Americans idolizing the ignorant: Who is to blame?

America has stupid people. This is a fact of the world, but the blame cannot be placed on any one person, or on a group of people like celebrities.

By placing the blame of stupidity on politicians in the media and reality TV shows, it is implied that the solution to our IQ deficiency is in simply silencing these bad influences.

But silencing is never a solution, just a band-aid that will fall off sooner or later.

The whole issue is being analyzed backwards. Children and their buddies don’t participate in ignorant discussions because of T-Pain’s gangster speak. T-Pain markets himself as a gangster because children participate in ignorance.

Ignorance isn’t cool because of celebrities—celebrities are ignorant because its popular.

And it has become popular due to structural problems in our social classes and the unfair distribution of wealth and power.

It is a problem of access and motivation—when children and their parents can barely scrape by from paycheck to paycheck and don’t see adequate motivation or ability to move up, they’ll shrug off the difficulty of education.

Their situation is one that creates unnecessary barriers and improper motivations against education.

Politicians like George W. Bush who appear to be ignorant in the public eye are a problem. But the problem, fundamentally, is not that they are viewed as stupid, but that citizens allow these people to represent the nation. The fault does not fall to the politicians, but to voters and taxpayers.

Instead of pointing fingers at the idolized but empty-headed politicians, point it at the people—they are the ones doing the idolizing.

The future is dark if
society maintains its current trajectory. But the darkness looms not because of the
actions of the uneducated class or because politicians misspeak on CNN, but because of the restrictions placed upon the majority of people by the elite.