The dumbing down of America; I blame the ducks

Disclaimer: Somebody else wrote the following paragraph, or something like it, on the Huffington Post (link below). I agree with it 100%, so I’m stealing it.

I can’t say what started the dumbing down of America, but I think it may have peaked about the time the History Channel s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d history to include “Swamp People” and “Pawn Stars,” and when A&E stopped broadcasting opera, classical music concerts and other notable arts and entertainment and went all in for “Duck Dynasty.”

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I used to call this the “redneckification” of America, but that made me an elitist, apparently. I don’t think you can live in West Virginia and call anyone a redneck without taking serious abuse. Besides, the Trump election proved that people whose necks weren’t all that red could still vote against their own self-interest and qualify for the ADDA – the Association of Dumbed Down Americans.

We used to make fun of rednecks or hicks or hillbillies or whatever you want to call them, even though one group of hillbillies made it out to Beverly Hills and became famous. “Green Acres” was one of my favorite TV shows. Who can ever forget old Mr. Haney, loveable Eb, Sam Drucker, stuttering Hank Kimball or the Monroe brothers, Alf and Ralph?

Those shows were really funny…and that’s my point. We looked down on a subculture and mocked it for our own enjoyment and it made us laugh, in part because we weren’t like them. We were better than them, or so we thought.

Today that subculture is deciding presidential elections and it isn’t funny anymore. If Mr. Haney, Sam Drucker, Hank Kimball and the rest were real people, they'd have voted for Donald Trump this year.

Walk into a Walmart and you can be overwhelmed by Duck Dynasty games, clothing, furniture, bobbleheads, chia heads, cigars, toys, dolls, duck calls, water bottles, mugs, Halloween faces, lunch boxes, guns and flags to fly out of your car window. There’s even Duck Dynasty Duck Tape. Honest.

I'd be curious to know how many Hillary Clinton supporters buy that stuff.

We have normalized the redneck culture that we used to make fun of by expanding its place in our music, our entertainment, our merchandise options and our lifestyle in general. That would be harmless enough if it didn’t coincide with the dumbing down of our electorate, but it does, and that’s the scary part. I think the two are linked.

We’re now supposed to normalize the Trump presidency with its white supremacy, disregard for the truth and a basket of Deplorables who enthusiastically voted for candidates who are going to turn around and screw them over in every way possible for at least the next four years. If we normalize Trump, that means we have already normalized low information voting and voting against ourselves.

What else can you call that except the dumbing down of America? Don't be surprised if one day soon the Statue of Liberty jumps down off that platform and walks on back to France.

Click this link to read a story that told us last August what was going to happening on November 8.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rosenblum/donald-trump-is-going-to_b_11637008.html