something is seriously fucked up in the USA lately

It might be the different perspective afforded me by living 4784 miles away[1], but it sure seems to me that Americans are taking stupid to a really uncomfortable new level.

I'm not even referring to their political ideas, which do tend to be pretty stupid across the generally accepted right-left political spectrum[2]; I mean the more fundamental kind of stupid. As in, unable to derive, comprehend, and internalize plain facts from the world in which they live.

The "birther" people and their weird forged Kenyan birth certificates?

An Obama euthanasia squad killing Palin's retarded baby?

"Brownshirts", Nazis, Hitler?

These "town hell" events where pathetic fat white people froth at the mouth and waddle around with quasi-religious fervor venting without irony about keeping the damn government out of their fucking Medicare?

Gross, dude. It's embarrassing. We've never been short of idiots, but from here it looks like US and A has reached a new and scary high-water mark. Something like 1 in 5 Americans is impervious to any unwanted facts[3] and proud of it, you liberal cocksucker, so hallelujah praise jesus and GO FUCK YOUR RACE-TRAITOR LIBERAL SOCIALIST FAGGOT ASS IN THE FUCKING ASS!!!

It seems to me, they used to more THINK that kind of shit than actually SAY IT OUT LOUD IN PUBLIC in the mainstream news media without fear of ridicule.

In some cases, this kind of shit *is* the mainstream media now. I don't just mean the fat radio 'entertainers' and the pudgy sobbing TV ones, either: pretty much every major TV news network offered sober coverage of Sarah Palin's wigged-out paranoiac screeds, but none of them really managed to get across the real story, which is: HOLY SHIT THIS LADY WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN ONLY ONE OCTOGENARIAN'S CORONARY AWAY FROM THE LAUNCH CODES IS A DERANGED LUNATIC WHO LIVES IN A PARANOID FANTASY WORLD.

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[1]: By which I mean, maybe the USA was always this dysfunctional and intellectually broken, and I was just better at tuning it out when I lived there. But I don't think so, because I've lived abroad for enough years at different times that I have at least some basis for comparison.

[2]: accepted, but fundamentally flawed and incapable of describing actual political discourse, since there is actually more than one fucking political issue on the table at any given time

[3]: Starting with the fact that an uppity half-breed jigaboo was elected President of the United States, and just kind of going from there...