CHRIS ROPER: Going down the plughole of stupidity

Are people getting stupider? It sure seems like it. How else do we explain the colossal amount of idiocy we see exploding around us on a daily basis? And boy, it sure is front and centre, now that all the shills, grifters and gangsters have realised that, to quote my own catchphrase, stupidity is its own reward. 

It’s not just a perception, there’s actual science stuff that proves it. According to Futurism.com, the Financial Times has reported that people across age groups “are having trouble concentrating and are losing reasoning, problem-solving, and information-processing skills — all facets of the hard-to-pin-down metric that ‘intelligence’ is supposed to measure.” 

And for once, “people” is not a synonym for Americans. The reports, based on benchmarking tests that track cognitive skills in young people, range from the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future study, which documented concentration difficulties in 18-year-old Americans, to the Programme for International Student Assessment that measures the learning skills of 15-year-olds around the world. The research suggests that young people are struggling with reduced attention spans, and that their critical thinking skills are in decline. 

But empirically, we can see it’s not just young people. There is no shortage of older idiots queuing up to compete for the clown of the week award. There is a bunch of possible reasons for why we’re getting stupider. 

There are shorter attention spans, which means that people just aren’t reading any more, and imagine that they can imbibe knowledge through listicles and AI summaries. There are the algorithmic bubbles of social media, which feeds us what we already know, which makes learning new things, and thinking critically, much more difficult to do. 

In South Africa, just to bring it home for a minute, we have a terrifying decline in the quality of our education. But this is a problem in many countries and, in some cases, it’s a deliberate ploy of authoritarianism. 

In the US, for example, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order dismantling the education department, which is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the attacks on education in that country. According to the Associated Press, “Trump has vowed to cut off federal money for schools and colleges that push ‘critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content’ and to reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and enact universal school choice programs”. 

Finally, pernicious critical race theory gets its comeuppance! There is a god! And speaking of deities, the DA’s Helen Zille, who wrote an entire book drivelling on about critical race theory, must be all aflutter. Though knowing that you and Trump share opinions on what constitutes a democracy, must be — or rather, should be — a little awkward. 

Another reason we’re getting stupider is because the way that bad people have tried to destroy the integrity of our information systems is working. They’ve spread confusion, manipulated public opinion, weaponised social media, downright lied about things, and made us believe that we can trust nobody, that there is no such thing as truth. Most effectively, bad actors are pushing anti-intellectualism as a populist strategy, so that experts aren’t trusted any more, and we’re supposed to believe that feelings are as valid as facts. 

So yes, we’re getting stupider. That’s bad enough, but even worse is that the stupidification of society is empowering idiots to take advantage for their own ends. And wow, when you look around, there are a lot of people doing stupid things. 

It’s been getting a lot of coverage, so you won’t need reminding of the Signal debacle in the US. But let’s take a moment to recall how dumb the defence of their actions was from the government officials involved. The US Director of National Intelligence (real department) Tulsi Gabbard (real name) sat in front of the House Intelligence Committee and told them that plans to bomb another nation were not classified information, despite everyone on earth knowing that wasn’t true. 

Closer to home — and this is too delicious for words — we discovered, via a Citizen newspaper article in my case, that the clown running the Cape Idiots Advocacy Group (CIAG) isn’t even a South African citizen. 

Yes, you read that right. Phil Craig, whose organisation’s stated aims are to create “our own First World nation on Africa’s southern tip — the Cape of Good Hope”, “build Africa’s newest country”, change the name of Cape Town to Little London, institute a nonracial race-based monarchy, and put a stop to the incompetence of the ANC ... is too incompetent to actually become a citizen of the country he is trying to screw over. 

Craig is, as The Citizen circumspectly puts it, “of British descent”, and he has apparently lived in the Cape Colony for 20 years. In that time, more than 150,000 people have been granted citizenship by naturalisation, if we are to believe the government white paper cited by Wits University in a 2023 article. That doesn’t sound like a lot, and far be it from me to deny the basic incompetence of so many of our government departments. But do I want to replace them with imported “First World” incompetents? (That’s not a typo.) No, no I do not. 

You won’t be surprised to hear that the Cape Clowns are planning a visit to the Great White Hope for the Cape of Good Hope, Donald Trump himself. In the meeting, they hope to follow in the crawling footsteps of Solidarity, AfriForum and the DA, and pledge fealty to the new American Empire. The thinking is, if the US invades South Africa after taking care of Greenland and Canada, it’s only common sense to line yourself up as a first-choice quisling. In the First World, that’s called foresight.

According to the leader of the CIAG, “we wish to firstly raise funds to scale up our promotion of Cape independence in South Africa, and then to request diplomatic support from the US, including placing pressure on the Western Cape government to respect democratic principles and to call a referendum on Cape independence. Thirdly, we want to request assistance with our contingency plan to hold a private referendum if the premier continues to block an official referendum, and lastly, lay the groundwork for future international recognition of an independent Western Cape.” 

I’ll bet the first thing Trump thinks, if he ever gets to hear of this, will be: “I wish I could find this sort of useful idiot in Greenland.” And to be frank, this kind of stupid isn’t that rare. But it’s still worth noting that Phil “First World” Craig, as he likes to be known down at the local Irish pub in Wellington, or wherever he lives, really thinks it’s a good idea to ask a country known for violent regime change to help us overthrow our democratically elected (in the real sense of the word) government. Why not try Putin next, Phil? He can institute a “special military operation” like in Ukraine. 

And the thing about clown cars is, there’s always room for one more clown. So the African Transformation Movement (ATM) has called for Craig’s citizenship (which doesn’t exist, confusingly) to be forfeited because, they say, Craig’s consistent advocacy for a separate Cape state “is a direct challenge to our national sovereignty”. According to The Citizen, ATM president Vuyo Zungula said: “In doing so, the minister would not only comply with the Citizenship Act but also send a strong message that divisive ideologies will not be tolerated in South Africa’s pursuit of unity and reconciliation.” 

The point of a democracy is precisely that divisive ideologies are permissible. We don’t “tolerate” them. Rather, they’re the point. 

Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber made this clear in a reply to the ATM, saying: “The Republic of South Africa does not persecute people on the basis of their political views. Section 15(1) of the constitution holds that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion’.” The Citizen tells us he also said: “In South Africa, political disputes are settled at the ballot box, instead of through the weaponisation of executive power against those with whom one may disagree.” Whoah, the DA subtweeting Trump? I didn’t see that one coming. 

So though I think the Cape independence people are absolute cretins, and I’m happy to laugh at their antics, I don’t think we should be shutting them up. The unfortunate consequence, of course, in a world that is getting stupider, is that sometimes stupid feeds stupid. Next thing you know, we’ll be invading Namibia.