People have been getting steadily less intelligent, as predicted in The Bell Curve. However, since the recent election that the stupidest of us feel they "won", there is no longer any SHAME in being "stupid", or racist, or deplorable, or any of the many other things that that stupidest of people embrace with glee. They have a symbol, a poster child of prideful ignorance, in the White House and they identify entirely with that person (even though none of them were born rich!). They feel that his presence vindicates and justifies their own place in the world and that their place has and will continue to improve and be elevated. They scream that they are "taking back America" which to them means a place where they can live in ignorant, time-honored comfort, unchallenged by change, new concepts, or three syllable words. If they need to kill every other American who possesses intelligence, compassion, empathy, diversity (i.e. pinko-commie-librals and furriners/people of a different skin color), they will gladly do it to maintain their "rightful place" of thinking they are the majority and they have a birthright to remain in the "winning" position regardless of capability, facts or reality. The fact that stupid people will hysterically and vehemently vote against their own best interests their entire lives has not gone unnoticed by the people quietly pulling the political strings, and I believe that much of the "dumbing down of society" has been deliberately engineered by those who aim to get and keep control of things by promoting stupidity as an useful political force.

I've been watching it develop in helpless horror since I read the Bell Curve in the 80s. In the 90s when I watched my welfare trash sister who has an IQ of 102 make the "dean's list" at her college, I knew that soon a person's dog would also make that dean's list if their owner so desired. I've watched countless "IQ tests" show up on Facebook that tell my former classmates who could barely make C's all through school that they all have literally unchartable IQs in the 200's and the fools believe and brag about it. This month I watched an idiot co-worker earn an associate's degree "summa cum laude" after worrying she'd even pass her classes and being delighted at getting a low B for a grade - which I'm sure a pet hamster can also do, now. Its in the news that people with Down's syndrome are attending college now. Of course they are. They will probably be graduating at the top of their class too. Why not? When everyone is a genius, even those at the bottom of the Bell Curve, our Idiocracy is complete. I am delighted that I am in my late 50s and will not have to live to see too more many decades of this cheerful slide into hell in a handbasket we are enjoying. Unfortunately for me, I like smart people, and they are a gravely endangered species.

In terms of common sense and being logical, yes it does feel that way at times. I feel like, at times, that I must've been the only one paying attention to my own life lessons learned in and out of school. I'm sure I probably come off as a moron on things to other people, but some things are just like...

"Really? Are you serious right now?"
I find myself thinking that. I keep quiet and to myself a lot for this reason.

There is no benefit for the ruling class in having a highly educated workforce. Blindfolds maintain the status quo.

Says the guy with the spare tire

I think it isn't so much a mater of being stupid as it is that peopel are more misinformed about actual facts than they had been... say about 50 years ago.

No.

I lean towards feeling that people are probably getting incrementally better with time, but social media allows us unprecedented exposure to dumbness. And in the case of our current president, emboldens some dumbness that normally would have remained hidden.

Can't vote for either -People are intelligent.Idon't know you-how can label you an idiot.

Are you saying peeps have a lower inherent intelligence then past generations? Or that they're less educated?

Some days I think I'm the celebrated village idiot.

(BTW - love your profile pic, especially for this post)