The Dumbing Down of America

The Warning Signs Have Been Around For Years

There was a political cartoon I remember from the mid-90s that I originally wanted to use for this week’s newsletter, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. It showed a middle-aged couple sitting in front of a TV, with the wife looking displeasingly at the husband.

She says to him, “Aren’t you worried about the dumbing down of America?”

And the husband responds, with big smile on his face, “Look! The evening news is talking about this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition"!”

I remember as a teenager hearing about concerns that Americans were getting dumber and dumber. When Jay Leno hosted The Tonight Show, he would do his “Jaywalking” segments, where he would ask random people on the streets about basic knowledge or history of America. Among those questions were, how many U.S. states there are? what’s the capital of the United States? why did the American Revolution happen?, etc.

The answers to those questions were not only so bad, but so embarrassing too.

It never got any better. When the reality show, The Anna Nicole Show, starring the late Anna Nicole Smith, who was known for appearing vapid and clueless, debuted on the E! Entertainment TV in 2002, it was the channel’s highest ratings ever. I remember the groans over that, and how my communications professors in college would discuss what that all meant for American culture for someone like Anna Nicole to have such a successful show (although its ratings fell week by week after that big debut).

Perhaps what it meant was that there was more interest in celebrity and entertainment culture than more serious news, despite all the seriousness that was happening in the world (The Anna Nicole Show debuted 11 months after the 9/11 attacks, and talk of invading Iraq of the supposed existence of WMDs was starting up). I remember some classmates in those college courses I took mention how the dumbing of America was getting worse and worse. One student said it seemed like Americans just didn’t want to pay attention to real issues, and preferred celebrity culture as a form of escapism. That does seem possible, since the reality of the world can be overwhelming, and some people do prefer to read gossip magazines or websites as a way to relax or escape from life.

But by the 2010s, there seemed to be more talk over the disdain for intellectualism in the United States. It just seemed like more and more Americans were not interested in looking into topics like philosophy, science, and history. Schools in conservative areas of the country seemed more determined to teach creationism and the Bible, instead of evolution, or even insist that dinosaurs and humans walked side by side together. Other countries seemed baffled by the anti-intellectualism in the United States, according to this Canadian news article from 2014 and this op-ed published by Al Jazeera in 2011. Even the magazine Psychology Today ran an article exploring how damaging anti-intellectualism is for society in 2015. It’s quite eerie to read that article now in 2021.

Now, you may be wondering: what does intellectualism mean? And what does it have to do with the dumbing down of America and the American people’s relationship with the news media?

Well, let’s the start with…definition time!

The other definition is a noun, meaning someone who is an intellectual person.

So, there you go. Rational thinking that is not guided much by emotion or experience. In other words, emotion and experience do matter while understanding an issue or finding a solution to a problem, but the rational mind matters more.

It appears the rational mind has long faded from American culture years ago. If it was warned back in the 90s, indicated early on this century, it certainly is showing right now in 2021. With the QAnon conspiracy theory maintaining its many followers, many Americans refusing to get vaccinated because they think the vaccine includes microchips to monitor them, or will alter your DNA, and so on, it strongly appears the need to encourage Americans to practice rationale is…years ago.

I’ll expand further on this topic next time, when I discuss what has been fueling anti-intellectualism in America for the past 25 years or so. The news media do it to us? Or did we do it to the news media?

Until then, feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

---

Like what you just read? Share it with others and/or subscribe with a free sign-up! If you’d like to support me in writing this weekly newsletter, Buy Me a Coffee!