Just some thoughts about Americans from an American writer.
...there is a kind of emptiness of thought at large these days that is hard to overlook. The phenomenon is now widely known as the Dumbing Down of America..
Now don't get me wrong. I don't for a moment think that Americans are inherently more stupid or brain-dead than anyone else. It's just that they are routinely provided with conditions that spare them the need to think, and so they have got out of the habit.
American life is full of these crutches, sometimes to a quite astonishing degree.
The idea os to spare the audience having to think. At all. Ever.
...there is a kind of emptiness of thought at large these days that is hard to overlook. The phenomenon is now widely known as the Dumbing Down of America..
Now don't get me wrong. I don't for a moment think that Americans are inherently more stupid or brain-dead than anyone else. It's just that they are routinely provided with conditions that spare them the need to think, and so they have got out of the habit.
American life is full of these crutches, sometimes to a quite astonishing degree.
The idea os to spare the audience having to think. At all. Ever.
from Bill Bryson Notes from a Big Country 1999
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