While many Americans can be stunningly ignorant, I lived in Spain and found many Spaniards to be stunningly ignorant. (Sorry, Spanish dopers! You’re a wonderful people!) In my experience, Americans are actually more knowledgeable of foreign countries and cultures than many other groups as a function of immigration and America’s place on the world stage.
Being “for change consistently” is at best a non-message (“Whatever you don’t like? Oh, yeah, we’ll change that! Because you know, we invented change!” – hmm yes and my generation invented intercourse) and at worst a cheap carnival tactic when approval ratings for the incumbent run almost but not quite as low as the full scale IQ score necessary to come up with that sort of masterful rhetoric.
Well, the median is one kind of average, arithmetic mean being but another; however, given the nature of intelligence, while it is dubious to begin with to assume it to be a linearly ordinal quantity, even granting that, it is yet more dubious to suppose it to be significantly cardinal, so as to allow calculation of the latter. Thus, it is not so unreasonable to suppose that when one speaks of average intelligence, one means thereby to use the median.
(Though, I don’t think that’s what these people are doing. Rather, they are thinking of intelligence as a cardinal quantity, if they consider such details at all, but also presuppose its distribution to be symmetric, thus identifying the mean and median)
I have no further contribution to this thread.
Exactly, most will worry about things they have control over, unlike national politics. Conversations about how to change the world are reserved those special people sitting in coffee shops across America. Those middle class young adults who have no problems, but have lots of time and energy. It is usually these people that get the country back on course after everyone else stopped caring about where it was going.
The politically inclined half (maybe less) of America will always have to pick up the slack for those who don’t closely follow politics. Things will get wonky, but at least we have enough people watching to scream if things start to get really bad. I think the rest of the country is smart enough to understand that bad things are happening when they’re pointed out to them, but not smart enough to figure it out on their own.
There is at least a vocal minority that I would consider stupid and/or insane.
There are people I disagree with, and then there are people I disagree with whose line of reasoning is completely alien.
First, average intelligence isn’t very smart. Face it; humans may be the smartest animals on the planet, and the smartest humans are very smart, but average human intelligence is, in absolute terms, not great.
Second, humans are wired to think irrationally about political issues. And as has been pointed out in other threads (I think **Sam Stone **made this point in the why is the media the suXX0r thread), the profusion of political blogs, etc., means people can (and do) just choose to go places where their views are reinforced. So their ignorance is reinforced and rewarded, seldom challenged.
I was planning to say the same thing, but you beat me to it.
Stupid is such a loaded word. I have no reason to believe Americans are any more or less “stupid” than any other humans.
I do, however, think that a huge percentage of Americans lack curiosity, as well as critical thinking and planning skills. They seem to believe they are inherently and perpetually entitled to a more comfortable standard of living than the majority of the globe. Moreover, the historical power and safety of the US has encouraged a great many Americans to be quite critical of other countries, while blindly defending US actions. Finally, a majority of Americans seem extremely interested in consumption with little regard to the costs, and seem allergic to most forms of sacrifice or self restraint.
ignorance combined with lack of critical thinking ability is the shortest way for me to sum it up.
from a conversation I had with a student and her parents.
(she initiated it by asking who I wanted to win the upcoming election then gave her choice instead of waiting for my answer)
McCain was her choice, so I asked her why
hes the christian candidate, Obama isnt
hes anti abortion, Obama isnt
hes willing to keep fighting the war on terror in Iraq.
I coulndt pass on all of that so I asked her if McCain is a christian candidate what has he done thats so christian to prove that? besides cheat on his wife. no answer
what do you think he will do about abortion? she of course thought he would try to make it illegal again, I pointed out that there is absolutely no chance that abortion will ever be made illegal in Americas current society and that McCain can say all he wants about it but the truth is hes just talking to say things you want to hear
and then the war in Iraq…the one about terrorism? yeah I had to infor both her and her parents that according to every investigation conducted by both our government and those of other countries there IS NO CONNECTION BETWEEN IRAQ AND TERRORISM. Bush lied. you were lied to, if you think I am lying to you now Google it and read the report for yourself.
I aint trying to say Obama is some kind of angel, I am not trying to sway opinions here I just want you to turn your brain into the ON position before you go and vote for 4 more years hell.
Have you some antipathy to capital letters and punctuation, like e.e. cummings?
not sure if its like e.e. cummings or not but yeah, english in general gets on my nerves and its even worse with a wrist brace making you miss type all over hell and back
If we are stupid we have certainly bumbled our way into creating a pretty darn good place to live. More folks clawing to get in than out.
There are days when I’m convinced we’re wrecking the place but somehow I haven’t been persuaded any other nation has done as good a job with such a heterogeneous population.
Well, half of them have to be less intelligent than average, right? And average isn’t very bright.
(yes, I know the difference between average and median, but they aren’t that different in this case)
His own way. 
A sidenote, but since it was brought up, statistically as intelligence grows people’s politics move right.
American Splendor: Average! Man, average is dumb!
You’ll have to provide a cite for that one.
*
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.* - John Stuart Mill
**American Splendor **- I don’t know HARVEY, do you think your a Nerd?
Anyway.
Some people need to start giving some cites here or chill out with the statistically this statistically that talk. 
I think Americans are lazy mostly. I also think the ones who have the power to make change are greedy and selfish. Stupid? Well, drive on the Beltway here in DC and you’ll see stupid. Trust me.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Most folks are smart enough on their own ground.
Corrolary: They are not smart enough off their own ground, yes?
Someone wise once told me that not everyone has the luxury to consider everything in depth. She was right. Everyone, no matter how bright, uses heuristic algorithms in their decision-making process.
So, is that wrong? At what cost does it become right or wrong- either way?
It’s a decision we each make.
If you mean stupid in the sense of “lacking in intelligence,” we must first define intelligence. The ability to solve problems quickly with a low chance of error would seem to be the best definition, since most “learning quickly” metrics are dependant on retaining large amounts of information with low exposure- a trait linked to, but not solely coupled with, intelligence.
I think most Americans have more pressing issues. It’s where Trotsky and Lenin erred- the proletariat wants three square meals a day, a roof that doesn’t leak, to leave something to his heirs and hopefully have enough left for a few creature comforts.
Once one has the luxury to have all that secured, one is free to solve problems and think.
Or: Bad damned question, of course a large percentage of people are objectively “stupid” if stupid is defined as “of less than average intelligence,” since intelligence follows a non-symmetric distribution. Obviously, that’s not what the OP meant.