Are You Stupid?

In the most dynamic and prosperous country on Earth-the USA-stupidity overshadows the intellectual and technical accomplishments that other nations envy. If Americans continue to delude themselves about their country, the USA will end up like the USSR: imploding from within. This work analyzes the systemic aspects of America's current condition: across-the-board-dumbing down through media and in education; growing dependence on and demand for entitlements; corruption in the private and political domains; chronic cronyism; the opportunistic engineering of reality. Consequently, individual and collective stupidity not only leads to crises, it renders the USA impotent in dealing with the challenges of the fast dynamics characteristic of our time of post-industrial capitalism oriented towards consumption. The causes for this state of stupidity are examined: the people's willful ignorance of the nation's true history and development; an economic system that does not foster a sense of citizenry; cultivated mediocrity in education and entertainment; corruption of justice; rampant consumerism; a state of prosperity that lulls the people into complacency. Taking the rewards of change for granted, Americans no longer understand what change entails. Gazing into the rear-view mirror of history in search of answers, they forget that the USA was founded in a world more similar to the 1st century than the 21st. Americans will have to start fighting their own stupidity instead of further exhausting the country's (and the world's) resources in wars and entitlement measures. America has to 'reset' herself, within an authentic democratic process, on a foundation appropriate to the integrated world of the global information age.