America has become a nation of shallow thinkers

Most Americans don’t read 1 book a year nor search out alternative journalism, which might explain why so many citizens complied with the insane, society-wrecking guidance of faux experts.

Plenty of people still read books and search for articles not written by MSM stenographers … but not nearly as many citizens as in previous decades.

My wife recently re-posted a fascinating, albeit disturbing, dispatch on Facebook.

The point made by the author might explain - at least to some degree  -  the “dumbing down of America.” This change, in turn, might explain why so many citizens never questioned the world’s disastrous and criminal Covid responses.

The post from “Women’s Garden” notes that “the proportion of Americans who read books for pleasure is now at its lowest level ever recorded.”

“…Gallup found that the proportion of Americans who never read a book in any given year tripled between 1978 and 2014. Some 57 percent of Americans now do not read a single book in a typical year. … by 2017, the average American spent seventeen minutes a day reading books and 5.4 hours on their phone.”

For years, I’ve been grappling with the question of how mass-scale insanity could actually happen. The following excerpt might explain how:

“For many of us, reading a book is the deepest form of focus we experience — you dedicate many hours of your life, coolly, calmly, to one topic, and allow it to marinate in your mind. This is the medium through which most of the deepest advances in human thought over the past four hundred years have been figured out and explained. And that experience is now in free fall."

And how … Eureka!

One hates to say it, but America has become a nation of shallow thinkers. Far fewer people now perform the intellectual deep dives which make possible serious thinking.

In our Covid times, not enough leaders - nor journalists who develop the world’s authorized narratives - were capable of connecting disparate dots which would allow false narratives to be debunked. 

This requisite “thought-marination” process didn’t happen because too many people are unwilling, too busy or too lazy to read volumes of important stories (and books) that might have prevented mass misery.

As it turns out, a nation replete with non-readers produces a plethora of gnarly unintended consequences. (Or maybe intended consequences.)

A spirited debate about “experts” …

A couple of years ago, I got into a spirited email debate with a journalist who’s written numerous Covid articles for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Gannet/USA Today.

(I emailed this journalist to, perchance, get him interested in my “early spread” hypothesis and evidence. Needless to say, I failed with this objective. However, the two dueling journalists did exchange a volley of emails about other Covid topics.)

At one point in our exchange, I opined that I’d become an “expert” on many Covid subjects.

For my sparring partner, this was a preposterous assertion. I couldn’t be an expert because I had no science, medicine or public health academic credentials.

While my formal “science education” concluded with an 11th grade chemistry class, I didn’t back down, noting that for a year I had been reading everything I could on Covid topics.

I also noted that while I was quite conversant in the Anthony Fauci-promulgated authorized narratives, I’d read hundreds of articles and studies that made observations or arguments that would never be included in an article published by a Gannet newspaper.

While a phD in virology no doubt knows much more about cell structure, spike proteins and DNA sequences, these scientists are simply “experts” in one or two narrow fields of study. In contrast, I was looking at Covid issues from from an elevation of 30,000 feet.

As a freelance journalist who assigns himself his own research, I also had an advantage over any salaried staff journalists. Namely, I could - and did - spend eight to 12 hours every day reading a variety of stories and books. 

A staff journalist has a quota of stories he has to write every day or week and probably focusses only on the subjects he’s writing about. Furthermore, such journalists are pre-disposed to believe (and quote) only the authorized experts. Because they don’t (or maybe can’t) do more research, these journalists are perhaps unfamiliar with theories that challenge the “official” storyline.

*** (To their credit, my subscribers are obviously BIG readers who think a great deal about what they read. The button below allows my writing to be read by even more citizens.) ***

More reading makes possible new thinking and theories …

For example, due to copious reading and my intense, daily brain exercise, I could quickly see that the alleged Covid Infection Fatality Rate was dubious for 10 different reasons … and this informed my thoughts on the non-necessity of a “vaccine.”

From my readings of sociology, history and economics (and from old-style journalism), I knew one should always “follow the money.”

Informed by extensive personal reading, I also knew fear campaigns weren’t new at all and most of the Boogie Men the world is supposed to fear are as legit as the ghosts Scooby Doo un-sheeted.

In one email, I probably implied my debating partner wasn’t the Covid authority he thinks he is. This prompted him to email me links to approximately 25 Covid stories he’d authored. (I think he was trying to show me he’d written far more Covid stories than I had.) 

To me, this was dirty pool, as this journalist had an advantage I didn’t. Namely, he knew his editor was going to publish every one of his stories. As a freelance journalist with a skeptic’s bent of mind, the only site in the world that would publish my Covid articles was UncoverDC.com.

Still, I skimmed a sample of his articles.  As I knew they would, the articles simply regurgitated the CDC, NIH, WHO narrative.

I share this story only because I think it illustrates the point made in my wife’s Facebook post. 

This journalist thinks he’s very-well versed on all the important Covid topics, but he’s really not - because he hadn’t - or wouldn’t - read volumes of important stories that would, perhaps, have changed the way he wrote stories.

Furthermore, the experts he thinks are infallible spent every day proving they’re not. This prominent MSM journalist couldn’t know they might be wrong because he’d never considered this possibility. 

The man instantly dismissed the views of an educated, long-time journalist who’d spent every day for months researching Covid topics … because I didn’t get a phD in science from a prestigious college.

Regarding the dozens of articles he’d published, I’d bet that 90 percent of the people who read them also thought every word was the gospel truth. This is because the newspaper readers hadn’t made the effort to educate themselves, a process that would require self-study (and more reading) … and maybe even discovering Substack.

I also bet my sparring partner hadn’t read this book ….

My wife’s post referenced the fact that 57 percent of adult Americans won’t read one book in a given year. When we engaged in this email debate, the book The Real Anthony Fauci had been the No. 1 non-fiction best-seller in the world for many months (even though no mainstream newspaper ever published a review of this book).

I didn’t ask, but somehow I’m pretty sure this journalist had not read this book and never would. If there’s one book that would alert journalists that an informed, markedly-different point of view exists about all Covid subjects, it’s Robert Kennedy’s impressive tome (a book with 2,100 footnotes).

Question: How can a journalist write “fair-and-balanced” articles, if he’s never read - and thought deeply about - the provocative and persuasive arguments made by an author as serious as Mr. Kennedy?

This point made, I know he would counter this point by proclaiming … Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also “not an expert.”

What we have in American journalism is a giant Catch-22. The only experts who matter have science or medical degrees … and they all believe Anthony Fauci (which actually isn’t true either. For example, every expert who signed the Great Barrington Declaration, including hundreds of bonafide scientists, rejected many of Covid’s authorized narratives).

If someone is skeptical of the credentialed experts, this person - apparently by definition - is not an expert and - apparently by company policy - cannot be quoted by mainstream pack journalists.

I’ll give a pass to many citizens …

One reason many people might not read articles that might change the way they think about any subject is they’re simply too busy trying to make a living (for example, devising new work-arounds to deal with real inflation).

When you think about it, who actually has time to read 10 alternative media Covid stories every day? Not many people … but I’m one of those people.

Even in our Censorship New Normal, I found and read a library full of stories that percolated in my mind and caused me to dismiss most of the propaganda my mainstream media colleagues swallowed whole. 

One sign of intelligence is knowing what you don’t know. While perhaps counter-intuitive, the more people read, the more they realize how much they don’t know.

When it came to complying with Covid guidance, the vast majority of citizens hadn’t read enough to know who they shouldn’t trust and why these experts might be wrong.

Most people probably didn’t even know counter opinions were being censored.

Of course, the censors probably already knew the “dumbing down of America” had achieved  critical mass. They knew most Americans no longer seek-out, read and think deeply about important subjects … and so they went ahead and pulled the trigger on a contrived pandemic.

Avid readers are far more likely to connect important dots. Those who rarely or never read are much more likely to be duped.

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