How America got so Stupid

You wanna know how I got this dislike ratio? I make a video praising the Soviet Union and nobody bats an eye...I make a video praising the United States and everybody loses their minds! OK fine, I hear you, you only want to hear things that confirm what you already believe. I get it. Let’s talk about why Americans are stupid. There’s a famous episode of the Jimberly Kimblerly Live where clueless residents of Los Angeles fail to name a single country. Is this South Africa? -We have the country of

Asia Greenland or Iceland or something. Although these are no-doubt cherry-picked and I’m sure if you stood in a big city all day and shoved a camera in peoples’ faces and asked them questions, you’d be able to find three minutes’ worth of people who couldn’t answer on the spot. Miss, for a dollar, name a woman. -Name a woman? Yeah -uhhhh…. But the stereotype that Americans are ignorant about the wider world is largely true. These people can’t name a country because they don’t care about other

countries. 40% of Americans have a passport, compared to 66% of Canadians and 76% of Brits. In 1994 it was only 10% of Americans. But that doesn’t mean Americans have gotten more globe-trotting since then, it was because after an above-average episode of The News, it became mandatory to need a passport when entering Canada and Mexico. So it’s fair to say a very small percent of Americans will be leaving this corner of the world. As I said in a previous video – America has all you’d ever want geo

graphically within her borders. Why go anywhere else? The foreign cultures, maybe? Americans don’t care about that either. On the list of highest-grossing movies in the USA, you have to go all the way to 520th place to get a movie that isn’t American. It’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, by the way. Couldn’t even beat The Nutty Professor, someone please check up on Ang Lee. Neither do global affairs hold an average American’s interest. When asked about the Kyoto climate accords, who the Taliban a

re, or who Nicolas Sarkozy is, Americans are woefully under-informed compared to other developed nations. In 2009, only half knew that last year’s Olympics were held in Beijing. Oh but of course, when asked to name American celebrities, they had no trouble at all. At the same time, we non-Americans are flooded with American culture. Some British people know more about American politics and history than their own. France had to pass laws banning radio stations from playing too much American music

. There are only two countries where Coca Cola is not sold. Wait scratch that, this journalist from Finland bought at coke at a water park in Pyongyang in 2017. And what’s this hiding in the background of somebody’s holiday snaps at the Hotel National de Cuba? Look, you know something’s up when remote tribesmen in the Amazon rainforest who don’t even have electricity know who Michael Jackson is. Americans used to be quite well-read. After the Second World War, Americans consumed 63% of all the n

ewspapers in the world, and they used this to their advantage. In 1948 the newly formed The United Nations created a list of human rights that all countries should strive to uphold. One area that Americans were particularly interested in was this one, article 19. “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression… and receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. What the USA wanted was a completely level playing field. Anyone can buy any medi

a from any other country. A global free market of ideas, released from the shackles of censorship. For if everyone can gain access to the truth, we cannot be marched into the same kind of ignorance and intolerance that characterised the Axis nations of war. This is admirable; freedom of speech is a core value of the United States and many other Allied nations. But some delegates, like those from India, questioned the US’ motives; if you believe in an equal access to information and culture, shou

ldn’t you redistribute some of your media-creating capacity to developing nations like ours, so that we all have an equal opportunity to tell the world our stories? The Americans would not budge. Of course, they knew that deep down that India was right. The American delegation to the convention was highly populated by journalists and media magnates. They knew that if countries couldn’t afford their own news, they would be increasingly reliant on buying news from American wire companies like the

Associated Press. Which was good for both the media companies’ profits, but also the US State Department, who would no doubt have been licking their lips at the prospect of a billion people all reading news with a specific American spin on it. In 1944, The Associated Press sold news to 38 countries. Within eight years that had doubled to 70 countries. In the 1950s, around half of films shown in European and Asian cinemas were American, and two thirds in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. Which makes

sense – Americans made grand, technicolour films brimming with Hollywood sparkle because they could afford to. Whereas war-torn Europe, impoverished Mexico, and nuclear obliterated Japan were stuck making small-scale comedies to keep up morale. One of the most popular French movies in 40s France was 1949’s The Big Day, a mostly plotless movie where a whimsical French postman gets up to whacky mischief in a quaint village. There just wasn’t the money or resources for anything else. Hollywood cap

tured the European public’s imagination, and they wanted more. But why was it only a one-way street? Because while you can do or say whatever you want within the United States, the constitution also says that the American government can regulate what goes in and out. During the Cold War, anything that might be considered “communist propaganda” could be seized by the Post Office and never delivered. Books or even souvenirs from communist countries, for instance. Pamphlets criticising US foreign p

olicy. Immigration reached a low point in the early 70s with only 4.7% of Americans being foreign born, limiting Americans’ interaction with different cultures. Obviously it wasn’t totally like North Korea, plenty of foreign movies and music were allowed into the US. But the media that caught on was either already Americanised, or so plastically exotic that it doesn’t really say anything about the culture where it is from. The Beatles were British, yes, but they got their start covering American

rock-and-roll musicians. When John Lennon stepped out of line, the American government made sure that he knew it. Movies imported from Japan were mostly samurai flicks, with very few movies set in the modern day. The film Ikiru is widely considered the best Japanese film ever made if you ignore people who have never felt the touch of a woman. But this existential drama about a depressed lonely man was only given a limited release in California, and the poster was edited to feature a stripper wh

o is only in the movie for like a minute. The narrow stream of European movies that made it into the USA came in the form of the French New Wave cinema, movies that were stylistically inspired by American films, but also so stuffy that few audiences would ever want to watch them anyway. This was further stifled by the Hays Code, a set of extremely strict regulations that were in place from 1934 to 1968. If you’ve ever wondered why old black-and-white films seem so dry, it’s because of these rule

s. Some things that were completely banned from ever being shown in any film included: Bad guys winning. All movies must end with the police outwitting the evil criminals, or the criminals causing their own demise. Any nudity. Even the silhouette of a booba is an instant ban. Blood or dead bodies. When people get shot in old films they usually just clutch the wound, but no actual blood is seen. Pointing a gun at somebody in the same frame. This is why guns are always held at waist-height. Kissin

g for longer than 3 seconds. Interracial couples. White people as slaves Criticism of religion, or of any other country. Naturally, this prevented the more artistically liberal European films from being shown in American cinemas, and when they did get a U.S. release, they were usually edited to remove the violence in movies and sex on TV to comply with good old fashioned values. At least until the rules were abolished in 1968 and replaced by the age rating system we have today. Even as the Cold

War ended and the internet gave Americans unparalleled access to the rest of the world and all of human knowledge, they still prefer to hang out on a handful of American-made websites dominated by Americans. The insular culture of 20th century America has carried over to the 21st. Tightened border security after Septiembre Undécimo means foreign musicians can have a hard time getting visas. In 2002 the touring visa of a German orchestra was cancelled after it was discovered the cellist had a cri

minal record for shoplifting a pair of tweezers in 1991. When they tried again for a visa in 2004, the cellist had to undergo an hours-long interview with Homeland Security and had to physically pick up his visa from the US embassy. Global cultures might be more present in American media, but they’re always through the lens of American characters. Such as The Last Samurai starring Tom Cruise, where he plays a white guy in 1870s Japan. Seven years in Tibet, another American in China. Indiana Jone

s – American in Egypt. The Bourne Identity, American in France. Inglourious Basterds, Americans in German-occupied France. And for the ladies in the audience – Mamma Mia. For a movie set on a Greek Island, there’s not a single Greek person in that entire movie! Is there any hope for America, or are they destined to be stinky dumb rednecks forever? Maybe. In 2000, 92% of the music in the USA top 50 was American – making it the second-most insulated music market in the world after Pakistan. But to

day it’s more like 60%, with Brits, Canadians, Latin Americans and Africans making themselves more seen in the charts. Each year there are more foreign films nominated at the Academy Awards than ever before. What used to be an American-only pay-to-win awards show is now an international pay-to-win awards show. As social media platforms have an element of randomness in what they show to users, there is a higher chance of Americans being shown videos from other countries, forcing them to take note

. It seems the revolution will be TikTok’d. I’ve been giving the impression throughout this video that it’s all or most Americans who are terminally undereducated, but American ignorance isn’t as evenly distributed as you’d think. That study I mentioned earlier? When adjusting for English proficiency, income, and education levels, Americans are really no different to their European counterparts, and in some cases marginally smarter. Knowledge about the wider world even correlates to political vi

ews, and not in the way you’d think. A 2022 survey asked Americans 12 questions about the world, such as who is the British prime minister, what does the Indian flag look like, and what this symbol represents. The people who answered the most questions correctly were...committed Democrats and committed Republicans. Swing voters, those enlightened centrist chads, were the stupidest. Only 40% of moderate Republicans could name the US Secretary of State, compared to 60% of convicted Republicans. On

ly half of moderate Democrats knew that the USMCA trade agreement replaced NAFTA, compared to 66% of people who are strongly pro-Democrats. Also I just thought it was funny that the more an American knows about the European Union the more favourable view they have of it. So are Americans ignorant? Many of them are, but it isn’t their fault. It’s a mix of geography, American imperialism, Cold War paranoia, moral puritanism, and economic factors that create a paradoxical nation that is both the mo

st expansive empire, but also an informational prison of their own making. God bless, you stupid bastards.