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And our electorate is in part why the electoral college exists and why the founders thought we shouldn't have a direct vote: we're too fucking stupid and too easily swayed by a populist. Too bad the actual electors won't do what they're allowed to do and not vote for Trump even if the people do.
At the time the electoral college was instituted, only white land owning men could vote, the majority of the population was illiterate, and only the very rich could afford to be well-versed in the affairs of state.
To compare that horse and buggy time with today's world with near-complete literacy, mass media and widespread internet access is even more moronic than you are pretending that the electorate is.
The problem isn't that Americans are significantly dumber than the people of other nations.
It's that the US is one of the most propagandized nations in the world due to billionaires, hectomillionaires, their corporations, and their industry associations owning the mainstream media and the vast majority of the politicians as well as the political machines pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Revered as minor deities as they are, the Founding Fathers couldn't have predicted the conditions 250 years into the future. Including the fact that the very mechanism they included to make sure that the constitution would be updated to fit the times, the amendment process, would become functionally impossible.
Tl;Dr: the problem isn't people being too stupid, the problem is that the will of the people has been overruled by organized corruption and propaganda.
isnt what we are currently experiencing an unhealthy reaction to the that same propagandized society? hard to pump shit into peoples heads for decades and not get some sort of sociopathic, immune-like response. many of our fellow citizens really do want to see it all burn right now. everything has been calcified and these people are lashing out in, what I think is, the worst possible way.
in many respects the very thinking processes of our society have been perverted in service to the whims of the richest. I consider this a bit of a dumbing down of our civic intelligence, but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
While I absolutely understand propaganda is the issue (my comment history is chock full of "I fucking hate propagandists") we're all subject to the same information that others can't seem to see through. That someone like MTG can stay in government isn't completely the fault of propaganda, you have to be stupid enough to not see how absolutely stupid and hateful people like her are and choose to vote for them again and again.