't put much thought into his post.
As for my post, please be so kind as to educate all of us on where I speculated or made assumptions.
@Chrisose - it's really fucking up reality when it gets orange nutjobs the presidency. Also it's really ruined the history channel.
burtosis,
So true. Between the "reality" shows and the "I'm not saying, I'm just asking a question" religious crap about 80% of the Discovery network content is unwatchable. I do have a guilty pleasure in History Channel's "Forged In Fire" though. You can see some influence of the producers manipulating the narrative but it is still primarily about making the blades.
Fantasy Industrial Complex, so well put.
It is called Television.
I call it the financial business complex. I think that is closer to the reality of chaos.
Academicism is a cult like Catholicism and atheism and Mormonism.
@@johnhanks4260 WTF are you even referring too when you say "academicism"?
And since when is atheism a "cult"? What are you smoking?
Such a good way to describe it
America has never been invaded, hence the concept of pain and suffering from war is unknown. The US is so detached from war torn Europe of WWII or Vietnam.
War of 1812
Good point.
@Ann Linley America's cities were never bombed down or had people murdered in the most inhumane way possible. They've never suffered from poisonous gas or unexploded bombs.
You must be an idiot! America was heavily involved in both WWII and Vietnam. We paid a great price for wars we didn't even need to be a part of - but we came to the rescue of allies at our own expense. Practically every country in the world still owes America for war debts.
@@r.t.7626 Yeah, but that OP probably talking about millions of deaths like in WW2, not 3,00 in WTC. Or Europe in general, or old civilizations like India. Kings have always been fighting for thousands of years.
This is more relevant now, then it was four years ago.
facts are becoming harder to distinguish from lies. It’s almost impossible to even find facts when they’re shrouded by all these layers of media you need to dig through first.
We need to drop any biases we have and search objectively for truth, or else critical thinking dies.
@@superresistant0 ?
@@superresistant0 this is completely unrelated to what I had to say in my original comment.
It's absolutely related. Up until approximately 10 years ago everyone knew men can't become women. Now it's anathema to say that
@@jimmydean123123 now more and more people are recognizing that gender identity is more complex than just genes alone. Even if gender was just confined to the objective reproductive structures of a person, the binary is just plain inadequate to describe intersex people. People are learning that the existing model is inadequate and we are leaving it behind. You don’t have to follow, but you should at least be able to see why people are looking for other models.
@@KnufWons you liberals would write a thesis out of a simple stone just to excuse whatever shitty image you have from yourselves.
As the pandemic continues, this video really resonates more so now than when it was posted in 2017.
True. Many people got the heart attack vax and have suffered.
@@RilfDanielson And billions got that same vax and are just fine.
@@Muzakman37 Nicely said.
@@Muzakman37 but they sure aren't protected from Covid lol
@@RilfDanielson says a guy with no medical training
I think Individualism is also to be blamed here, it is a great idea, except when we imprison ourselves by just being in ourselves all the time. Community is important and we need to create some distance between our thoughts and ourselves. Not every thought that pops up in our mind is worthy of being carved in stone. But we do tend to over emphasize useless thoughts and emotions.
I would say collectivism is at fault. For example, an individualist will see idiots on reality TV and change the channel. A collectivist will be duped into thinking that it's worth watching by other collectivists who have already been duped. Prove me wrong.
@@grantjohnson5785
The audience of reality TV and other brain damaging media is made up of millions of individualists.
A collective that cared about the health of all over the pleasure of a single individual would not let such poison flourish.
@@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself If the people who watch the trash that "everybody else watches" are individualists... they're pretty darn bad at it.
In my reading of history we have little to fear from individuals engrossed in their own self-promotion. When armies of the like-minded collectively march to a singular vision of Utopia, then run for your very life.
@@amandaatchley5257 You are lost.
"In this age, where most people probably won't die tomorrow because of fantasies . . . " Over a quarter-million COVID deaths later.
250,000 dead, most avoidable... And about 1/3rd of the population still voted for him -_-
@@travcollier
More like 1/4, but still WAY too high a proportion.
However, I think that these deaths were not because of fantasies. It was mostly because of the lack of fantasy instead.
99% survival rate. Ruined economy due to lockdowns.
Currently well over 500 000 dead, in the USA alone. Naaah, must be a hoax, right?
As detestable as a lot of things he says are to me, I have to applaud and thank this channel for truly presenting a full spectrum of viewpoints.
As willing as Kurt Anderson here is to point his finger at "the right, and the entire republican party," I have to wonder why he's only telling one side of the story. I think he's onto a good start when he's talking about the Fantasy Industrial Complex, and it certainly does manifest centrally in America, but I think that insisting that these problems are largely American and specifically right wing/Republican is negligent at best. These are Human Problems, and ignoring how either side might be committing these sins against reality itself only exacerbates the problem.
I agree. When he stated the only reason Trump won was because he was a star made me realize this is a little biased.
And so demonstrates the magical thinking. "The other side is just as wrong as mine, so pointing out errors on my side only shows your bias." Bullshit. That's just typical right-wing whataboutism. The left doesn't deny reality to the extent that the right does, which was exactly his point when he says it's not necessarily limited to the right, but does there does in fact seem to be a tremendous amount of stupid nonsense coming from that direction.
@@forge20 You just proved my point. One could swap out "left" and "right" in your statement there and end up with essentially a word-for-word quote from any of the pundits on either side. We're all accusing each other of the same exact sins, and then responding with more accusations of projecting, lying, gaslighting, etc. We all need to change our attitudes and our approach, or there's no saving us.
@@BULLTRONHERO Were you able to find the survey he references near the end of the video? It's around 8:52
Aha I wish I could go back in time and tell this guy: "LOL, dude wait for 2020!"
Right? I'd like to hear from him this week🤣
lol. likewise
exactly
To me this feels like Obama's third term not Bidens first. Just how I feel about it.
2020 is just beginning. Mark My Words^^
We are mostly irrational beings.
Trump believes he's 'like a smart person' and 'a stable genius'. (Which, btw, I take to mean he's a horse's ass, because, you know, he said 'stable').
Canada burning down the white house would be hilarious if the guy wasn't in control of hundreds of nuclear weapons. I was wondering maybe that I was an idiot for not knowing that Canada burnt the white house down but then I realized it was Trump saying it. -All he does is talk out of his ass, he even contradicts himself in the same sentence. The other day he said he read the letter from Kim Jong Un saying it said great things and a few minutes later he said he hadn't read it yet. The truly disgusting thing is that so many idiots out there follow him blindly with everything he says and take his word over anything, it's almost like a cult.
are you?
Yes US americans are irrational
When the comment section of a video completely reinforces the point made in the video...
This
Hunter, it's really sad that I actually can't tell if you're a troll or being serious. Whichever it is, you've reinforced Hsoj's point beautifully.
Double digit IQ's are fun sometimes.
Them ChemTrails are bending our psychic minds and we all know NASA and the Illuminati is behind it.
It is happening in every rational video
"Most people aren't gonna die tomorrow because of fantasies and untruths..." Man, wasn't pre-covid a simpler time?
Yeah thatd make sense except most people didn't die so...
The solution is to be patient with one another and encourage learning. To many good minds are shamed away from science and critical thinking. Please don't attack others for thinking differently. That is sadly the first step in the long process of restoring trust in common sense and genuine discernment. Carl Sagan had a lot of wonderful insight to foster education for humanity.
Todays Christian= Money, Power and pray to God for more Money, Power..
Really, was Christ a rich man? I don't understand the reasoning with Christians thinking God gives people money.
To buy more porn
*bad Christians
Guy: "Most people arent going to die tomorrow from believing untruths."
COVID-19: Hold my beer.
and, on a smaller scale, it is unusual for 5 people to die because the outgoing president lies about the outcome of the election, and a mob believes him :-(
It's unfortunate that it's not more effective in removing the cult of ignorance, and that collateral damage is high.
@Mendoza Juan speaking of untruths, 2020 death toll overall in the US was at least 12% higher than in 2019. And if we look beyond statistical averages as a way to pretend that we somehow AREN'T in a pandemic (see: lying with statistics), most COVID-19 deaths are preventable if hospitals have the adequate capacity, which most did not in 2020. The death tolls weren't because of people's personal choices (well, some were) so much as a lack of preparedness, which was because of bad planning and policy. The big lie here was that we have such a good healthcare system that no more investment was required. We now know these were deliberate policy choices made by people who were fine risking everyone else's lives to save some money on the budget.
@@FourtyParsecs finally a truthful comment !
It depends. We could conduct a cruel social experiment where believing an untruth and lacking critical thinking skills results in certain death. We could create something worse than Covid that kills way more idiots.
Religion is the bridge from logical thinking to the ridiculous and dangerous.
Funny thing about reality TV. I built scenery for the first one on MTV. The scenery I built was to hide all the cameras. It wasn't scripted per se, but every show was entirely contrived. That's why the acting was /is so shitty on these programs, they're basically doing improv, badly.
I used to watch rush limbaugh , but as i actually thought about the things he said i realised he deleted facts & spun things to fit his narrative
I was watching Alex Jones when he was new and exposed Bohemian Grove, but then he went insane and became disgusting.
@CNSR4500 its fear tactics to gain power, basically he took a page from religion's play books
*RE:"I 'use' to watch Rush Limbaugh"*
What did you _use_ to 'watch him' with on your radio?
@@brucefrykman8295 hey moron you do know he did have a radio program too, but nice try snowflake ❄
He could be very convincing but when he began to harp on things in what to me was heartlessness, I quickly tuned him out. He was all about propaganda.
He may not be a good speaker, but the thing to pay attention to is the historical background and overall message of describing why America developed it's problems.
Daniel Winfrey you can say that again. Halfway through this rambling and I'm still not sure what he's talking about. Hasn't talked about any of the points in the title. He should have written something down and rehearsed to prepare for this video.
6 years later. What a lesson to see.
We need to figure out a way to get these reality deniers out of power and out of our way as we seek to address real problems. Delusion is a serious threat to our health and well being and even our continued existence.
The problem is, the stupid people love being told they're victims...
Remove the republican party then.
To get reality deniers out of power we need to get rid of reality deniers altogether.
Good luck with that! You will never defeat evil!
@@joeking433 Only the people at the top are Evil. The followers are just complete morons playing the hate game.
Wow, and to think that it's gotten so much worse since this was made. Who would have thought in 2017 that we would start questioning basic medical knowledge and would ignore an immediate global pandemic. So, even the claim here that we won't get better until we suffer the consequences turned out to be too optimistic.
The people questioning basic medical knowledge are the ones who pushed the narrative of a dangerous pandemic. The average age of people killed by covid is literally just the same as the average life expectancy 🤦🏻
Well, Andersen did say that suffering the consequences will change some minds, but not all. That's been borne out.
Thing is, the media pointed fingers at everyone except themselves, same with politicians.
The reality is that the media, politicians, government, and many corporations 100% created the environment for people to distrust and fall down rabbit holes.
They commit mass atrocities, wreck the environment, alter truth for profit, and push propaganda to cover their hides. Then they turn around and go "oh look at these dumb people, it's their fault".
These are criminals, without a doubt, who will be entirely safe from the wreckage they cause, and the majority of the population will suffer while believing that their neighbors are the enemy, or that 1 politician is the issue.
Donald Trump merely overtly took advantage of the abusive system that many others created and have been abusing for decades. Even the public distaste for him made people astronomical amounts of money, while distracting people from real issues.
And who have thought we would have been lied to about that pandemic at multiple turns 🤷
9:29 - "Political parties had their own newspapers, their own magazines." They do once again. And we're headed down the same road again. Those who are unaware of the past are condemned to repeat it.
That's a flawed argument. I am among those who are aware of the past, but I'm doomed to repeat it anyway! When the majority are unaware the aware suffer the same consequences.
@@karenryder6317 Yeah, it's bound to be an unpopular sentiment, but I've always kind of doubted that individual awareness of history can do much of anything to affect contemporary sociopolitics.
@@karenryder6317 it usually is directed to anyone in power or control like, the Captain who didn’t know the past is doomed to repeat it or something like that
This aired over 3½ years ago.
I'd like to see an updated version.
and it would be really easy to produce. Simply 20 minutes of repeating 'told you so!'
@@Skaldewolf just blindly follow some clearly bias publicist with no PhD on the matters he speaks of... you really know what's going on in the world bud lol
PhD? Trumpers don't believe people with real credentials!?
@@briankenyon1543 I'm not a "trumper"... you wanna actually talk we can talk, but yeah this man has no PhD on the matters he is educating all of you on ..
@@jesusiii6732 sure! We can talk. Do granted this prize winning author is no PhD.. But I wasn't so much commenting on his credentials, rather your obvious dispute of the thread material!? Given your aversion to the claims made.. I made the assumption that you must find yourself on the extreme right of the subject, hence the "Trumper" assertion. Apologies if that's off the mark.
It is However always hard to swallow.. the active denial of how this country has become so mired in the absurd... But! I am starting to understand just how successful the propaganda machine has been here.
Having come from an actual free country. Meaning SQUARLY, free from fear.. first and foremost. And second and equally as important, free from rampant Christan/chest pumping blind patriotism.. ie, we are our own harshest critics. (Not needing to be "CORRECT" at every turn.
Now good sir. You may defend your great and heroic nation... If you dear?
“Fantasy industrial complex.” Congratulations, I just bought your book.
Very interesting; thank you for sharing. As a Canadian, I've always watched our closest neighbour with both great fascination and puzzlement over how such (relatively) strange systems of operation continue to function. This helped to clear up some of that confusion, so thank you. :-)
Agreed, fellow Canadian 🇨🇦
I'm coming! I don't mind the cold hell as long as there are heaters and coats.
Your government froze the bank accounts of peaceful protestors and your PM said on live tv that you don’t have a right to defend yourself. And most Canadians applauded. Trust me, we are the puzzled ones.
Sadly, there is a segment of Canada that is up close and personal with the American crazies! I fear for my country!
@@brettbarager9101 Exactly. We should never be complacent that it can't happen here. In fact, it already is here and seems to be growing.
Oh, my dearest past Kurt Andersen. If only you could see what its like now. Such a simple time you speak from.
I was waiting for someone to put this into words. Finally.
It’s almost like the ability to critically think has been stolen away from anyone on the right
It's exactly that sort of astoundingly biased an ignorant thinking that is the problem. The inability to think critically exists in absolute abundance in both the left AND the right. Both sides have logically incoherent, insane ideas. No doubt people like you buy into all the "left" ones and fail to critically analyse your basket of views individually, allowing your tribal mind to block out dissenting thoughts. This happens on BOTH sides.
The spoof film "Idiocracy" turns prophetic!
This is one sad reality that happens to also be fact...
Only liberals and Democrats manifest Idiocracy! It's like they're trying to make it happen! The rest of Americans hate them for being so utterly stupid.
@@cy8685 My friend, you are already a part of the Idiocracy! Conservatives who overwhelmingly believe the magic man in the sky should dictate our policies for starters. Those that believe being gay is like a hobby or some magic sin that sky daddy will punish you for. Anyone who unironically watches Alex Jones. People who don't understand the difference between Weather and Climate. Lower to middle class individuals who believe in trickle down economics. People who think ayn rand was a genius. Civil War Revisionists. Those who spout states right except when its something they don't like. All of this and more is yours to be had.
@@Go4Noctis 😂😂😂 Thank you for making it abundantly clear that *YOU* are part of the Idiocracy! NOTHING in your comment is accurate! You obviously received a liberal "education" (indoctrination) and have an extremely warped perspective of reality. I'll bet you even support AOC idiocy! Stick with your video games and leave "grow-up" discussions to the adults. 😂😂😂
@@cy8685 I actually grew up and was educated in a highly conservative and wealthy area. We were not wealthy (in fact we were on government assistance while my mother went back to school) but we had the house from a few generation back. This allowed me to get some of the best education in the country. The high school I went to was #5 in the state and 596th in the country out of over 35,000. I do play video games as do many people lovely of you to try and make a hobby into some sign of lack of mental acuity. I'm also 31 BTW who knows if you are just denigrating me to a child because you feel some sort of superiority or you just think I have baby face which I have gotten before. Everything I said is 100% accurate. Could you explain how anything I said was inaccurate. Does the conservative philosophy not have quite a few members like this. The Mormon church and evangelicals are conservative. Anti gay sentiment while not exclusive to political conservatives it is to rooted in social conservatives.
What part of what I have said is inaccurate and why?
Also I'd try to make claims about you but the only one I can make is that you are not confident enough in your claims to have any connection to them. I'm guessing the main purpose for your account is to "rek the libtards" while being able to completely divorce yourself from it.
@@Go4Noctis 😂😂😂 "rek the libards", huh? I NEVER used the term "libtards". You just keep striking out with your identity politics, don't you? I never assumed you were a kid, but I *do* know that playing video games is a great way to divorce yourself from reality, which you do so well. Keep up the "good" work.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. “ - Mark Twain
Holy shit!!! This guy nailed America! He is so spot on that it's scary.
Here in 2020 the problem has only gotten worse.
When people protect themselves with fantasies, the moment the get in real trouble they hold on to their fantasies even tighter.
As a young boy, some 50 years ago, I looked up to that great nation on the other side of that big pond. Now I feel just pity.
We’re in trouble, yes we are.
I never had the impression from anyone who came of age in the sixties that they believed they were entitled to their "own truth."
And this is how my friends, the American dream has turned into a nightmare.
The "American Dream" was doomed from the beginning. It was built on theft, occupation, genocide, slavery, and exploitation.
Delusion and denial is the grease that made the machine work.
@@theobserver9131 Those are things that could have been fixed. Bad things happened, but it was never necessary to continue the mistakes.
Some medicine tastes bad, but it could have been taken in time. People fought very hard to make that happen, and other people worked even harder to prevent it. Choices were made, and in the end, people decided that the American Dream was actually pretty low in their list of priorities.
@@ribbitgoesthedoglastnamehe4681 I agree with you. I’m still an optimist in that if the people got their shit together we could reverse most of our issues… I mean we’ve done it before. I am also, however, at a loss as to how I can expect for that condition to actually happen
Bingo!
He had me completely, until he started talking about politics still using a rigid scientific infrastructure when discussing the very nuanced realm of politics and society. He stresses so much that your private beliefs should remain private and divorced from a public platform, but then turn around and quite vocally states his own beliefs, which seems awfully hypocritical. Although I don’t think this was malicious or intentional because he genuinely seems to believe his stances, but it just proves that his theory that private and public opinions can be completely separated is quite faulty. Human interpretations of reality are really so fundamental to their interactions that it is impossible to truly shed those biases in particular circumstances.
His primary problem is that he sniffs his own farts and is, himself, a so-called "elite" leftwing twat who thinks he's got it all figured out and can tell everyone else exactly how they should live and what they should be "allowed" to think and say. Little better than the self righteous hardcore bible-thumpers who have it "all figured out".
He talks about how Trump isn't a proper "good" entrepreneur, but I would almost bet my life that this man has never built a business, nor changed a tire, nor worked any kind of blue collar job.
He probably thinks msnbc and cnn are actual sources of news and that they conduct journalism.
people like him are what make normal folk hate the Elites in the first place
Watching this in November 2020 hits different...
Anyone else watching this in 2024 right after the election? And finding it relevant?
We were taught in school that the pilgrims were heroic victims that left Europe for the new world to escape religious persecution. As an adult, learning how the early settlers such as the pilgrims and Puritans worked, my belief is that the Europeans actually kicked them out because they were preachy assholes.
i mean more like they were actively trying to kill them tbf
@Leon lionhardt obvious russian bot
@@gibullian36 Europe didn’t kill enough of them
@Leon lionhardt number one in what? Highest GDP per capita? Excellent universal healthcare? Good quality of living? Scientifically literate population? None of these.
All you guys have going on for you is "no goberment gonna take away muh guns!!1!"
Instead of wasting time here on TH-cam, go plot up the next school you're gonna shoot up
Thank you Kurt Anderson for your insight into how this alternate reality that’s not based in facts happened in the US.
....science flies you to the Moon...........religion flies you into buildings............
Walt Snow Well said my good comrade, well said.
to be religious is to be a blind man in a pitch black room looking for a black cat that isn't there. And finding it.
and people use it to set policies, rules and laws.
They would be The American Taliban.
and they are waiting. verry, very near to power.
Incomparable contrast between the words 'Religious' vs. 'Spiritual'!
Islam flies into buildings, you idiot.
Islam IS a religion.........now who is the idiot ??
Completely agree with what you are saying here, BUT I'm almost 100% sure that you are knocking on an open door, since I doubt it that any of those people living in an alternate reality watch a video clip such as this one. The big question is how can we convey this kind of a message to the people from the "other side"?
Ive been thinking a lot lately about The Ironic Quantum: the space where fiction and reality blur and objective truth loses its value. I hadn’t considered how reality TV plays a role in that: it really did predate social media in establishing and reinforcing malignant narcissism as a norm rather than the toxic minority
I’ve been screaming about this ever since my blogs in the MySpace days. I could see what reality tv was doing to the minds of our society, and I feared it would lead to our downfall. This is before Facebook was even a thing.
*RE: "The Ironic Quantum: the space where fiction and reality blur and objective truth loses its value. "*
Our politicians are our "servants" How does that work where the servants turn out their masters?
Something aged well for once. Man is simply prescient!
There is no such thing as prescience.
What he does is taking facts, they follow a trend, and he just continues following where that trend goes. No magic there, everyone can do it, every day. Ignorance and following believes is just so prevalent, that he seems like a miracle worker.
Same as the bishop who was called a wizard for being able to read without moving his lips.
Reality isn't punishing people fast enough for being stupid. Reality is punishing me for someone next to me being stupid.
Oh boy... four years later and it still holds true. But not just for the US.
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:224
This historical context behind this quote is intriguing. I'd just like to add what Jefferson said before this: "To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, 'by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.' Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers." Sadly it seems just as true today as it was back in Jefferson's day.
Trevin and Sand
We are all creatures of our time and adjust our outrage meters accordingly. Only people like you and perhaps me know there is nothing new under the sun. I came of age in the 1960-70s and these days are like paradise on earth. And I mean that in all sincerity. I do not mean it metaphorically.
" ...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." Thomas Jefferson
oll.libertyfund.org/quote/302
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. Isaac Asimov
Darrell Rees you wrote: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been." Let us examine the result. The most prosperous, powerful, scientifically advanced civilization in all of human history. I suspect you may have noticed USA has more creationists then than all the rest of the advanced nations combined. Am I right?
I submit to you this is no coincidence. I surmise you have no idea how this could happen. But I do know why. And with a bit of false charity I smile indulgently at your manifest ignorance.