I swear the US just keeps getting dumber and nuttier

[Coventina]

A relative of mine just went on a rant about how global warming is a false, government conspiracy.

This guy is the son of a scientist (now deceased, thank goodness he didn't live to see this).
Moron's father, as I said, was a scientist, an archeologist, who actually got FIRED for teaching evolution (back in the 50s).
So, he witnessed FIRST HAND the damage that anti-science pinheads can cause.
His own father was FIRED for teaching SCIENCE!

And now, he actually said that anyone who thinks global warming is real should read Genesis 8.

[Arugula Latte]

1. Religion is often the culprit in this mass stupidity.

It's pathetic that people still believe primitive, nonsensical mythology is "real."

[villager]

2. The only *real* remaining political question in the U.S. is when will the country break apart?

I'd originally thought somewhere in the 2050's, when Empire, and its economy, had collapsed, and the changes wrought by climate change itself would overload the system...

Now I'm wondering if it'll be sooner....

[Nay]

6. Agreed. I just am sad that I'm too old to benefit from the breakup. I'll just be swept

away like nothing.

If I were 30, I could look forward to perhaps seeing an improvement instead of this seriously long and painful decline that will not end well.

[The_Commonist]

8. I watched the beginning of a Colin Quinn comedy show about the Constitution...

...last night, and the only thing I remember about it, before I fell asleep, was him talking about how the country is getting ready to break apart.

I can't say that that would necessarily be a bad thing. If the Empire is going to collapse and break apart anyway, it should be done consciously, and the break-up should be managed. "The Nine Nations of North America" and all that. Of course, as the OP points out, we're too stupid as a nation to do anything consciously and/or rationally. It will turn into a giant clusterfuck.

[villager]

9. Actually, that's another good way of phrasing the only true U.S. political question: Soft landing...

...or hard landing, given that the "landing" is inevitable?

And yes, we're not smart enough to avoid the latter.

[Thor_MN]

16. When jumping off a cliff, it isn't the fall that kills you, it's the landing.

[DinahMoeHum]

3. "It ain't getting any smarter out there" - Frank Zappa

G*d, I miss him.

[hifiguy]

18. The best FZ quote on Teh Stoopid:

"Scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe."

The universe is a big place, but as for Earth, I think he is right.

[alterfurz]

20. alternate FZ phrasing

[DinahMoeHum]

21. +1

n/t

[smirkymonkey]

37. +1000

[BlueJazz]

4. Well, I didn't know you and I have the same relatives.

[Coventina]

5. Haha!

So glad we finally found each other!!

[awoke_in_2003]

31. We're all god's children...

[shenmue]

7. Sigh

[Live and Learn]

10. Must be a recessive gene. nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. I am reading Charles Pierce's book "Idiot America"

which he wrote 5 years ago.
It is very well written, as most of us Pierce fans would expect.
His section on visiting the Creation Museum ( remember dinosaur saddles?) is a marvelous bit.
But he does take pains to point out this is not the only era of American Idiocracy.

[Coventina]

12. But, I would argue we are going to pay the highest price for it.

Or, the next generation will....

Not to mention our fellow species....

[villager]

19. Right. The planet's whole climate wasn't busy shifting and fraying...

...during our previous "Idiot Ascendant" periods....

[Xipe Totec]

13. It's as if the US was a bag of Peanut M&Ms and the GOP sucked the sweetness and put the nuts back nt

[Fred Sanders]

14. The poor shall always be among us, it is said. Unsaid is that the stupid shall also always be among us.

[hobbit709]

15. People used to think I was joking when I said Idiocracy was a documentary.

Not any more, Monty.

[hifiguy]

28. Americans have, throughout the course of the country's history

been fearful and suspicious of education and intelligence. It's not an aberration, it's a constant in our history as a nation. But there was always a certain envy of the smart and the educated and a secret desire to be seen as smart.

George Wallace was the first modern politican to revive on a large scale what Richard Hofstadter so eloquently called the paranoid and anti-intellectual strains in the none-too-bright-to-begin-with American psyche. And the reichwingers have done nothing but stand on the gas ever since.

[hifiguy]

17. You can hearit, I swear.

Every night you can hear the stupid leaking out into the air when it is very quiet.

[2naSalit]

32. Got that right!

All that noise keeps me awake at night.

[lpbk2713]

22. Apparently Faux Snooze has the power to nullify other acquired knowledge.

I feel so badly for his father's memory and for any of his
friends who may know about this sad turn of events.

[Nevernose]

23. Your friend has bigger reality misunderstandings than global warming

He literally believes that a 600-year-old pro-incest alcoholic once built a boat in Palestine, loaded it up with between two and seven of every animal on earth (depending upon what section of an old book he's focusing on), and then sailed for forty days and forty nights before being contacted by an invisible, omnipotent sky-wizard who promised not to destroy all life again, and then died at the ripe old age of 950. And all this happened 8,000 years ago.

So I guess I'm not really sure why you're surprised to find this relation of yours has some difficulties understanding the complex science behind global warming.

[Coventina]

24. Please don't call him my friend.

He's anything but.

And, I AM surprised that he believes that stuff, given that he was raised by a principled scientist.

[Nevernose]

25. Okay then

Your "friend."

It's okay: I'm related to very similar people. I get it.

[mahina]

27. Billions have been spent getting us there.

I'm guessing, of course, because I have no way of finding out what Koch Ent. et. al. has spent on disinformation. It must be a fortune though, and it's been effective.

It's shocking to witness how divided we've been against ourselves, with different facts for the deniers.

Something about a house divided against itself standing.

Time to heal, reveal, and stop the disinformation campaigns. Are we helpless? No.

[hifiguy]

29. Probably hundreds of billions over the last 45 years.

[Rex]

30. I've never understood how reading The Bible has more veracity than the scientific method.

Did God run 'all this' through a test tube first? Faith? So how can faith have more veracity than observable date? I've never been able to get a fundie to explain that to me and probably never will.

"Cause God" is an instant fail, need more.

[Syzygy321]

33. The Creation museum is not far from where I live

And I really want to see it and take my kids. It would be so great to laugh about afterwards, and it would show them how the odder half lives.

But then. I think of all the true believers who will be walking through the place with the hushed awe (same hushed awe that I feel in the Field Museum),

and I just know my kids will guffaw and yell things like, "mom, look - here's a diorama of Adam and Eve patting a Stegasaurus - stupidest thing ever!"

So I don't dare take them, because I don't want them to be rude.

(Sure would be fun though).

[Gloria]

34. It's like a plague of insanity brought about by

people in the media doing this weird "balanced" reporting which gives equal standing to bullshit...

It's enough to drive you crazy...

[Snobblevitch]

35. That's a broad brush you are using.

[Arugula Latte]

36. How is it a broad brush?

Coventina gave a specific anecdote about a person she knows.

On the other hand, there IS an epidemic of religious rightwing dumbasses spreading The Stupid in this country. But Coventina didn't say that. I did.

[smirkymonkey]

38. I'll second that.

[Martin Eden]

39. The melding of RW propaganda and conservative religious faith ...

... has produced a dogma of beliefs that erase the distinction between religion and politics.

People are afraid and angry. Unscrupulous politicians funded by the oligarchy manipulate that fear and anger by telling the people their religion is under assault and they will be their champions in restoring "their country" to them. People who are dimwitted enough to fall for that (having been brainwashed by Faux News & RW talk radio) will swallow the entire ideological package which includes global warming denial and a brand of laissez faire capitalism that is the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus Christ.