Stupidemocracy

[Hotfoot]

First off, I'd like to point out this thread is not an attack on a specific group of individuals or a general attack on democracy in general, but rather one of the system's flaws. I want to reiterate, this is not a democracy or America bashing thread. This is a discussion of a specific flaw in the system and possibilities of how to fix it.

Anyway, one of the key tenants of democracy is for the people by the people. The citizens have considerable say in how the government works. However, as I have noticed in my years, a lot of people are stupid, or at the very least, unattentive of certain things. I'm not immune from this myself, I often find myself ignoring things because I have no interest in them or don't want to deal with bullshit. Still, even with that, there are some really stupid people in the world. Either education failed them, or they deliberately failed education. Now, I may not have hard figures at this moment, but I believe it's at least fairly accepted that stupid people have more children than smart people, on average (this is NOT saying that people with lots of children are stupid - all of John McCormick are dead, but not all dead people are John McCormick).

This being the case, how long until this country is controlled entirely by idiots (yes, yes, obvious jokes inbound, but seriously)? What can we do about it? Demanding limits on having multiple kids won't work (look at China), so the only fix I can think of is Education - but the problem that solution is that if the stupid people have enough control, they can control education into the ground (or dig it a grave).

So is this right? Should we let this happen? How can we stop it? I mean, imagine if it wasn't stupid people, but immigrants. The country is designed to change to best suit the needs of the majority of people living here, with a handful of laws that would always remain the same. If the majority of people living here are unforgivably stupid and run the country in to the ground, should we just accept that, or do what we can to save the nation (and perhaps the world)?

[Josh]

Was there truly a more enlightened age of American society before this one, or are you falling into the 'My Times' trap?

Civilization requires ongoing maintenance. There's no point at which you can comfortably coast, really.

[Hotfoot]

It's more a question of how or if such a thing should be stopped.

[Josh]

Sure, but it's not going to be easy. Frankly, I think people need a bit of hard times in order to stay on their toes. We've had a soft go of things since WWII, basically.

You look at how we're weathering events like Katrina and see how it goes- when there's no reason to be on top of things, we let them go to shit. Unfortunately, that's the kind of medicine we're going to have to take for a while in order to get the ship righted. The utter fucking worthlessness of our past few presidencies is another example, as well as the shitty congresses we've installed.

[frigidmagi]

Honestly stupid parents don't always have stupid kids, nor do smart people always have smart kids.

To get what I think you want however is a massive effort, you have to clean up the shit on T.V (no I don't mean porn relax), the utter vacent mindness of the news (Yes, I'm looking at Fox News to, relax) and the sheer crapfest that is our school system.

You also have to deal with the fact that both parties are run by people who little minded, small souled petty tryants who care only about the advancement of their team and ignore everything else with a few expections. There are maybe 2 or 3 Senators that I would exert effort to keep the rest of them I wouldn't weep over much if they were all dragged to jail like they deserve, All of them not just the Republidrones or Demorats.

[Hotfoot]

Well, I'm talking entirely nurture when talking about stupidity. Parents who reject education in general and find it worthless will tend, by and large, to raise children who see education as worthless.

I get the feeling that education is eventually going to be a luxury if we're not careful.