Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America

[The Grand Nudger]

Meh, IDK, on the note of smart people building bombs I might be hopelessly biased.   In my experience, anecdotal as it is, within a group of outliers willing to build roadside bombs....it was the smart ones that were the cause for worry, and their intelligence and education where precisely -why-....not an ameliorative factor.  I suppose I'll never know how many people were educated or "intelligenced" -out- of building a roadside bomb....and I never would have had much interaction with those people. You'd always expect, instinctively or through the effect of dehumanizing propaganda, that it would be some ignorant fanatic twisting the dets on reappropriated 105's....but when you actually apprehended them, they were pretty smart...down to the man. I never met a dumb one.

One of the most important things we'd remind trainees at my MOUT range was that they needed to -stop- imagining that they were smarter than these guys. That was rule#1. Accept that the people who do this shit are more intelligent and more clever than you could ever imagine them to be, and the only way to ensure that you didn't end up as a fine red mist was to follow -process-. Your own wits weren't sufficient, in a battle against theirs. You had to open a door a specific way, you breached a building from specific points, you had only a specific amount of time, you didn't touch items x y and z -ever-......you treated them as though they would explode, as though that's all they ever did.

I suppose it probably lead to my seeing intelligence as a -tool- that people leveraged to achieve their aims, rather than as the method by which those aims were arrived -upon-, or by which a "bad" aim might be disincentived or realized...and then abandoned. The notion that education or intelligence would lead a person to holding some similar opinion as my own regarding the morality or practicality of turning people into mist, or making it more difficult to do some thing I considered horrible, just doesn't seem to wash with the reality of people who turn other people into mist. Their educations, their intelligence.......just didn't stop em, didn't even slow em down or give em a moments pause....they -used it- to make an even finer fanatical argument....they were more sure of what they did than the random uneducated and ignorant militiamen we routinely picked up, who, in many cases where themselves disgusted with their own guys roadside ops. Meh, those guys were in the blast zones as often as we were, of course....and it came out in the wash that they usually weren't told that their op was designed to draw us into range.......and then having achieved that, they would -also- be within range. We all had a mutual fear and hatred of shit that suddenly went boom, and the people who made that happen. Most of the time, when we got ahold of these guys, it was because of a tip...we didn't find em, they were -given up- by people who nonetheless still believed in their cause and wouldn't piss on me if I was on fire.

To put it as simply as possible. It's not the uneducated or unintelligent nutters finding a way to make explosives look like dolls or toy trucks.......and it isn't a clueless person that realizes a grenade inside of a football plays on an american soldiers near autonomous childhood response to footballs. I could go on and on about this, adding misery upon misery...probably until the day I die. I'm pretty sure theres nothing on earth that -couldn't- blow your fucking hand off the next time you touched it. It's a little tick in my head now...I reach out for my own damned coffeepot veeeery slowly every morning, and that little jokes only sad because it's true...and it's only true because I saw what smart people could do, dedicated to a cause or their own calling, and provided with material.

I think.....that lower incidents of violence being noticed with higher levels of education/intelligence is correlative, not causative. We see higher levels of education/intelligence in places where people are -for a whole host of other reasons- less violent. Education and intelligence are benefiting from a peaceful situation, not causing it, either in society or within an individuals own mind. I do, however, concede that I may be completely and utterly wrong...and it's just that tick causing me to see things the way that I do. Strangely, my intelligence wouldn't seem to be helping -me- there either, assuming I'm wrong.

[Rev. Rye]

There are likely other factors involved.

Of course, I also think it has a lot to do with populism. Historically, a high level of education has been a sign of being part of the elite, and, when the educated hold a view that seems opposite to what is considered "common sense," the people tend to assume that the elite must be wrong.

And no, the fact that a high level of education is becoming an essential part of getting a job hasn't actually changed anything here.

[Dystopia]

[Mister Agenda]

I think it might be helpful if internet searches operated in terms of 'most factual' and 'most credible' coming up first instead of 'most popular'.

Roof's journey evidently started when he searched for black on white crime statistics. Naturally, the first things that come up are heavily biased and throw nuance out the window. Sites like The Council of Conservative Citizens (formerly Council of White Citizens, iirc), then most likely Stormfront (given his middle name, maybe that came first). Roof would still have been a racist without that kind of influence, but I have some doubt that he would still have become a murderer.

[Anomalocaris]

There are likely other factors involved.

Of course, I also think it has a lot to do with populism. Historically, a high level of education has been a sign of being part of the elite, and, when the educated hold a view that seems opposite to what is considered "common sense," the people tend to assume that the elite must be wrong.

And no, the fact that a high level of education is becoming an essential part of getting a job hasn't actually changed anything here.

Those who pursue high level of education mainly for getting a job are unlikely to seek the sort of high level education which emphasize understanding over a mere resumeable degree.

I think the typical "college" experience in the U.S. is increasingly taking on the characteristics of high end vocational training at the expense of real science and liberal arts education.

[The Grand Nudger]

Which is a shame, considering how long the road to acceptance of the very idea of a "liberal arts" education was....and how much we have benefited from it.   We left the idea of a college degree as "high end vocational training" -behind-, and now seem to be racing back towards the bottom as fast as we can manage it.  

We, as a culture, are quickly becoming a service society for better educated foreign professionals.

[Pyrrho]

[Dystopia]

[Pyrrho]

[nihilistcat]

Anti-intellectualism has already killed murika