When did our collective IQ sink so low?

[Brigid]

Taking a CCW into a Wal-Mart and injuring people when it goes off is OK, at least by some people. So is getting shot by some psycho when all you did was go to a movie. Even a place of worship is not safe in some cases. There is serious speculation about one presidential candidate's mental state. While the elite steal us blind, the rest of us squabble about chicken sandwiches and take our cues about what is acceptable behavior from watching reality TV. We've got an entire generation of young people whose lives will be stunted by crippling student loan debt because they believed well-meaning parents who told them going to college would prepare them for a future. All they really got was the aforementioned debt and their jobs shipped overseas because employers want cheap labor. Flipping burgers -- yeah, that's a future all right. I don't even want to think about what shape this country will be in by the time the baby I just saw on the bus sleepiing in its mother's lap grows up.

[Zoeisright]

1. Well, I know that republicans are certainly devolving.

They hold even tighter to their completely debunked beliefs, don't understand a thing about logical reasoning, and believe whatever Hannity and O'Lielly tell them.

[Justice wanted]

2. I think it started while I was in school. I see the dumbing down

of our society to this day. I see what my nieces and nephews are reading and it scares me.


I got my 11 year old niece Harry Potter for Christmas and she couldn't get through the first Paragraph BUT she is on the Honor Roll at school and the teacher says she is one of the smartest in her class.

I see reason and logic not being taught and I'm sicken by it.

[Brigid]

6. Wow.

An 11-year-old who hasn't learned how to read well enough to get through Harry Potter? In my day that would have been cause for remedial reading classes. Your niece is being cheated big time by our so-called educational system.

[Justice wanted]

14. I know. She loves to read and she went through the Wimpy Diary Book but Harry Potter she

struggled.

I make it a point to get Classic books as well as book and games that my nieces and nephews want.

I got the 11 year old Mary poppins for Birthday. I don't think she tried to read that.

[yawnmaster]

3. Don't think it is IQ. The collective average has always been 100...

but it is something.

[lunatica]

4. I keep asking myself the same thing

I think it was when Sarah Palin unleashed the banshees from hell.

[KurtNYC]

5. The standard of living in the USA peaked around 1977

It's all downhill from here. Stagnant wages and rising prices.

Collectively acting stupid is nothing new -- slavery was pretty stupid, the Salem witch trials, Prohibition, Vietnam, repealing the Fairness doctrine, relying on corporations for "news", and 2 terms for W were all stupid.

The amazing thing is: life goes.

[hifiguy]

7. People are decidedly dopier, en masse, than thirty years ago.

Which coincides with the election of King Ronald the Simple. Make that correlates with that election.

Seriously, I don't remember people stopping for green lights (yes, I've seen it) back then. Nor do I recall people walking out into traffic in the middle of a block and expecting traffic to stop. It's the little things that show you how really solipsistic and stupid much of the populace has become.

Thirty years of denigrating everything about education, especially higher education, telling the sheeple that smart people are actually no "smarter" than inbred teabilly doucherockets such as themselves and the dumbing down of virtually every aspect of mass culture can only have one effect. It has not been a good one.

[Brigid]

8. "Inbred teabilly doucherockets"

You've been reading the Duchess, haven't you?

Seriously, about the crossing in the middle of the block: I live near one of the busiest intersections in town. People pull that crap all the time, and sometimes they even have little kids with them. It's so bad, at least one police car hangs out in the parking lot of a nearby CVS, because they know chances are good that they'll be needed.

[RebelOne]

10. Well, I know that when I lived in Los Angeles,

if I walked out in the middle of a block, it was the law that the traffic had to stop. I don't know what the law is now because that was a long time ago. In fact, I was amazed that I stopped traffic.

[Odin2005]

13. I think it's that Reagan made being an ignorant dick socially acceptable.

They have all ways existed, but before 1980 people that openly exposed their ignorance were shamed.

[Marcia Brady]

9. Well--

I don't know of anyone who thinks it's OK for a psycho to shoot up a movie theater, a church/temple, or a Wal-Mart. Do you? Really?

[Brigid]

11. There are some who . . .

seem to think that these sorts of things cannot be prevented -- tragic, but less important than the right to carry around a dangerous inanimate object. That this country is awash in guns is okay with them, it seems. My brother and my brother-in-law have shotguns and rifles for deer hunting, but don't feel the need to own an arsenal.

[Reasonable_Argument]

15. Well

Your brother and brother in law could just as easily shoot up a group of people with the weapons they already own. Why does the number of weapons they have in a safe at home make a difference?

[Brigid]

16. My point is . . .

They're not osessed with their guns. Need to follow regulations in order to own them legally? Fine with them. Assault weapons? I doubt either of them has ever fired one. I am no expert on the issue of guns and gun laws, but I do know there's got to be a way to get sensible laws onto the books and enforce them. What I don't get is the obsession of some people with deadly weapons. And for some, the solution to the problem of gun violence is -- more guns! That just doesn't make any sense to me. Never has, never will.

[Odin2005]

12. Average intelligence has anctually increased over the past 100 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

You are confusion intelligence with reasonableness.