...as evidenced by the drop in percentage of Americans who agreed with the factual statement “the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews”?

It used to be that people felt proud of knowing the score, of understanding the way of the world, of being clued in to how things work.

Today, though, it’s cool to be ignorant. I don’t think it’s just people who actually know the facts about Hollywood and lied to the ADL to be safe.

Judging from comments by countless anonymous people on the Internet, a lot of people are proud of being out of touch with what’s happening. They want you to be aware that they’ve cultivated their cluelessness. It’s really very strange for somebody like me who can remember back to the late 1960s. That era had its flaws, to be sure, but willful ignorance was not one of them.

***
Exactly.

How many arguments have I had on the web (Damian Penny’s comments section is particularly bad for this) with idiots who — after I’ve made a matter of fact, everybody-knows statement about the importance of preachers/barbershops/grandmothers/basketball/hair in Black culture, for instance — leap at the opportunity to engage in some moral exhibitionism:

“Do you have proof to back up that racist statement? Any studies? Any statistics??”

Of course not, you dickhead.

Unlike you, I didn’t waste the last good years of my life being brainwashed in academia; I lived with and worked with and talked with actual, normal human beings (professors definitely don’t count) and that’s how I formed my knowledge of how the world really works. Through the evidence of my senses and my own personal experiences.  

(KEEP READING...)