World Champions of Gullibility
July 11, 2022
ALAN writes:
English professor Calvin Linton wrote in 1962:
“We live in the best educated age in human history. It also may well be the most gullible. ….. There is evidence that certain tendencies in modern education are more likely to increase rather than decrease human gullibility…..” (“What Happened to Common Sense?,” Saturday Evening Post, April 28, 1962, p. 10.)
Wayne C. Booth, also a professor of English, agreed:
“I don’t know whether we are a more credulous generation than our fathers, but it surely must be true that in proportion to the amount of time and money we spend ostensibly educating each other, we are the most credulous, gullible, superstitious people of all time….”
(Now Don’t Try to Reason with Me: Essays and Ironies for a Credulous Age, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970, p. 64.)
Similar thoughts were expressed in a letter to the editor way back in 1983:
“No wonder we have difficulty solving problems, what with a nation of robots waiting to be told what to do, what movies to see, music to listen to, clothes to wear. Of course, the robots don’t know they’re robots. They think they are ‘in’, which makes for an interesting situation: While advertisers are conning them, they are conning themselves. It’s tough to tell who is doing the better job. The clear winner, though, is the advertiser; he ends up with the cash, while robots wind up with the junk.”
(William O’Connell, Letter to the Editor, U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 19, 1983, p. 5)
Precisely so. Let’s adjust that assessment to fit today’s Americans:
No wonder Americans have difficulty solving problems, what with a nation of worker ants waiting to be told what they may say and not say, whether and how they may travel, whether they may visit their own families at Thanksgiving and Christmas, whether they may operate their own businesses, and whether they must wear masks and get injected. Of course, the ants don’t know they’re ants. They think they are “cool,” which makes for an interesting situation: While racketeering bureaucrats, doctors, and drug-pushing pharmaceutical companies are conning them, they are conning themselves. It’s hard to tell who is doing the better job. The clear winners, though, are the medical and political racketeers; they end up with the cash and unchecked powers over the ants, while the ants wind up with ruined businesses, Big Lies, Fake Viruses, poisons called vaccines, fewer rights, and less liberty.
Worse yet are people who imagine that someday Mommy Government will give them back those rights and that liberty. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Tell me why such people do not deserve to be fleeced.
