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Indeed, add in all the religious meddling in educational curriculum and you've got a recipie for an ignorant population.

Doesn't help that a whole lot of idiots also think it's somehow very clever of them to "rise above" it all by acting like it's "both sides". This is what passes (for a special kind of smug idiot) for political acumen.

Of course, the "liberal media" harps on the "both sides" thing all the freaking time. Which is why I find it mighty curious that a lot of supposed "leftists" take up that mantra, too.

Amongst wealthy countries, the US scores above average in science and reading comprehension, and are only really showing lag in mathematics. In terms of critical thinking, this has been a baked-in element of the curriculum, that was intentionally baked-in, for a long time now. Most countries are this way, and those that have dedicated time to specifically critical thinking, as its own subject, are relatively new, and not many do it, in primary education, yet. So this means the US is not unique in how poorly students are taught critical thinking, amongst countries with similar levels of resources.

Also, baby boomers demonstrated a lower level of critical thinking skills, than kids do today, they also show sharper cognitive decline, earlier in life, than X, and millennials have been. So is it that the conservatives have been trying to disassemble the public school system, to move funds to privatized education, thus eroding the common access to education? If so, why does the US actually score well compared to its peers? Why is it that the oldest common generation is actually the worst of the common generations, still alive, for things like critical thinking, and cognitive decline?

So there is some other factor(s) that make the US seem to stand out on this issue, amongst peers. Could it be US media specifically empowering the voice of morons, because outrage drives viewership, and profit is the only goal to US news/media companies? Is it that the elites within the conservative party have redesigned their entire party structure, and playbook, to empower morons, because morons vote for them more often than not? Is it a combination of these factors, and others, that have been shaping the US in this fashion? Could this be why we have been seeing greater, and greater, pushes from political influence groups, in other countries, that have ties to US wealth? Things like dismantling the NHS, establishing US style media as the dominant party in places like europe (murdoch family owned outlets getting larger pieces of the pie, and pushing sentiment to dismantle not for profit sources, like the BBC, and NPR/PBS, for example), far right parties, trump cocksuckers, putin cocksuckers, etc. have been on the rise for past ten plus years? Could it also be that people are growing increasingly disaffected with capitalism, and there are a lot of people lashing out, lacking understanding of what is causing life to be more difficult, and reaching out, in desperation, to anyone who sounds different from those who got us here, even if it should be obvious those people would likely make these specific issues worse? Is it that these things are also compounded with a growing desire, amongst the growing disproportionately wealthy set, to push all the bad aspects of societal structure, to hasten its collapse, and then swoop in to take over directly?

IMHO it is all of the factors in the previous paragraph, and others I haven't bothered to bring up, and not so much the education system, at least not yet. Sorry for the word vomiting in this post.