Are Americans Just Stupid?

[Anomalocaris]

Yes. Stupid and selfish.

Americans donated about 300 billion dollars to charities last year and put in about 8 billion volunteer hours. Either in raw numbers or per capita, Americans are the most generous people in the world.

 Pretty hard to make the ‘selfish’ tag stick.

Boru

When a major fraction Americans would put a trump in charge of half of the world’s nuclear weapons just so they can more freely denigrate collective contribution to the collEctive good, and pay less, they hope, towards the general welfare of the world, or just the general welfare of the people of the country they profess to be patriots of,  and stick it to those whose circumstances, or just the locations, of birth was less favorable than their own,  it is hard to avoid the “extremely, ruthlessly, myopically selfish” tag.

[Ranjr]

A good segment of the population has always been stupid.  There was a time when stupid people knew their place.  Now, they have a worldwide support group telling them that smart people are dumb and rich people know best.  So stupid has become louder and more organized while remaining easily manipulated.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

A good segment of the any population has always been stupid. 

[Anomalocaris]

A good segment of the any population has always been stupid. 

A good segment of any population has also always been insane, or brutally selfish.   The quality of the population overall can be judged by how much of hand it had in allowing the stupid, the insane, and the brutally selfish to rule.

[onlinebiker]

It's simple math. When you consider the average man - half the population is dumber than him.....

[Anomalocaris]

It's simple math. When you consider the average man - half the population is dumber than him.....

And that half Of the population will vote for the dumbest braggart amongst themselves to make a scene.

[onlinebiker]

It's simple math. When you consider the average man - half the population is dumber than him.....

And that half Of the population will vote for the dumbest braggart amongst themselves to make a scene.

Half didn't.

Remember?

[Rev. Rye]

To answer the OP:

[Ranjr]

A good segment of the any population has always been stupid. 

"Two or eight lanes it don't matter it's just another town.  There's a fool on every corner on every street in every one."

[Angrboda]

If you're frequently wrong, being anti-intellectual is a winning strategy. Also, if you hold beliefs that are hard to defend, anti-intellectualism is a winning strategy. Anti-intellectualism becomes a matter of rational self-interest, and something of a self-perpetuating one. If you encourage people to be anti-intellectual, more people will be frequently wrong or hold beliefs that are hard to defend, thus increasing the trend toward anti-intellectualism. I don't know that it's necessarily a vicious cycle, but I think it can feed off itself.