Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.
That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?
Nah, that is not really true. There has been a significant bump due to covid, but before covid IQ test results have shown constant improvements.
That said, I don’t think IQ and political idiocy are that strongly correlated. I’ve met a lot of highly trained people, who would doubtlessly get great IQ test results, who are politically extremely gullible.
That also said, IQ tests are a quite flawed way to assess intelligence.
My personal believe is: This is not about people getting dumber, but about propagandists getting better. I also think that unsteadiness is a way better catalysator for fascism than low intelligence.
IQ tests are not necessarily flawed to assess current state of intelligence, but they cannot be used to compare intelligence today to intelligence a century ago. Because 100 IQ today is not the same as 100 IQ score a century ago.