Tewder
Senior Member
Well put Urbandreamer. This is an asinine topic, and reveals more about the intelligence of the poster than it claims to about the USA.
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Is the USA stupid?
- Thread starter Whoaccio
- Start date
Prometheus The Supremo
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US scientists kick ass! it's the US politicians (not all of them) that are dumbing down america. the average person, no matter which country you're from, isn't too bright.
Whoaccio
Senior Member
Actually, the US really is stupid. It gets beaten in standardized testing by every other developed country (and even a number of undeveloped ones). Anybody who thinks there is no issue when the US spends more on education than every other country, and scores worse in every category is just denying the obvious. No one is pretending, or even suggesting, that EVERY American is stupid. Only you are putting out that straw man. NASA and the Ivy League aren't the only things in the US, which on average under performs Slovenia. Care to suggest why it under performs a country like Estonia?
Dichotomy
Banned
Standardized testing or not, the beauty of the United States is its sheer size, whether the topic is raw materials, infrastructure, talent pool - there is no other country that comes close. Like Madonna, every time critics write the U.S. off, she reinvents herself.
Even upcoming powerhouses like China and India are in danger of collapsing under their own internal inertia, like how to feed and cloth a billion people apiece while growing a modern economy? Established economies like the UK, Germany, etc. are faced with aging populations, failed socialist demands and dwindling internal resources.
I wouldn't count the US out just yet. There are stupid people in all communities. It largely depends on the questions being asked, I suspect, and the agenda of the questioner.
Even upcoming powerhouses like China and India are in danger of collapsing under their own internal inertia, like how to feed and cloth a billion people apiece while growing a modern economy? Established economies like the UK, Germany, etc. are faced with aging populations, failed socialist demands and dwindling internal resources.
I wouldn't count the US out just yet. There are stupid people in all communities. It largely depends on the questions being asked, I suspect, and the agenda of the questioner.
afransen
Senior Member
Well, the US economy isn't anything to brag about at the moment, so I don't understand where you are coming from, Dichotomy.
Brandon716
Senior Member
I've tried to refrain from talking first so that several opinions could get going.
As a dispirited American who has lost confidence in a lot of the country, I don't know whether its accurate to call the USA stupid or not. I say it all the time, but actually meaning it is another.
The USA clearly has a problem in that its a land that has so much good, so much positive in it to be countered by so much bad. For a western society its unfortunate to see such anti-intellectualism rampant among the general population. If its not anti-intellectualism, its pseudo-intellectualism that creates things like Intelligent Design and tries to blur the lines of science and religion.
Outside that, the US has so many things to focus on which are bad.
The most concentrated poverty in the western world, which sits along side the largest wealth.
The most people in prison both in actual numbers and per capita of the western world.
Some extremely restrictive personal rights laws to proclaim its the land of freedom.
These ironies are too numerous to name.
As a dispirited American who has lost confidence in a lot of the country, I don't know whether its accurate to call the USA stupid or not. I say it all the time, but actually meaning it is another.
The USA clearly has a problem in that its a land that has so much good, so much positive in it to be countered by so much bad. For a western society its unfortunate to see such anti-intellectualism rampant among the general population. If its not anti-intellectualism, its pseudo-intellectualism that creates things like Intelligent Design and tries to blur the lines of science and religion.
Outside that, the US has so many things to focus on which are bad.
The most concentrated poverty in the western world, which sits along side the largest wealth.
The most people in prison both in actual numbers and per capita of the western world.
Some extremely restrictive personal rights laws to proclaim its the land of freedom.
These ironies are too numerous to name.
Brandon716
Senior Member
The USA can almost be described as a sour apple. It looks perfect on the surface, but when you bite into it there is something just not right and it makes you sick to your stomach.
lordmandeep
Banned
No Bush is to America as Emperor Commodus was to the Roman Empire.
It will come back but never to its former glory.
Emperor Commodus was the first Emperor after the five good Emperors (Trajan, Hadrian) who brought Rome to it's greatest Glory.
Commodus really weakened the Empire (like Bush has weakened the American Superpower) and Rome was never the same again.
doady
Senior Member
People are like maggots: small, blind, and worthless.
Whoaccio
Senior Member
That is rather misanthropic.
TrickyRicky
Senior Member
I agree with Urbandreamer and Tewder on this one. Most Americans believe in angels as physical manifestations active in their own lives, but than most Canadians believe in our absolute moral and now apparently intellectual superiority over virtually identical peoples separated by an arbitrary geopolitical boundary. So who is the dillusional group?
Whoaccio
Senior Member
The one that scores lower than former commie-block countries on standardized testing despite being tied with Switzerland for spending.
Dichotomy
Banned
My point is, every decade or so, there is some form of 'correction.' There is an awful lot of greed south of the border, that is for certain. In a 14 trillion dollar economy, what is happening now should blow over in another 6-12 months.
How many Canadian banks got involved in these risky mortgage deals south of the border? CIBC in particular comes to mind. There is no shortage of stupidity to go around, but the U.S. has faced worse challenges before.
My admiration for Americans is their ability to shine in their darkest hours. The Manhattan Project, the Mercury/Apollo space programs, the Marshall Plan - these are but a few of what they are capable of. I guess what baffles so many critics, or American-bashers, is how can a country be capable of such greatness, yet such wilfull stupidity, too?
Dichotomy
Banned
The United States and Brazil have a lot in common, whether they would admit it or not. Both have economies that were at one time based on the slave trade and benefited from it; both are still paying a stiff premium for that, more than a century later. Brazil has the productive south, carrying the non-productive north; the U.S. has the reverse situation - again, both vestiges of their checkered past.
Both have high prison populations and for the same reason: penance being paid for the slave trade. Guns, ditto. Crime, ditto. America's rich are richer and Brazil's poor are poorer, but both countries have a hapless middle class saddled with paying the bills of their country.
Both have religious intolerance, yet apparent moral liberties (the Carnival and San Francisco, for example.)
These are broad generalizations, but the comparison does help to explain some of the reasons that there is such a dichotomy
in the States.No country is perfect, but a measure of a country's success and desireability are no better based than on the number of immigrants pouring into it, and by that measure the U.S. is among the top.
Whoaccio
Senior Member
Whats that line about Brazil? Brazil is the USA of the next century, and always will be. I don't seriously think the USA is in some kind of death spiral, I am just pissed off how nobody down there seems to wonder why they are scoring so poorly. NASA, the Ivy Leagues and such will always have a nearly limitless supply of geniuses from America and around the world.