I spoke to a good friend last week who asked me, half seriously I think, "Did somebody put stupid pills in the water supply?"
Good question.
I'm beginning to think it's possible. Ironically, that same question was asked in two other places at approximately the same time by people who did not know each other and had not communicated with each other in any way. It also, again ironically, came up in a national blog post a few days later.
What triggered each of these pondering was a different incident but they all shared a common thread: People in authority or in leadership positions were being quoted saying the most absurd, stupid, insipid, shallow remarks you could possible imagine.
Let me get personal for a minute.....when I was growing up in a small, sleepy little town in the South, the worst thing you could be called by your peers was "ignorant". The word "ignorant" was carefully chosen and distinguished from "stupid" because it was assumed that if one was "stupid" it was hereditary or perhaps the result of a mental defect and southern politeness wouldn't tolerate demeaning somebody for that purpose....
"Ignorant", however, was different. If somebody was called "ignorant" it implied that you were uneducated, perhaps willfully uneducated, due to laziness or just plain stubbornness.
Needless to say, those among my peers who were most admired were the scholars and thinkers; the achievers; the eloquent; the mannered. The least admired were the "ignorant".
One avoided being labeled ignorant at all costs and the only way to do it was to study diligently and keep abreast of what we called then "current affairs". (There was even a required course for Seniors called "current affairs".. that included...ready for this? How to read a newspaper article. ...which was a short course in critical thinking....imagine that...)
What I am lamenting today is that ignorance is no longer something for which one needs to feel ashamed. In fact, even our President is proudly ignorant and it seems that the rest of the country is following his example. Our leadership...on national, state and shamefully on the local level proudly wallows in ignorance supporting prejudices and hidden agenda with obviously false, misleading, and sometimes downright dishonest rhetoric that plays to the most basic of human emotions and we let them get away with it. Hell.....we even frequently re-elect them. Even if the rhetoric isn't dishonest or deliberately misleading, the logic by which they reach conclusions is laughable.
This rant fits almost too neatly under the category of "dumbing down of America" but I think it goes beyond that. It speaks to yet another question of what America and Americans actually value; which character traits they covet and which traits they shun.
I prefer to shun ignorance.
