In recent decades, America has witnessed an intentional dumbing down of the population, the effects of which are unmistakable. This isn’t an accident or a natural shift in education standards but rather a calculated effort by certain political forces to reduce critical thinking. When people lack the tools to question or dissect information, they become more malleable and easier to manipulate. It’s no wonder that a former president openly declared, “I love the uneducated.” Anti-intellectualism has flourished in this climate, feeding off both a suspicion of “elitism” and a comfort in simplistic narratives. Meanwhile, credible sources are struggling to make themselves heard amid a cacophony of misinformation. Instead of promoting knowledge, public discourse increasingly rewards sensationalism and surface-level engagement.
This deterioration isn’t limited to any one political ideology. On one side, some figures seem almost proud to erode intellectual discourse, insisting that feelings are more important than facts or deriding experts as disconnected elites. On the other, we see cancel culture, where voices holding unpopular opinions are silenced or erased rather than debated. The rise of “call-out culture” may have begun with good intentions, intending to hold individuals and institutions accountable. But it has devolved into something far more concerning—a collective fear of speaking out, of exploring new ideas, or of challenging the dominant narratives within any given ideological camp. Individuals, rather than grappling with dissenting views, now often cherry-pick facts to reinforce existing beliefs, discarding inconvenient truths along the way. This trend of “cherry-picking” runs even deeper in an era of extreme polarization. People find themselves locked in echo chambers, surrounded by voices that only reinforce what they already believe. In the process, even our social media feeds have been curated by algorithms to show us opinions that mirror our own, reinforcing the divide and shielding us from alternative perspectives. Debate, once considered a healthy part of democratic engagement, is increasingly dismissed as too divisive, and as a result, we are seldom exposed to ideas that make us uncomfortable.
Yet it’s precisely this discomfort—this challenge to our preconceived notions—that spurs genuine intellectual growth. If we hope to reverse this intellectual decay, it’s essential to return to first principles, to the belief that education is not merely about gaining knowledge but about fostering an environment where ideas can be tested, where individuals are empowered to think critically and independently. Intellectual curiosity should be celebrated, not viewed with suspicion or disdain. And disagreement should not be equated with enmity. Indeed, there is value in a society where opposing views can coexist and where questions are encouraged rather than suppressed. In a functional democracy, education should ideally empower citizens to make informed choices.
However, when intellectual rigor is treated as elitism, and skepticism is replaced with cynicism, the entire democratic framework becomes fragile. The outcome? A society driven more by fear, tribalism, and reactionary thought than by reason, evidence, or constructive debate. If the American intellectual is to survive, we must recognize that intellectual growth comes from questioning, not blindly accepting, the narratives fed to us. Ultimately, intellectual growth relies on the openness to revise our own beliefs. It’s a lesson that’s as old as democracy itself. As thinkers like Socrates taught, the unexamined life is not worth living. If we allow our intellectual institutions, public discourse, and individual curiosity to atrophy, we risk creating a future where critical thought is not just devalued, but becomes a relic of the past.
Bitter with the Swede 