About the Handbasket

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

It is an accepted truism that we’re going to hell in a handbasket. The “We” varies, but if you consider it “the US” or “The West” or “Human civilization” it still applies.

Now part of the reason it applies, of course, is that the world has been going to hell in a handbasket since there’s been a world, and if there were writings left by trilobites, they’d be screaming at kids these days who wear their skeleton on the inside, and what will become of the world in their tentacles?

So, some of the perceived flames and speed of the handbasket are always — and always will be — that things are changing in a way that we who are older don’t like and can’t fully process.

And while there are identifiable problems, which I write about here on the regular, it’s important to keep in mind that a lot of our dissatisfaction with the world, the younger generation, the way things are happening is just that every human has a set image of the “ideal” world, explicit or implicit in our subconscious, and that a lot of it will be based on what we internalized as a good thing as kids. So, with longer lives and the acceleration of technological change, we’re all feeling more and more like everything is going wrong and bad and evil.

Not all of it is an illusion, of course. Partly because of technological change, and because suppressed voices are finally being heard in the culture, we are aware of how far away we’ve fallen from the Constitution — and that’s important — but also that right now most of our institutions, including the formal institutions of our country, are being used against us by a cultural group (they’re not even a cabal) who hates us and our system and wants to destroy us.

And this is actually going on worldwide, because leftism could only keep up the illusion of working when it had complete control of information dissemination. And it has been losing that control since the fax and the typewriter, but it accelerated with the internet and blogs.

Their reactionary — in the proper sense — and counter-revolutionary — again in the proper sense — efforts to keep control are making things horrendous and insane and are giving the illusion that other things are going to hell in a handbasket, but in fact the change is being pushed from above, and not taking very well with the masses.

So, that particular handbasket and who is in it is important to examine. I’ve seen so many — mostly by older people — articles about how the culture is hopelessly corrupt, and no one knows their sex and blah blah blah, cue the end of the world. But none of this is true. The young are wounded — wouldn’t you be, raised in the middle of this battle royale for the culture? — and often susceptible to crazy manipulation by the left — teach your kids well — but I’ve seen them turning to the “old ways” (which are older than I, since my generation already wasn’t taught) and trying to learn the “proper way” to do things, and even in some ways longing for tradition more than my generation ever did. Sure, they are often having to find their way to the “way that works” by trying everything else first, but that’s a process that’s been going on since my generation was young. And what did you expect, when we threw them into a world where every law and tradition had been stomped flat and deemed irrelevant or evil? (And by “we” I don’t even mean my generation. We were thrown into a world half like that already, and never learned a lot of the “way things are easier to do and should be done.” Partly due to technological change, partly social, partly due to the long war of the twentieth century.)

The kids are by and large all right, or struggling mightily to be all right. And the people are largely all right, or struggling to be all right. All of it against a shitlib overculture trying to push everything to destruction and chaos.

You can tell the people are all right, and the people are winning, because all over the world the cry of the elites is “We must suppress the peasants attempts to communicate.” This is not the attitude of an “elite” that’s winning the culture.

But the other part of the basket to unpack is the genetic one. Look, if we don’t examine that basket and see it for what it is, not only are we going to be unnecessarily blackpilled, but we’re going to neglect what we absolutely need to do.

So, let’s talk about Idiocracy. Let’s talk about it, because it needs to be talked about. I’m sick and tired of seeing people say “We’re living in Idiocracy!” because that movie is idiotic and elitist, but also because genetics doesn’t work that way, ever, and also, no, we’re not.

The latest one to put a bee in my bonnet was a right wing commenter losing his mind at Sheila Jackson Lee’s version of the solar system. And claiming this proves we are now in Idiocracy.

I’m not going to name the writer claiming this is Idiocracy, because I have no beef with him. This idea is so pervasive on the right that it’s just in the air. And ooh, boy, is it dumb.

First, let’s talk about how the movie is dumb, shall we? If we’re going to talk about stories saying ‘we’re all breeding ourselves into stupidity’ The Marching Morons did it better and scared the crud out of me as a young kid. In fact, if you want to make sure that your kids want to have tons of kids, expose them to The Marching Morons. They won’t know enough about genetics to realize the time spans involved in this actually happening are just not possible in 50 or even 100 or 200 years. And they will of course assume they are the intellectual elite, and must reproduce to save humanity. Not only did it work that way on me, but also on other friends my age who read science fiction.

The thing to understand about The Marching Morons, though is that it works better than Idiocracy for two reasons: the society it shows is not actually genetically stupid. It’s obviously (“Forgive me Freud for I have neurosis”) indoctrinated/misseducated into stupidity by a pervasive and evil government. And the idea that it’s genetic is sold to us by the main character who is a highly specialized moron himself. (I.e. he’s a brilliant salesman but in many ways a dumbass. As proven by the ending, which I won’t spoil.)

Idiocracy, OTOH is … Okay, guys, I continuously rant about how most of the movies and tv shows trying to portray the very smart fail, because they’re created by midwits, according to their idea of geniuses. Which usually aren’t.

This is the opposite effect. This is a movie created by midwits, trying to portray the “dumbs”. And it fails in exactly the same way. Most of what’s depicted is not “stupidity” but “ignorance”. And stuff like…. the tv shows, say? Or the way the president is some sports star? That’s midwits sneering at those they perceive as being beneath them, and it’s classist and stupid and infuriating. It’s also not how any of this would work.

But the premise itself is flawed and wounded.

Nothing about the worldbuilding works. It’s impossible for the species to breed itself into stupidity that fast. I mean, sure, let’s assume dumb people are out-breeding the smart (actually no one is breeding much, we’re importing a vast underclass, and I’ll go into that in a moment.) Eventually it will drop the IQ of the species. But assuming it will do it that fast is exactly like the climate change panic. I mean, perhaps humans really are heating up the planet (it’s possible, though we have no actual proof of it.) But the amount can be trumped by one good disaster, and it’s so incremental we’re looking at hundreds of thousands of years to see a result. It’s something that should be of interest and concern to scientists who would meticulously measure and compare data. It is instead being screamed about and the change expected in “twelve years.” And has been for 50 now.

It is the same with genetics. Even assuming a replacement of the smart with the dumb, it would take at least a few thousand years, not a hundred or two. And the change is debatable.

There is some credence to it, in the last fifty years or so, because more “intelligent” (very hard to define) people tend to train for longer periods which lowers their fertile years of marriage. Add to this that in the last thirty years or so we’ve weaponized education to keep men and women from marrying and the more educated are indeed reproducing less.

We also of course subsidize — via welfare — the reproduction of the “less capable” in society. And because we have anti-biotics and semi-competent hygiene few of their children die.

From a thousand feet up, this looks like a situation that could lead to “Idiocracy” — only it wouldn’t, because it would be simply impossible to support that complex a civilization with people that dumb — except…

Except that the tendency of the high achieving to train forever is already starting to reverse, because the rewards aren’t there.

Except that while disease doesn’t weed the children of the poor down, drugs and gang warfare do. Lives still tend to be shorter and not particularly productive of children that survive. (Or why we are importing an underclass.)

Except that being high-achieving in society is not the same as being very smart. On the contrary. True geniuses tend to have issues functioning, let alone succeeding economically in a “normal” society. The highest-achieving economically tend to be mid-mid to slightly higher than average mid-wits. This has been proven by study after study. They need to still be in touch with the vast majority of people to succeed in a society composed of them.

And being low-achieving in society similarly has nothing to do with being an idiot. My brilliant grandfather would totally have been a welfare case for reasons of being emotionally cracked, as would his family have been (And a branch remains that, now) if there had been a welfare state.

Point being that what we tend to classify as “dumb welfare cases” can and do often throw out brilliant offspring. And the high achieving…. guys, have you paid attention to Chelsea Clinton? A young woman so dumb that not all of her parents’ money or influence can buy her a career?

Okay, so since I’m so smart, how do I explain the sheer stupidity of our politicians and our “underclass” not to mention the increasing ignorance of our middle class and incompetence of…. everyone.

Oh, very easily. You see for about a century now, worldwide, parents have been less involved in raising their own kids, “experts: have dictated education, the government schools have been run for the benefit of the government schools and to push a vague “nice” leftism which keeps getting dumber and dumber, in an effort to make everyone perform the same, and also stay in their lane and not interfere with the growing power of the bureaucrats.

Thing is, humans are strangely and bizarrely adaptable. And while genetics don’t change that rapidly, culture absolutely does. And most humans, being social apes, just want to fit in.

The politicians are dumb because — eyes Sheila Jackson Lee who I think is old enough to be my mother, so definitely not the result of breeding down — they have been pushed on the people not as being competent (though that was faked for a while, via a controlled media) but as being their color or culture. “Looks like you” is what they’ve sold politicians to populations as “and therefore understands you.” This is the whole point of redistricting.

And when you hire anyone for any reason other than competence, you degrade competence. This is inevitable, and should be put in math, honestly. A sustained regime of hiring for any reason other than competence will usher in ultimate, world-breaking incompetence. No degradation in IQ needed.

Now layer on top of this that we are now more aware of how unbelievably stupid politicians and other “experts” are and can be, because media control has been pierced.

And add to it that a lot of this Kakistocracy is intent on destroying things through malice, because they imagine this will allow them to escape punishment. (And that’s not counting how many of them are so incapable of abstract thought they really believe their meddling “improves” things. Because they’ve been told so.)

Then add to it that an increasing portion of our “underclass” was imported yesterday, or to be fair over the last 40 years. First of all, the fact they need to keep importing people directly into welfare — even illegals who have jobs still usually also are welfare cases. Look at it from their point of view. But a lot also get trapped in welfare — dispels the idea that the underclass is reproducing and taking over the world.

Second, the people we’re importing might be stupid … or not. No, seriously. We know that most of them come from societies without advanced tech, or really much tech, at least at their level. And that they’re grossly unprepared for a technological society. And by technological society, for a lot of the illegals imported under Obama, this apparently includes “knows what a toilet is.”

That is enough for them to have every appearance of being dumb as rocks. Because they are in an utterly alien world, and isolated for linguistic reasons, and not precisely aware of HOW to get on.

But even those who think they have some idea and speak the language a little are going to present as dumb compared to natives.

Look, I’m slightly smarter than the average bear. I’d consumed American media and literature from a young age. I was fluent in English on day one. I have a post graduate degree.

And yet my first ten years in this country I operated at “F*cking stupid” levels on everyday things, from grocery shopping to buying a house, to which jobs I applied for. Because I couldn’t “read” the social signals at all and wasn’t aware of the substrate of a lot of what was going on around me. I’d say I was “winged” for the first fifteen years or so, and looking back is full of cringe. But it was part of changing cultures. Which is always difficult for an adult. Not impossible, but difficult.

Given how difficult it was for me, less prepared people might be lost and fishes out of water for the rest of their lives, and given the “education” we’ll provide their kids, and the habits the kids will inherit it will take a couple more generations before they’re at “average.” REGARDLESS OF IQ. (IMHO it’s the reason TPTB import them. Easier to keep them down.)

Yeah, it means we live in clown world and that everything is stupid.

But it doesn’t mean that it’s genetic, or that the people themselves, as individuals, are stupid.

And this is very important to know.

Why?

Because humans are maleable and almost infinitely adaptable.

If the decay were indeed genetic — it really is impossible, over the three or four generations things have decayed over. Just.Not.Possible — the handbasket to hell would be on greased rails and there would be no way of stopping it except perhaps a coerced breeding and sterilization program that would make the Nazis blush.

But it’s not that bad. It’s just humans doing stupid human tricks. And it’s mostly culture.

Doesn’t mean we’re not headed for a crash or that it’s not going to hurt like a mother. We’re running on stupid so those two are inevitable.

But the cure is at hand and has started being implemented already. People are more and more mistrustful of government schools and tertiary indoctrination, as they should be.

Now it’s going to take a generation or two to turn this around. Or maybe three or four.

But it can be turned around.

Teach the children well. And build a culture that will facilitate intelligent behavior. Even from the objectively dumb.

138 thoughts on “About the Handbasket”

  1. So much this. I mean, my adopted older sister has, to be frank, a room temperature IQ (she failed the ASVAB, okay? That’s supposed to be freaking impossible to fail, and yet.) Her birth mother was classified as actually retarded. My sister’s daughter, however? From what I heard (she and I don’t really talk and never have–she was fifteen when my parents adopted her, and I was fourteen, and we had less than nothing in common) her daughter (and possibly her son) had definitely above-average intelligence. Very bright, apparently. Or, at least, very good at school–which I will grant, given the state of public schools nowadays, may not mean much or even close to the same thing as “very bright”–but, giving the benefit of the doubt here…yeah. And I’m pretty sure their father (or fathers? don’t recall if they share the same father not) was about as smart as a bag of rocks himself, so he wasn’t contributing much on the genetic front. I think most “dumb” comes more from upbringing and culture than genetics, to be honest. And where genetics get involved…well, if I’d reproduced, odds are high that one or more of my kids probably would have been in that “profoundly dysfunctional in society” stratosphere of “genius”–or autistic, or both. I only barely avoided being autistic, and I think only the fact that my genius was in communication skills (language, written and spoken) is how I avoided being more dysfunctional than I already am. But in the scale of things–for all her poor choice in men, my “idiot” sister certainly has been more functional in traditional society than I ever have been!!

    1. If “mom” overindulges in alcohol, the child-to-be gets damaged. Ditto if the umbilical cord wraps the baby’s neck during delviery and reduces essential blood flow to the brain.

      There are a whole bunch of reasons, spanning dumb luck to lousy environment to parental ass-hattery, that can leave a child with mental deficits small to profound.

      Human IQ is naturally rather variable. We tend to follow our parents, for obvious genetic reasons, but the standard deviation is rather biggish. So a pair of 100 IQ folks might produce a kid 15 points either way. And a genius or profoundly shortchanged couple might produce someone 20-30+ points different back towards the mean. Human genetics are totally weird in some ways.

  2. There are plenty of “intelligent people” that were taught stupid stuff but don’t know how stupid that stuff is. ☹

  3. But it doesn’t mean that it’s genetic, or that the people themselves, as individuals, are stupid.

    My single favorite pull quote from Men In Black: “A person is smart. People are dumb.”

    1. People in crowds are stupid, easily panicked, and dangerous.

      —Summarizing a lot of different people, books, and films from over the years.

    2. Classic maxim: To find the intelligence of a mob, divide the intelligence of the least-intelligent member by the number of people in the mob. 🙂

  4. “Smart” or “dumb” can – at least in some cases – be influenced by your perception of the world, and how things are. Law school trains students to “think like a lawyer”, and I’m of the opinion that people can similarly be “trained” to be smarter or dumber. To an extent.

    However, I’m also of the opinion that what’s “smart” or “dumb” in one situation might not be so in another. And so, actively trying to train people to be smarter (aside from basic things like knowledge, and how to think logically) risks running afoul of opening some incredible cultural blind spots.

    1. One exercises the body to develop it. You can go for power, speed, stamina, flexibility, combinations, etc. Or grow useless lumpy marsmallow.

      Mind/brain is similar.

  5. I’ve been seeing stories in the ‘news’ about the tool-belt generation – where the “kids” today are strapping on a tool belt and going into the trades and forsaking college. There has also been an interesting series of you-tube videos of a young man who went into trucking and documents driving a truck (thank-you to my wife for finding this) and what it’s like that is very interesting and popular. I’ll submit they ain’t stupid but smart in the ways of the actual world. I’ve also followed a young woman who is farming with her family – as a high school kid she is doing massively complex math and dealing with GPS and fluid dynamics to figure out how to spread manure on the bean field. Also, her tractor cab looks like a mini version of a 747 cockpit with all the controls, data feeds and electronics in use. She isn’t interested in any CRT, DEI, or PC crap all she is looking for is a better yield next year for the beans. 

    There is also a huge number of kids/people (flyover country) that have been world smart and book dumb for a long time and continue to be a major factor. Here’s a true story: My Aunt, PhD and a University Department Head for many years was smart as all get out and could explain the chemistry behind why the yolk could have a green tint to it when you hard-boiled an egg. The woman consulted with NASA back during the Moon missions. Making a grilled cheese sandwich with her was a disaster. She never learned to drive a car and lived in an urban environment her whole life but did very well for herself. How to dress for an interview? Ask Aunt Dot – finances? Dot again. Taking care of a clogged sink or a door off the hinge? She is helpless and has to call in a “handyman” to fix it. One thing she got right was shortly before she passed away she met my then girlfriend (shortly after wife) and said to me: “This is the best one yet”. I listened to Aunt Dorothy and she was right (34 years now for me and the Mrs.). 

    I will also submit that there is a major factor of “competence” in our lives now and it will be self correcting as we move on as it just won’t survive. There will always be some folks that are not-smart but there is a good chance they also ain’t stupid. For those that truly are ‘dumb’ or actually unable to properly function in a day to day living situation they simply won’t survive when society isn’t there to “catch” them when they fall. Like early life, their existence (without external support) will be brief. This is the same with organizations that ignore true merit and competence too. 

    1. One very popular video game franchise on Steam is the Truck Simulator games – Euro Truck Simulator 2, and American Truck Simulator. They’re so popular that on at least one occasion, a newly announced DLC for one of the games – which add either new countries or a state to the game – became the best-selling item on Steam for a few hours after it went on pre-order.

      And the games focus on picking up a cargo, driving your truck to the destination, and dropping off the cargo. That’s it.

    2. My dad was a salesman for a long time. He hated it but he did it because it paid for a nice house in the ‘burbs and put food on the table… until he and his entire office were purged in a company restructuring around the turn of the millennium. He tried a few different sales jobs, hated all of them, and then cashed out some retirement money to go to truck driving school. He has recently passed the million-mile mark and he LOVES it. If Michigan voters decide they don’t want property taxes (I work in that department for my county) I will be strongly considering that very same career move.

    3. I’ve been seeing the same stories also – about ambitious and smart kids doing a cold-eyed cost-to-payoff analysis of attending college – and going into skilled trades and setting up their own business instead.

      The value of a college education has been so degraded, while the costs go up – it just isn’t an attractive option for a smart, ambitious kid any more.

      1. The Reader has an 18 year old grand nephew that has made a similar choice of going into a trade. Interesting that while his father is a hand surgeon, he fully supports his son’s choice (as does the Reader).

      2. The journeyman tin-knocker assisting with some work in my datacenter made more than most of our helpdesk staff, most of whom were well established pros and all of whom we pay rather well. He had less than six months on the job. Ouch.

    4. My mother’s oldest brother is a physics professor. He is also useless at the practical details of life.

    5. An American “tool belt generation” won WW2, against two major enemies on two simultaneous fronts.

      They left us with enough to wreck an Evil Empire and hold off another in the lengthy Cold War.

      The college scam generation have a much shittier record.

  6. Chelsea Clinton may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she is a success by one standard. She’s born 3 kids and they may even live to reproductive adulthood themselves.

    1. Rumor years ago is Chelsea in Space Camp was terrified of (and dominated by) her mother and adored Bill. Given her upbringing, maybe it’s surprising she’s done as well as she has.

      1. One thought that I have about Chelsea is that her mother may be pushing her into careers that Chelsea didn’t like or want to do.

        Chelsea might do better in careers/lifestyles that she wanted to do not what her mother wanted her to do.

        1. I’m fairly certain Hillary wanted a clone of herself. Lord knows if the technology was reliable, that’s exactly what she would have done.

          1. Sadly, plenty of parents have that temptation but some don’t act on it.

            Of course, she’s the worse person to try to make a “clone” of her daughter.

            Oh, I suspect that Hillary is the reason that the Clintons only had one child. She got her “clone” and made sure that she wouldn’t have any more children.

        3. Preaching to the choir. I’d be terrified if Hillary Clinton was my mother too. I’m surprised Chelsea found someone who was willing to take Hillary on. Talk about a MIL from Hell.

          1. The deciding vote for Slick Willie’s RETROACTIVE middle-class tax increase in 1993 was a Congresswoman named Marjorie Margolies-Mesvinsky. She knew her constituents hated the idea but she was persuaded to vote for it anyway. She was actually surrounded by a group of large men, mostly House leadership, while she cast her pushbutton vote, and remained surrounded until the voting clock expired so that she could not change it. The video of this is actually creepy. She served only the one term and failed re-election by a landslide. Nobody remembers this, but …

            Chelsea’s married name is Mesvinsky. This is not a coincidence. The congresswoman’s price for that vote was apparently that her grandkids would be “royalty”.

            1. Dang. Talk about selling one’s soul to the devil. Too bad Chelsea is upsetting the apple cart, probably with hubby’s help. Hear nothing about the “royal” grandchildren. That is the whole point of setting them up to be royalty.

      3. You’ve heard sad stories of a mother losing her child to cancer.

        Maybe this is a happy story where cancer loses its child to a healthy life?

  7. Over the last few years, I’ve sometimes gotten the impression that much of the organized malfeasance of TBTP these days can be traced to TBTP having a time table that they are attempting to follow, and significant mile stones in that time table are linked to the 2030s.

    And much of the brazenness that we see today is linked to both a sense that things will be fully under their control once the target date is reached (so they have nothing to fear from us in the long run), and a desperation created by a realization that the population at large isn’t going to meekly allow the yoke to be put in place. And as a result, said population must be kept firmly under control until the target date.

    Adding to that, while there is a time table, and presumably they envision some sort of ruling structure will be put in place as a result of that time table, positions within the structure are still very much open to debate. And thus, jockeying for position exists between TPTB subfactions.

      1. Because the WEF made the timetable, the UN followed suit, and no one wants to be left standing out with the commoners when the arrow of history ™ hits the target.

        1. I knew there was knavery afoot, but when I started to see ads for The Great Reset appearing in the middle of Covidiocy, I knew it was worse than I realized.

        2. Pretty much. And unlike now, the power structure doesn’t potentially get upset every few years when voters go to the polls. So if you’re near the top when the new structure gets imposed, you’ll *stay* near the top.

        3. I continue to wonder when the Davos crowd will realize that their regular meetings there represent a buffet for the “eat the rich” sects.

      2. For the same reason the communists always have Five Year Plans.

        And it’ll probably be even less effective than the communists were.

        1. Yep. The addiction to 5-Year Plans has been a “feature” of ComWorld for a long time. And when the planned/predicted results fail to materialize there are Great Leaps Forward and similar idiocies.

    2. Emotionally, it makes sense that they would have a time table simply for the fact that they are not really Jewish, nor Christian, and are afraid of not getting their worldly rewards in this life. Also, age.

      But they could have simply warped their minds with their flavor of magical thinking.

      It could also be an intelligent response to the feedback that their scheme is failing. I’m not sure that the filters they trained onto their perceptions would allow them to perceive and intelligently respond to such.

  8. But it doesn’t mean that it’s genetic, or that the people themselves, as individuals, are stupid.

    “A person is smart. People are dumb, stupid animals. And you know it.”

  9. The thing the left fears most is the fact that the more the people learn, the more they become conservative. Only the laziest most indoctrinated remain Liberal/Progressive/Communist. That is why they have to keep importing a new underclass, as soon as they learn enough they go back to what they always were, Conservative and Christian, mostly Catholic. Certainly not liberal or Communist, which is one of the racist whitest Ideas to ever spring up.

    1. Which is why the left works so hard to keep people ignorant. Those who are not ignorant will never fall for leftism’s unworkable conformist society that even heavy doses of fairy dust couldn’t bring about. 

  10. I coach a rugby club and spend a great deal of time with the players and their families and friends. I agree that the kids are alright. My sister’s boys, the ivy crowd, not so much but that’s mostly performative. most of them will be alright too. I really believe that this too shall pass and is already passing 

      1. In my case, not going to college “for real” until I was 24 had a lot to do with being able to fend off the indoctrination in the first place — and it wasn’t even that bad back in the ’80s. I got out of school just in time.

      2. I’m glad I went back to grad school after a decade in the Real World™. And I busted my rump to get in, get the degrees, and get out, much to the mild astonishment of the faculty.

        1. It only took me seven years to get the same result, under the unwitting tutelage of my Crazy Uncle Sam. Consider me AND the faculty mildly astonished.

      3. Amen to the mid-thirties shakeout. That’s when I finally understood the question “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” So I cut back on intellectualizing and got busy with being clever, methodical, and little bit wise. Which paid off, making me and my wife into comfortable Nine-Percenters. Ones who are extremely skeptical of intellectuals.

  11. Absent congenital issues or trauma related brain damage, it’s the environment, stupid.

    The number one correlation with “does well on IQ tests” across all other categories is “books in home and read to from young childhood”. Not “Einstein and Madame Curie made a baby.” Books and being read to.

    1. THIS!

      THIS!

      THIS!

      The only explanation for my academic success is that Mom taught me to read (via phonics) before I hit school. My parents weren’t geniuses by any means, and we were poor — poorer because only Dad was working, but that was a choice. Mom also taught me basic arithmetic, with one gumdrop on the first stair, and two on the second stair, and so forth, and the sum of all gumdrops as a reward for getting it right. I read my way through Heinlein’s juveniles in third grade, and I didn’t actually need to study anything in math until eighth-grade algebra. Wound up with a PhD in hard science from a well-known Institute and a succession of fun and lucrative jobs.

      Teach your kids to read! Or your grandkids, or your nieces and nephews, or your cousin’s kids, or any kids you can reach. And make them read aloud, even though they’ll hate it because it’s so slow compared to reading in your head. It won’t just help them, it will help the country as a whole, even the world. We need as many smart kids as we can get.

      (Why does this work? Possibly because a kid’s brain gets a great rewiring at about age 5. If they’re reading and counting before that, it gets built into the operating system. Later, and it’s just an app. It’s the difference between learning a language as a “mother tongue” and trying to learn one in school.)

  12. And to continue the theme of obsessively nitpicking at the certainly good enough AI images on the free ice cream, I guess the image is the male hand basket to hell, and there’s another one for the guuuurls.

        1. Depends whether “Included In The Handbasket to Hell” is preferential in the AI’s worldview.

  13. >build a culture that will facilitate intelligent behavior. Even from the objectively dumb.

    This is a key point – forget trying to get statistically similar profiles of humans in each industry, focus on trying to create paths for more people to succeed wherever they are.

  14. Frequently, folks say “stupid” and they mean “doesn’t behave as I think is reasonable with my assumptions.”

    Or, worse, “makes some points that, if true, threaten me.”

    1. They also tend to use “stupid” when the correct term is “ignorant”. Which, unlike stupid, is curable.

      Of course, the epitome of that are those who insist that the pyramid builders, or the Romans, or many others, were less intelligent than people today because they failed to invent everything we have. I’m tempted to assign “stupid” to them, since their smug ignorance doesn’t seem to be curable. 😒

      As for the “threatened” ones, I suspect their hysterical fear is also not curable.

  15. I actually liked Idiocracy, even though I don’t buy the hypothesis. It treated people as worth saving, which is rare for satire (Dr. Strangelove jumps to mind).

    1. It’s very much a dude humor movie. Which is not a bad thing.

      I tend to snarl because people use it as evidence. And have for years.

      (Amusingly, only today did I realize that they’re basically…doing the time machine trick of one of the characters. Which is a little amusing, unless it’s a situation where they’re doing harm.)

      1. And the funny thing is, they don’t realize how deeply subversive the movie is.

        Think about it.
        Is racism a problem in the movie? Anthropogenic global warming? Inequality? War? The cult of expertise? Any of the other neuroses of the very concerned and smugly self-regarding?
        Now think about how many of those “issues” were gleefully subverted by a bunch of ‘tards.

        This was a flick MADE to be deconstructed. The lens is one of sneering superiority, but…. Seriously, tell me wouldn’t prefer that President to ours.

        (I had someone pull it out as evidence once. Back when the movie was still fresh in my head. Few arguments have been as fun. For me, at least.)

        1. ….dude, the problem of the movie is “only stupid people are breeding.”

          Which is one of their neuroses.

          Evidence, the line I just quoted is from a pop song…..

  16. I think that part of the “going to hell” feeling is that, for most people, life does get progressively more difficult. Beginning when that warm cozy place in Mom begins to get cramped.

    1. Probably correct, but not pathologically so for most; most of us seem to outgrow it when we become adults. The problem is that many today are encouraged, or even mandated (helicopter parents, or the smothering sort of child protective laws), to remain children.

        1. Sure, I have the same reaction. But by nature the things that prompt that reaction result from the actions of the lunatic fringe; the “squeaky wheel” syndrome. And the MSM are happy to provide the “oil”. They are not anywhere near a majority, or even a large minority.

    1. President Camacho had several admirable qualities:

      He loved his country.

      He was willing to listen to advisors smarter than he was.

      He made an effort to determine if they were, in fact, smarter than he was, not just pretending to be.

      1. I’m guessin gyou figured it out, but you have to hit the plus mark and insert it as an embed, now.

        At least sometimes.

        1. No, I didn’t, I just used the comment form at WP.com instead. I wish to god they would stop “fixing” things. If it works and people use it that way then DON’T EFFING CHANGE IT JUST BECAUSE.

          1. I think they misread the Emerson quote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” At that rate, no hobgoblins at WP. Not sure about any minds, regardless of size, though.

            I’m impressed by how it occasionally gives the header text box, and other times, skips it. Note that “impressed” doesn’t necessarily mean “approve”.

            1. Why they need these fancy new boxes and shite, instead of just letting us write comments in Markdown, is beyond me. Idiots justifying their salaries, more likely than not.

              1. I think they are drying to draw in users who are not HTML savvy, and so are “making it easier.”

                They’ve “easy”-ed some of my favorite features out of the free side of the platform. What’s been added is aimed at commercial blogs/sites with lots of graphics and limited text, as best I can tell.

          2. If it works and people use it that way then DON’T EFFING CHANGE IT JUST BECAUSE.

            Where have I heard that before? Oh. Yes. Every change. Note, the changes made were user driven. Every fall there was 2 – 3 conferences. Washington, California, and sometimes Facilities, regardless of location. Out of those 3 conferences a list was compiled of changes requested. Then that list was pared down to what could be accomplished in a year (😂😂😂😂😂😂 sorry could not type that without LOL). While the code comments usually had the ticket number and change list number in it, that wasn’t always communicated to the users (that is until one of the changes was listing the change comments). Even when they were told why we got push back because a change was made. I swear programmers cannot win.

            I still get the frustration. I roll my eyes too when WP makes changes, what appears to be “just out of the blue”. Not kidding when I say “I write (wrote) software. I don’t use it.”

  19. It’s hard to assess intelligence when the Education Authoriteez actively teach students not to think. They call you names and punish you for thinking. They reward you for reciting the Approved Bullshit Of The Day. Which might be the exact opposite of yesterday’s Approved Bullshit.

    2. I have said for years we are building a generation of perfect deep cover operatives, fully able to mimic their way into any society and completely hide their internal selves.

      1. That, and a generation raised to consider lying, oathbreaking, etc as being what you’re supposed to do to keep your position, etc.

        See our current government, the medical establishment during COVID, etc.

  20. I think you are being harsh on Idiocracy, which was not meant to be credible speculation, but was rather a spoof of then-current idiocies, with a veneer of SF to make it a bit more cutting. I mean, come on, a skyscraper is basically duct-taped together to keep from collapsing. That’s not meant as serious, but as a humorous embiggenment of the kind of mentality that drives a beater around without worrying about maintenance.

    Further, while the montage explaining how the idiocracy came about talks about genetics (and maybe Mike Judge even meant it), what it lays out could just as easily be the culture of stupidity that has pervaded American public education for at least fifty years. I don’t mean the culture that public education claims to try to impose, I’m talking about how kids actually interact with each other. Kids who are perceived as being “too smart” are ostracized and punished by their peers (this manifests in some subcultures as kids being accused of “acting white”), and reason and logic only make it worse. Having lived through that nonsense as a smart kid, the courtroom scene in particular was painfully real. Even his own lawyer stopped caring about anything but fitting in with all the others there, and not being seen as taking the side of the ‘tard.

    And the whole running gag with Brawndo is very, very real. I’ve had that conversation with people who could not (or would not) think, but just kept repeating their comforting cant. Again, not necessarily a function of IQ at all, but a trenchant depiction of trying to communicate with the stupendously ignorant.

    1. “Ostracized and punished by their peers….”

      Ah, most of my elementary/junior high experience.

  22. 1-Idiocracy…my theory-if we wanted to think seriously about the world building as world-building and not satire-is that all of the smart people hid, found somewhere that the idiots couldn’t bother them, and built a meritocracy that worked mostly because they knew what the alternatives were. If somebody showed up on the outside that was smart, they grabbed them and brought them to their Hidden Elf Village to keep them safe.

    All of the things that shouldn’t have worked there? The smart people built them so that the idiots would be fully distracted and not bother them at all. Having an average-IQ person with good common sense is a danger to them because they could look behind the curtain, as it were.

    2-I grew up with my family wanting me to get a degree, because you needed a college education to get anywhere.

    Well, I got my degree in 2022. Managed to do it because everything worked out right. Should have gotten it in 2007-08, but circumstances didn’t work out then. And…most of the things that I could do with the degree (English: Concentration in Professional Writing and Rhetoric, AKA Technical and Professional Writing) are being farmed out to Large Language Model (aka “AI”) systems. Or are firing people like mad and not hiring anyone new.

    It’s frustrating, because I’m not a “trades” kind of person and writing was a job that allowed me to do something that functioned. Now, it’s going away.

    (Don’t even ask me about the interview process for jobs with county and state agencies. I swear, it’s made to weed out anybody who can think.)

    I don’t think we’re going to Hell in a Handbasket. But I do think that the dynamics of the world are changing and enough people are putting a stick in things to make the change-over much more painful.

    1. Here’s the secret to local .gov jobs: They Already Have Someone They Want to Hire. The entire process is to let them justifiably reject you so they can hire someone’s cousin.

      1. I have to believe otherwise, because my father wants me to get a job that is a state or county job, that has CalPERS, and is “stable.”
        It allows us to have some kind of domestic harmony.

    2. Tell me about “jobs going away”. Mentioned before I am a forester turned programmer. Not the only one either. Been seeing programming jobs go away too. Not because there is nothing to program. Ask Sarah to ask Dan. Dan and I have been lucky to continually find jobs. Too many others haven’t. Don’t know about Dan, but not all my job changes resulted in increased salary and benefits. I never left my job (prior to retirement). Jobs left me, and everyone else in the company.

      1. That seems to be how it works, unless you’re a particular wizard in terms of programming types or working a job where you’re plugged in far too well into the system itself.
        Never had those.
        Dad did (law enforcement, then he was the guy that they could trust to get things done). Thinks that everybody could have that if they Worked Hard Enough (TM).

  23. Way back in the dark ages had a test from a teacher with the question on should we have dropped the atomic bombs. I knew what answer was wanted, but answered yes anyway and then wrote a small essay on how it saved lives in the long run. 

    Got marked wrong.

    Lesson learned, authority is to be questioned and pushed to prove their point at every step. Don’t think the teachers in the school were happy with me after that.

    I may have a problem with being just a wee bit stubborn. And been known to dig in and not move even when I should simply because I will not tolerate being pushed.

    So, some people get more onery the more you beat them.

  24. As a somewhat happier set of thoughts, however, I have to say that I have had the feeling that we’re re-doing 1989 over again, only more so. The feeling began around the beginning of this year, and it keeps getting stronger.

    In April 1989, students began protesting the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. They were, at least to begin with, calling the Party out for not living up to its supposed ideals, but the motivations and how they evolved gets complicated. Internal communication controls kept word from getting out much inside of China, even as the rest of the world watched in puzzled fascination, right up to the moment the tanks were sent in and the protests were crushed.

    (For the record, the outcome of those protests and the government response was, for decades, a net positive for the people of China, up to about 2010, but I’ll not rant about Xi right now.)

    Then the world kept turning and things seemed normal until November, when communism fell, seemingly all at once. German students protested at the Berlin Wall, then danced on it, then tore it down. The Iron Curtain fell all across Europe, leading to the Best Christmas Ever in Romania. The USSR kept chugging along for a few years, but it, too, ultimately fell.

    Shorter version: The People, a small subset of them, stood up to communist tyranny in one communist nation, and the tyranny blinked. Kids in other communist nations, already aware through pirated video tapes that life in capitalist countries was infinitely superior, saw that, thought about what it meant about the power of their own tyrannical governments… and brought them down in an eyeblink.

    Now look at today.

    Most of the governments of the west and the developed world have been commandeered by the retarded grandchildren of the communists, led by a German with dreams of controlling the world. They keep declaring they are going to end freedom and control every aspect of your life, and think they are clever by phrasing it as marketingspeak, then getting offended when us plebes interpret the marketingspeak correctly. There are farmer protests against government control/destruction of the food supply across Europe (in addition to the yellow vest protests in France that never really stopped). There are protests against the socialist government in Brazil. Argentina got so fed up with their ruling class they elected, in a landslide (and continue to support in similar numbers) a man the WEF probably consider a maniac bent on destroying government — and he’s delivering tangible, measurable, undeniable results.

    Oh, and China? It’s not been getting reported much in English media, but there have been protests. Not localized to one city. Nothing large, and there are a lot of factors (because China, complexity is baked in no matter what course events take), but… If a protest against the government breaks out today, unlike in 1989, they have internet. And the government has learned, to its terror, that no amount of controls can actually stop word from getting out. If a real protest starts, it could spread to every major city (and there are a lot of those), and even if the People’s Liberation Army would accept orders to fire upon its own citizens, protests in every city literally could not be put down, the army is not big enough. (And the PLA considers what happened in June 1989 to be the most shameful, dishonorable event in its history. OFFICIALLY.)

    I can’t point to anything precise to justify my feeling, but it is not going away, is getting stronger, and the idiots in control of the levers of government keep doubling and tripling down on stupid.

    ¡Viva la Libertad, carajo!

    1. What the CCP learned in 1989 was that a local garrison might balk if ordered to suppress the locals. Because that’s what happened. They had to bring in a unit from another part of the country to suppress the demonstration.

      1. Well, also that PLA Generals within notional driving distance of Beijing (you never keep major regular troop formations in an imperial capital, too tempting), ordered to mount up their units and drive into the city to kill the kids in the square, would “Yes sir!” smartly but mysteriously and silently miss their movement schedules for days on end, and when queried report “mechanical difficulties” and such.

        Word is they went through some non-small number of units and Generals who kept not getting on the road before they put together enough troops to kill all those kids.

        Afterward a large number of PLA General Officer offspring, being upper-class in the classless paradise, were noted to have been attending Beijing area universities.

        Lots of Generals and their families to shoot afterward.

        1. IIRC, these days there is a PLA unit effectively deployed at Beijing (probably just outside the city, actually).

          There’s also a security unit (I can’t remember the exact department) *specifically* designated to keep an eye on that PLA unit.

          If anyone in the PLA got shot, I haven’t heard about it. I suspect there were a number of “early retirements”, though.

      2. Not exactly. There were outside units brought in, but also exactly nobody in the PLA had training in crowd control, and a hideously unclear order was given (perhaps deliberately unclear) in early June, leading to confusion and then the bloodbath.

        Then in 1996 the Party was writing the official history of recent events, and tried to get the students labeled as counter-revolutionaries. And the PLA leaders, unanimously as I understand it, said Fuck No, those were the People we were supposed to be protecting, and we failed them. Call them or what they did anything like that, and we will give you Big Problems.

        Which is why, in the official CCP history of 1989, the events of Tiananmen are referred to as “an incident”, and nothing worse.

        (None of which is to exonerate anyone for what happened, but it was more a cascade of incompetence than it is usually portrayed in the west, when it’s portrayed at all any more.)

        Will portions of the PLA today be more loyal to Xi than to their ideals? Almost certainly. Will that happen in massive enough numbers to put down protests in all major cities across that enormously large country, all at the same time, to such an extent as to quell the growing sentiment against the CCP? I doubt it.

    2. Hopefully the current dissidents in China have learned not to bunch up, other than momentarily for specific short actions.

      “Rapid” isn’t in the CCP playbook.

    3. Since some of the Usual Suspects (not here, elsewhere) are pontificating about how to survive being at ground zero for a nuclear attack, I’d peg it closer to 1986, or ’68, or ’84, or …

        2. I’m dreaming of a Romanian Christmas
          Just like the one that happened once
          Where totalitarians become cooling meat
          And people taste liberty sweet…..

          1. Since my email sigfile is…

            “…I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” — Merry Romanian Christmas! (I have a little list…)

            …I can hardly disagree. 😊👍👍👍

        1. Slathers on like pitch, smells like Cosmolene.

          But the best part is, it catches fallout. Just scrape it off, roll into pellets, and feed into your handy backyard BWR – be the first on your block to have power restored!

  25. You often remind us to check our assumptions for leftover, baked-in Marxist thinking. Now I think I might need to do the same to you — by saying “I mean, sure, let’s assume dumb people are out-breeding the smart. […] Eventually it will drop the IQ of the species.” This makes the assumption that IQ is genetic. What evidence is there for that?

    As evidence that IQ is trained, not genetic, I offer the fact that adopted kids, if adopted at a young age before their culture and habits are formed, end up with IQs much closer to their adopted parents than their biological ones. Plus there’s that Norwegian study that showed an average gain of 7 IQ points from two extra years of schooling, across a LARGE number of young men (over 100,000 being given IQ tests as they entered military service, hence why only young men were tested).

    As anecdata that IQ is unlikely to have a genetic component, I offer one of my relatives. He has three brothers. (Full brothers, not half: same parents for all four). Three of them (including my relative) are geniuses. The fourth has a mental disability of some kind (I’ve never pried) and, while he can hold down a job working with his hands (last I heard he was working a janitorial job), is not capable of living on his own, so one of his brothers takes care of him. If IQ was mostly genetic, you’d expect this kind of thing to be rare, and expect mental disabilities to show up for more often in clusters of siblings. But to the best of my knowledge (and do correct me if I’m wrong), people like my relative’s brother are the more typical case: a single child with low IQ in a family of much higher IQ.

    So for myself, I have no reason to think that low IQ has a genetic component. What I see, based on my own experience, is people who won’t, or have been trained not to, think. Intellectual laziness, not lack of innate intelligence. That’s cultural, not genetic.

    1. The human brain is grown via the same DNA as the other bits, so how folks think and how well must also have a genetic component. Lots of variables make for lots of variability.

      1. Not necessarily. It’s entirely possible that the basic template for the brain is genetic, but that intelligence is entirely dependent on the stimuli the person receives after the brain has grown. I.e., the neurons are genetic. But the connections the neurons make between them are not determined by genetics, they’re determined by life experience. Hence why babies grow up speaking the language their parents spoke to them, rather than a language encoded in their genes. A baby born to Spanish speakers who’s adopted at age 1 by English speakers will grow up with English, not Spanish, as a mother tongue.

        I will readily grant that some parts of brain formation do appear to have a genetic component. For example, ADD appears to be inheritable, though (according to the ADD-specialist doctor who told me this 20 years ago) the probability ranges from 30% to 80%, which strongly suggests that a wide variety of genes, in multiple combinations, are involved.

        But I suspect that the basic template is all that’s genetic, and unless something goes wrong (Down’s syndrome, etc.) nearly everyone can reach high IQs. And that the average being average has a lot more to do with whether kids have a school that motivates them to do well, or whether they end up stuck in a prison of a school and learn to hate learning.

        1. The brain is flesh, proveably grown via genetic code, like the rest of the body. It isn’t done with major growth until about age 25. Like the rest, it has development over lifetime.

          Like the rest, it is subject to developement through exercise. (Or its absense)

          Genetics play a huge role in what material you have to develop. An endomorph body can be taught to be and developed as a good basketball player or fencer but hockey or football might yield greater result for same effort. An ectomorph probably gets better results for same effort training as a runner versus Sumo.

          Not all brains are the same, either. But brains seem far more adaptable than body-type. But there are also different “brain-types”.

          Root problem: “IQ” is almost a meaningless buzzword in most casual discussions.

          Folks today are as flabby and obese in mind and soul as they are in body. -That- is the problem.

          Get off the couch and -work-, body, mind, and soul.

          1. To the point about flabby minds, I was reading a substack where the Author was recounting the experience he had going into old archives and reading the transcripts of militia court martial proceedings from early America.

            The people involved were all regular farmers and craftsman with limited formal education, since it was the militia, and no lawyers involved since it was military proceedings. And yet the people evinced a use of rational thought and clear vision of logic that completely blows away what you see in our over culture.

            These were people who had to use their minds as well as their bodies to succeed and it showed.

      1. I understand. No worries. I’ve been there, done that, too. Usually not allergies in my case, usually sleep deprivation due to baby.

    2. Because they insist on having mattresses and pads, and fluffier pads, and 1) it is horribly tall and 2) kills my back. I need a hard, firm, board-like, non-sleeper-swallowing surface for my snoozes.

      Here endeth the rant.

    1. And that’s why I try to read the comments before I provide a helpful link. Thanks!!

  28. Slowly catching up on blogs. I’m not sure I’d class Chelsea Clinton as stupid. The impression I get is she has absolutely no interest in power or fame, despite her parents wanting her to be their scion immensely.

    I rather suspect she just wants to be wealthy and upper class privately and be left alone.

    I don’t think it’s even possible to be those two’s daughter and somehow glide through society with little more than a blip like she seems to otherwise. A put the only thing I can remember if her is I think she had a ridiculously expensive wedding, and mostly managed to a voice having that remembered too.

    1. When she was at Stanford, the local rumor mill from “The Farm” had her solidly mediocre in all aspects – not gifted-but-cruising or a moron, just solidly holding down the tallest bit of the bell curve.

      1. Or chose to fail?

        It could be easier or safer to for her to agree to Hillary “pushing her” into that and deliberately failing, than it would for her to tell Hillary “no way”.

      2. That could just as easily be lack of interest as lack of ability. If Chelsea Clinton doesn’t want a Career, failing every job that could start one until her parents stop pushing her into them is certainly a way to avoid it.

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