It seems to be the nature of Amerikans to think in this extreme fashion, everything is either right or wrong, no grey areas and no middle ground. When your side is always the right one and the other side is always the wrong one then everything is viewed through a polarizing lens and ultimately a selfish lens. I live in Canada, just a mile from the border with the US and I can tell you that this sort of polarized thinking does spill over the border. Perhaps it is because it appeals to the selfish child that exists in all of us, me first, gimme, gimme but it is no way to build a civilized society.
Canadians own a lot of rifles, we use them to hunt but we rarely use them to shoot other people.
Amerikan friends tell me that Canadians don't have any guns and that our government prohibits them, they are surprised to hear that we have lots of guns per capita and the guns that we do restrict are ones that are mainly designed for killing people. Maybe that's why we have so few mass shootings or even single gun homicides?

What can I say? I don’t want to intrude on private introspection...but it pretty well sums it up correctly!

That was helpful . Very clear. I don't feel any better living amongst them though.

I lived overseas for fifteen years, and that experience gave me a different perspective on the country, I think. Since my return, I, too, have been wondering what is so brilliantly expressed in this article: "... Can people really be this selfish? This oblivious? This…thankless? Why do they keep voting for less healthcare, retirement, education, income, savings, happiness, trust, year after year — even the so-called good ones? What kind of people…why are they literally the only people left in the whole world who do that? And then…complain bitterly about not having…the very things…they deny each other? Who can even make sense of this, the bizarre circular firing squad of social suicide that America has become?"

I like your sign.

Unfortunately we too have IDIOTS here in Australia. Our current prime minister and his cohorts are in that category. So sad. I wish they would emigrate to the US at once, they would feel more comfortable there I am sure.

We have idiots in the UK too, those who have forgotten these freedoms and what it cost to gain them. Now in a Trumpian cascade of idiotic quasi patriotism we are departing the European Union at the time we need it most.

Keep fighting honey

I've wondered if it's actually your vaunted Bill of Rights which is part of the problem. It seems to encourage selfishness and miss the idea that rights for the individual will frequently conflict with rights for the community ( your 2nd amendment being a classic case in point). Perhaps you should replace it with a Bill of Responsibilities and Rights.

But I thought USA was the new social experiment.

The Idiocracy has been developing well for decades and don’t see any break in its solid march forward

Americans are so well off that we are disconnected with reality. I have a great many friends from having my YouTube channel from all over the world. I often apologize for my ignorance as an American. They seem to have the hardest tie understanding how religion can make an entire nation "idiots". This is why I am active online and try to help people escape religion.

Seriously, am I the only one here who has a problem with this?

It's posts like these that demonstrate how you don't need religion to be ignorant and biased, nor does rejecting religion guarantee that you are reasonable and logical.

This article may contain ideas that people here largely agree with and have a solid grasp on grammar but logically, it's a nightmare.

"Everyone else agrees that I'm correct and it's only a few crazy outsiders who disagree."
"If you don't agree with my ideas, you are an idiot who is a danger to society. Not only that, but you are contemptible and selfish and generally an all around bad person."
"If you argue with my position, it's because you are mired in backwards thinking and your argument won't be worth listening to."
"My proof that you are backwards idiots is that you don't meet the standards I have deemed the true evidence of the situation."

I will make up my own mind about political issues by looking at the facts and applying actual logic to them. If that makes me an idiot in this person's eyes, or anyone else here, then that is your loss, not mine.

In try to avoid commenting too much, on the US politics of this site, since its none of my business really, but these days it hard to walk by. I am glad someone overseas said what they did in the article, but it goes way beyond that. How can so many US citizens not understand that this president is not merely making you look immoral and selfish, but laughably silly? It is getting to the stage where just saying, USA and politics, together in the same sentence gets a laugh.

very good article, sad but the truth

A very well written summary, it provoked a flashback of two British village idiots having a discussion about politics and finance. (Monte Python)

Very well said.

As I see it we have been trying to get past religion for some time. The U. S. was the recipient of most of the religious people who had no country that liked them, they moved here and formed the basis for our culture. There was a part of this that wanted for a better world and did not want religion to be part of the societal norm, they wrote the Constitution stating this.
There were and are those who want this to be a religious country apparently so basic morality could be applied. Over years of ignorance of both history and religion, there have been groups that have tried to make the country more to their liking. We now have what we have. In the past forty or fifty years, I have personally seen the education structure of this country try to make the people less educated and less able to think rationally, logically, and critically. The dumbing down of education has been our downfall and to see what happens when people of this system take control one has to look no further than Betsy DeVos, head of the dumification department.
We have to take back control of the system and develop freedoms that have to do with things other than the ability to be free to be stupid and ignorant. I learned many years ago that historically things change when they get so bad that they can be no longer supported by the masses. Greed does not work. Ignorance does not work. Not working at being an educated democracy does not work. Can we try something that may have a chance?

I read that article you're quoting from. I like how the term "free-dumb" is applied. I think it's true.

[theweek.com]
This is another article along the same line

All is sadly true. However, I think it is so remarkable in that we were once the epitome of what people felt they wanted for their lives. The same things influencing us is also influencing other nations and they are also succumbing to these extreme tendencies. That we have fallen so far is what makes this so disturbing. The fact that too may connect greatness with being superior is also a sad comment. The fact that Europe is doing better is because they too had to learn the hard way with wars, deaths and destruction. But, right now, they too are headed in the downward direction.

Good commentary on the situation.

Actually in spite of the idiocy in America, there are those from third worlds countries who are worse off and would like to move here. There are idiots in South America and Africa, too.

Really eye opening but so very unfortuneate at how true it is

For want of a better way to put it:

Somewhere in here, there is a theme of an "intellectual bankruptcy". But I'm finding it difficult to compose my thoughts on this, as I think normally the concept would apply to individuals, not collectives. A collective doesn't have one single intellect, so can it be bankrupt? Perhaps the wording should be something like the "societal intellectual bankruptcy".

I think in the near term the US society has been signaling that its collective conflicted and pathetic action on the virus will be to concede that a large portion of the society get infected, that hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions will die, but that it will still try to compete and move on, even as most of the rest of the world tries for the harder and smarter solution which is to slow the virus down to a crawl and shoot for a vaccine or some-such.

On the broader issues of intellectual bankruptcy, and how non-bankrupt societies around the world can co-exist with the US, in business, in environmental challenges, in security, and in all other matters, I think that is something that needs to be worked out.