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Location: At the dude ranch / above the sea Gender:
Posted:
May 19, 2026 - 3:32pm
Lazy8 wrote:
Who's this "we"? Half the news is about what some moron said on twitter. To the perpetually online all there is is online, and if you can crank up outrage on your podcast or substack without leaving your favorite chair at Starbucks...well, it beats having to engage with the real world. Yes, there are foreign actors doing their best to provoke the gullible, but the gullible are oursâand those foreigners are competing with hordes of local liars for the attention spans of stupid people.
The long decline in American education began long before Trump had the power to do anything about it. It spanned administrations of both incumbent parties, it began before the first AOL login. We can't blame foreigners for our self-inflicted intellectual decline.
Trump is surfing a wave, but he didn't create it. Most of his most ardent supporters have to ask their grandkids how to text on their phones. We weren't stupided, we stupided ourselves.
No argument that there is a too significant portion of the populace who are stupid, and the template for Idiocracy.
But, was America really getting stupider over the past 50 or so years? I bet there are examples to suggest that it was still doing pretty well. The place for smarties to come get smarter.
And, like you've seen me say before, there are plenty of people who are die-hard Trumpers that aren't stupid. Instead, they're gullible or racist or frustrated or some from column A, B, and/or C.
So, instead of just saying that Trumpers are stupid, what else should we be accounting for when we think about how to get the USA back on track (and make it great again)? Certainly there's education and employment and nutrition. But we have to drop the too-Berkeley notion that "everyone gets a say." They shouldn't. The folks that made ARPANET and its offspring didn't see that letting the media be unsupervised wasn't freedom, but a foot in the door for idiots and liars and enemies to say things that even the smart folks would fall for.
It's good to see that some schools are teaching kids how to understand that FB and TikTok and the others are just there to get your data, or make you spend, or make the ad folks rich. But I think Pandora's box is already open. There are external enemies that want to steer even the smartest of you in the wrong direction, including voting for a pliable senile buffoon so they can run the nation.
Who's this "we"? Half the news is about what some moron said on twitter. To the perpetually online all there is is online, and if you can crank up outrage on your podcast or substack without leaving your favorite chair at Starbucks...well, it beats having to engage with the real world. Yes, there are foreign actors doing their best to provoke the gullible, but the gullible are oursâand those foreigners are competing with hordes of local liars for the attention spans of stupid people.
The long decline in American education began long before Trump had the power to do anything about it. It spanned administrations of both incumbent parties, it began before the first AOL login. We can't blame foreigners for our self-inflicted intellectual decline.
Trump is surfing a wave, but he didn't create it. Most of his most ardent supporters have to ask their grandkids how to text on their phones. We weren't stupided, we stupided ourselves.
And, despite having beaten That Horse into the ground, we have underestimated the amount of damage that foreign manipulation of our social media has done. Start with FoxNews and the Australian that helmed it. Continue to the known rooms full of Chinese and Russian hackers who spend their workdays 1) generating propaganda against our population - see also "don't get vaccinated - and 2) searching for ways to hack into our electronics.
Yes, trump has actively dismantled the American education system (why?) but there are outside attackers who are, basically, dulling the blade on our weaponry.
Who's this "we"? Half the news is about what some moron said on twitter. To the perpetually online all there is is online, and if you can crank up outrage on your podcast or substack without leaving your favorite chair at Starbucks...well, it beats having to engage with the real world. Yes, there are foreign actors doing their best to provoke the gullible, but the gullible are ours—and those foreigners are competing with hordes of local liars for the attention spans of stupid people.
The long decline in American education began long before Trump had the power to do anything about it. It spanned administrations of both incumbent parties, it began before the first AOL login. We can't blame foreigners for our self-inflicted intellectual decline.
Trump is surfing a wave, but he didn't create it. Most of his most ardent supporters have to ask their grandkids how to text on their phones. We weren't stupided, we stupided ourselves.
And, despite having beaten That Horse into the ground, we have underestimated the amount of damage that foreign manipulation of our social media has done. Start with FoxNews and the Australian that helmed it. Continue to the known rooms full of Chinese and Russian hackers who spend their workdays 1) generating propaganda against our population - see also "don't get vaccinated - and 2) searching for ways to hack into our electronics.
Yes, trump has actively dismantled the American education system (why?) but there are outside attackers who are, basically, dulling the blade on our weaponry.
That's an excuse. We're dumb because we're lazy. Others merely exploit it.
If we weren't so stupid, we wouldn't be here for a second time.
Location: At the dude ranch / above the sea Gender:
Posted:
May 19, 2026 - 1:36pm
Lazy8 wrote:
As for the civic ignorance of the population enabling all this...couldn't agree more. We have seen endless political meddling in education, dumbing it down, forcing ideology into the classroom, disempowering parents and teachers and pushing pedological fads over results. Yet the only answer ever proposed is more centralization, more top-down control.
Power serves power first. An educated population is a direct threat to a structure that counts on ignorance. Don't look for a solution from above.
And, despite having beaten That Horse into the ground, we have underestimated the amount of damage that foreign manipulation of our social media has done. Start with FoxNews and the Australian that helmed it. Continue to the known rooms full of Chinese and Russian hackers who spend their workdays 1) generating propaganda against our population - see also "don't get vaccinated - and 2) searching for ways to hack into our electronics.
Yes, trump has actively dismantled the American education system (why?) but there are outside attackers who are, basically, dulling the blade on our weaponry.
Term limits good. As a lawmaker you quickly get corrupted, though. It lives intrinsically within the system.
Term limits doesn't beat that wave in the long run. Few years max, then good-bye to term limits again, and all goes back to square one.
And the quickest and the best way we can weaken this power would be term limits in Congress. I have been arguing this ever since I first got here. The resistance to this notion here has been universal and hard core during this time as well.
Congress has surrendered too much of its powerâÂÂmost obviously the power to declare war, but the problem permeates governmentâÂÂto the executive branch. Term limits changes this how?
For every complex problem there's a simple solutionâÂÂand it's wrong.
There is no silver bullet to kill this monster. Congress is indeed the problem here, but weakening it will not reclaim its power from the executive branchâÂÂit will do the opposite. I live in a state with legislative term limits. Because a fresh legislator arrives knowing next to nothing about how the process of legislating works and how all the things s/he wants to change are actually implemented they end up relying on the bureaucrats to explain it to them and suggest changes.
And they do. They can bury them in detail, stall, hide behind processes that they know and the legislators don'tâÂÂbecause they'll still be there when the session ends, and the legislators will be gone in two terms. By the time a legislator knows how the game is played s/he is out of office.
Okay, let us judge the whole country based upon your observations of Montana's state legislature. OBTW, Ohio has legislative term limits.
The Montana State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Montana. It is composed of the 100-member Montana House of Representatives and the 50-member Montana Senate. The Montana Constitution dictates that the legislature meet in regular session for no longer than 90 days in each odd-numbered year.
Ok, so tell me again how this is relevant in judging term limits in the US Congress ?
Term limits empower the executive branch. This is the opposite of what we need.
Says who ? You, based on the Montana example you proffer ?
You're just guessing, cuz we don't know as we have tried everything else but term limits. Presently, Congress cannot even pass a regular order budget. It has been a couple of decades since this last happened. It is totally dysfunctional because power is so imbedded that it prevents change and rational ideas from even being presented.
You are all cowards, afraid of change that you all so loudly claim that you want. It may take awhile for the needed changes that term limits will bring, but even the longest journey begins with the first step.
Term limited representatives should be more inclined to gather together and take back power from the executive branch rather than less inclined because the impact of the "party's" sway over the members is diminished making it easier to get along and work for a common good. .
The founders could and did enact a system where small states were hard to bully. That's the only way they could convince what were essentially separate, sovereign nations to unite into one country.
The size of the country has no bearing on this. Yes, regional representation makes sweeping changes and drastic accumulation of power difficult. That's the whole point of the Senate. A feature, not a bug.
And yes, the electorate is ultimately responsible. But those in power have contrived schemes to limit their choices; we bounce between extremes because the only way to thwart overreach by one faction is to support overreach by the other faction.
As for the civic ignorance of the population enabling all this...couldn't agree more. We have seen endless political meddling in education, dumbing it down, forcing ideology into the classroom, disempowering parents and teachers and pushing pedological fads over results. Yet the only answer ever proposed is more centralization, more top-down control.
Power serves power first. An educated population is a direct threat to a structure that counts on ignorance. Don't look for a solution rom above.
Power seems to be serving money first. Or money has become a coupon for power. The political actors we see are doing the bidding of a class that we don't even know. Millionaires are closer to poverty than they are to billionaire by billions of dollars. Billionaires barely have sway in the land of hundred-billionaires and soon to be trillionaires. And yes, they are not looking to limit their influence.
The Constitution was established for 13 colonies, not the 50 we now have with glaciers and volcanos. The founding fathers would never have enacted a system where North and South Dakota have the same number of Senate seats as California, New York, or Florida. The redistricting going on now would have been eliminated by a few simple rules... if they would have believed that those being governed would somehow allow themselves to be structurally silenced, or maybe more importantly, that so many of us would work to silence those with whom we disagreed. They were proud of their principals. Politicians today have none.
The system has been corrupted to enable the power you speak of, but only because we as a population let them. We've surrendered that power by being uninformed and lazy.
The founders could and did enact a system where small states were hard to bully. That's the only way they could convince what were essentially separate, sovereign nations to unite into one country.
The size of the country has no bearing on this. Yes, regional representation makes sweeping changes and drastic accumulation of power difficult. That's the whole point of the Senate. A feature, not a bug.
And yes, the electorate is ultimately responsible. But those in power have contrived schemes to limit their choices; we bounce between extremes because the only way to thwart overreach by one faction is to support overreach by the other faction.
As for the civic ignorance of the population enabling all this...couldn't agree more. We have seen endless political meddling in education, dumbing it down, forcing ideology into the classroom, disempowering parents and teachers and pushing pedological fads over results. Yet the only answer ever proposed is more centralization, more top-down control.
Power serves power first. An educated population is a direct threat to a structure that counts on ignorance. Don't look for a solution from above.
+1, nicely laid out. And should Democrats take the road to same old same old post Trump this grand experiment called America will fall further down the ladder. Without reckoning and consequences for country destroying actions they will continue on unabated.
+10. People need to be afraid of consequences. Appeasement following civil war I, is a big part of how we got here.
Congress has surrendered too much of its powerâmost obviously the power to declare war, but the problem permeates governmentâto the executive branch. Term limits changes this how?
For every complex problem there's a simple solutionâand it's wrong.
There is no silver bullet to kill this monster. Congress is indeed the problem here, but weakening it will not reclaim its power from the executive branchâit will do the opposite. I live in a state with legislative term limits. Because a fresh legislator arrives knowing next to nothing about how the process of legislating works and how all the things s/he wants to change are actually implemented they end up relying on the bureaucrats to explain it to them and suggest changes.
And they do. They can bury them in detail, stall, hide behind processes that they know and the legislators don'tâbecause they'll still be there when the session ends, and the legislators will be gone in two terms. By the time a legislator knows how the game is played s/he is out of office.
Term limits empower the executive branch. This is the opposite of what we need.
Agreed. We have the tools in place, we just need to have people willing to wield them. A strict application of the war powers act would go a long way, but congress has to be willing to use the enforcement tools they have - impeachment (this should be used against the corrupt actors on the supreme court as well). As long as they are unwilling to do their job, it's difficult to see what to do about it. If voters won't vote them out, then what?
I generally agree with all of your sentiments here (and below). But we do seem to be at a crossroads. An alternative to violence is some kind of amicable split (see if we can manage that without violence), then let the opposing systems run with their own inherent problems and see if either can survive on it's own. As I see it, we were lucky that the civil war happened when the rest of the world was weak and far away. Today, it's going to be a similar mess domestically, but there will be outside agitators pulling for their interests as well. I wonder if Zuckerberg and Ellison can divide the Hawaiian islands up without having their own war?
And the quickest and the best way we can weaken this power would be term limits in Congress. I have been arguing this ever since I first got here. The resistance to this notion here has been universal and hard core during this time as well.
Congress has surrendered too much of its power—most obviously the power to declare war, but the problem permeates government—to the executive branch. Term limits changes this how?
For every complex problem there's a simple solution—and it's wrong.
There is no silver bullet to kill this monster. Congress is indeed the problem here, but weakening it will not reclaim its power from the executive branch—it will do the opposite. I live in a state with legislative term limits. Because a fresh legislator arrives knowing next to nothing about how the process of legislating works and how all the things s/he wants to change are actually implemented they end up relying on the bureaucrats to explain it to them and suggest changes.
And they do. They can bury them in detail, stall, hide behind processes that they know and the legislators don't—because they'll still be there when the session ends, and the legislators will be gone in two terms. By the time a legislator knows how the game is played s/he is out of office.
Term limits empower the executive branch. This is the opposite of what we need.
And the quickest and the best way we can weaken this power would be term limits in Congress. I have been arguing this ever since I first got here. The resistance to this notion here has been universal and hard core during this time as well.
The founding fathers argued a great deal about voting rights. Landowners were the primary dividing line. John Adams warned:
...not to "open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation," because once you abandoned the property qualification, "there will be no end of it. New claims will arise; women will demand a vote; lads from twelve to twenty-one will think their rights not attended to; and every man who has not a farthing will demand an equal voice."
His underlying theory was about independence: someone without property was, in his view, dependent on an employer, landlord, or patron, and would therefore not really be casting his own voteâhe'd be casting his master's. Property meant economic independence, and economic independence was the precondition for genuine political judgment.
American's don't have "masters" at a scale to influence the outcome as Adams feared, but they have shown three fundamental weaknesses this century: A lack of education, and a lack of critical thinking, and a severe lack of principals. I've been saying it for 10 years now (and it's yet to "let me down" so to speak....), Trump voters are selfish, stupid, and/or racist. They have found an active minority who support those that are able to control their less and less popular opinions. The system wasn't set up to control for such a large group, aligned under a populist mantra, informed by the uninformed and unprincipled in a constant wave of engaging misinformation.
The Constitution was established for 13 colonies, not the 50 we now have with glaciers and volcanos. The founding fathers would never have enacted a system where North and South Dakota have the same number of Senate seats as California, New York, or Florida. The redistricting going on now would have been eliminated by a few simple rules... if they would have believed that those being governed would somehow allow themselves to be structurally silenced, or maybe more importantly, that so many of us would work to silence those with whom we disagreed. They were proud of their principals. Politicians today have none.
The system has been corrupted to enable the power you speak of, but only because we as a population let them. We've surrendered that power by being uninformed and lazy.
Education is the infrastructure that our country was built on and will need to reclaim any sort of greatness. From inner cities, to rural outposts, colleges to trade school we MUST invest in best in the world education. That has to be the building blocks laid once the reckoning phase is put in place.
We've been terrible places before, and we've always come back.
We, as a country, have been to actual war over divisions before. It was a terrible, searing experience that we don't appreciate today, not near enough. The history books we were spoon-fed from in school glossed over just how savage a time that was, how long it took to heal from, and what deep, bitter resentments it's still at the root of.
It's the worst possible answer, the very last resort.
But it is an answer, and it is a resort.
When all this is over there will come a reckoning. There has to. We as a country will have to face up to how close we came to the brink.
It will be convenient to blame one man, one party for this debacle, and that's so very wrong. Like Jacob Marley we are feeling the weight of the chains we forged link by link. Trump didn't have to build the apparatus he's using, he seized the power that was there waiting for just such a creature as him. It was there all along. And if you want to ensure that we never see this despotism again we need to wrestle with our own complicity in it. The problem, the real problem isn't just the hands that hold the power.
The problem is the power.
+1, nicely laid out. And should Democrats take the road to same old same old post Trump this grand experiment called America will fall further down the ladder. Without reckoning and consequences for country destroying actions they will continue on unabated.
The founding fathers argued a great deal about voting rights. Landowners were the primary dividing line. John Adams warned:
...not to "open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation," because once you abandoned the property qualification, "there will be no end of it. New claims will arise; women will demand a vote; lads from twelve to twenty-one will think their rights not attended to; and every man who has not a farthing will demand an equal voice."
His underlying theory was about independence: someone without property was, in his view, dependent on an employer, landlord, or patron, and would therefore not really be casting his own voteâhe'd be casting his master's. Property meant economic independence, and economic independence was the precondition for genuine political judgment.
American's don't have "masters" at a scale to influence the outcome as Adams feared, but they have shown three fundamental weaknesses this century: A lack of education, and a lack of critical thinking, and a severe lack of principals. I've been saying it for 10 years now (and it's yet to "let me down" so to speak....), Trump voters are selfish, stupid, and/or racist. They have found an active minority who support those that are able to control their less and less popular opinions. The system wasn't set up to control for such a large group, aligned under a populist mantra, informed by the uninformed and unprincipled in a constant wave of engaging misinformation.
The Constitution was established for 13 colonies, not the 50 we now have with glaciers and volcanos. The founding fathers would never have enacted a system where North and South Dakota have the same number of Senate seats as California, New York, or Florida. The redistricting going on now would have been eliminated by a few simple rules... if they would have believed that those being governed would somehow allow themselves to be structurally silenced, or maybe more importantly, that so many of us would work to silence those with whom we disagreed. They were proud of their principals. Politicians today have none.
The system has been corrupted to enable the power you speak of, but only because we as a population let them. We've surrendered that power by being uninformed and lazy.
No, don't go down that road. I still have faith in the people. Sometimes it just takes an awfully long time, but America won't heal until Trump's own supporters finally ditch him.
And he's really pushing it to the limit right now because he is psychologically compelled to. In a weird way, I think this all had to happen for America to heal itself.
We've been terrible places before, and we've always come back.
We, as a country, have been to actual war over divisions before. It was a terrible, searing experience that we don't appreciate today, not near enough. The history books we were spoon-fed from in school glossed over just how savage a time that was, how long it took to heal from, and what deep, bitter resentments it's still at the root of.
It's the worst possible answer, the very last resort.
But it is an answer, and it is a resort.
When all this is over there will come a reckoning. There has to. We as a country will have to face up to how close we came to the brink.
It will be convenient to blame one man, one party for this debacle, and that's so very wrong. Like Jacob Marley we are feeling the weight of the chains we forged link by link. Trump didn't have to build the apparatus he's using, he seized the power that was there waiting for just such a creature as him. It was there all along. And if you want to ensure that we never see this despotism again we need to wrestle with our own complicity in it. The problem, the real problem isn't just the hands that hold the power.
