I have been thinking a lot since the election about what could explain the incredibly high numbers of Americans who seem incapable of critical thinking, or really any kind of high level rational thought or analysis.
Then I stumbled on this post https://old.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/16ires5/lead_exposure_from_shooting_is_a_much_more/
Which essentially explains that “Shooting lead bullets at firing ranges results in elevated BLLs at concentrations that are associated with a variety of adverse health outcome"
I looked at the pubmed abstract in that Reddit post and also this one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5289032/
Which states, among other things, “Workers exposed to lead often show impaired performance on neurobehavioral test involving attention, processing, speed, visuospatial abilities, working memory and motor function. It has also been suggested that lead can adversely affect general intellectual performance.”
Now, given that there are well in excess of 300 million guns in the United States, is it possible lead exposure at least partially explains how brain dead many Americans seem to be?
This is a genuine question not a troll and id love to read some evidence to the contrary if any is available
The average ACT score in Florida among college-bound seniors is about 18. To be clear, that is only slightly higher than my cat can score by guessing. It’s an astonishing result. They are actually illiterate. And again, that’s the average for the state (nationally it’s around 22), and half of them do worse.
If you’ve ever tried to have a conversation with an average person… well, you can’t. There’s nothing to discuss except sports, since everything else is way too complicated. So now imagine a standard deviation lower.
Sit at any self-checkout in any grocer you like here in SF, and just watch for 10-15 minutes. That’s it, just watch. You WILL be amazed/appalled at just how small the intellects are.
I grew up in Virginia Beach/Hampton roads, and moved to Tennessee in 09 at 18. I’ve never really wanted to admit that outloud, to be honest, but I feel like the only normal person in this state sometimes. I’ve been here for over 15 years and I have met a grand total of 7 people I could have a decent conversation with, one of which is an Episcopal priest from another state, and 2 I met specifically through left wing organizing, so a group with membership that’s already higher than likely to be biased to education and intelligence. I knew people back home that were smart. I don’t mean educated, or some High Potential/Sheldon Cooper shit, I mean they were rational, intelligent human beings capable of common sense and able to hold a conversation. And remember, I was a teenager when I left. At 17 my peers in Hampton Roads were more capable at humaning than are my peers here at 33.
That makes me deeply sad, and I feel like such an elitist shit saying it out loud.
The first time I traveled to America, my first thought after a day meeting southerners was “man, these people are dumb as rocks”. It was a major tourist destination so I met many Americans of normal intelligence from elsewhere, and the southerners were friendly, but man… the things they chose to talk about, and questions they chose to ask, really solidified how dangerous promoting religion over education is. A democracy can only survive when the average is informed, and conservatisms overall anti-intellectualism — its multi-decade attacks on education — is the #2 predictive variable destroying western democracies (the #1 being religion itself).
Let’s just say I’ve been expecting fascist dictatorship for America for over 2 decades, so Trump/MAGA was expected… Though, even with that expectation, I didn’t expect it to be this fucking stupid.