2007-04-18

North Americans are more stupid than everyone else

Is that even possible? I seem to shake my head in total disbelief at someone at least everyday, sometimes multiple times per day. I really do try some self-talk, forcing myself to just accept it and move on, but I just can't because it's too unbelievable.

From my morning drive in, to the people I deal with at work, the people that serve me in food joints and retail stores, I just can't believe how people that stupid can still be alive and haven't somehow gotten themselves killed due to their lack of awareness of things going on around them.

Driving for example. Clearly nobody understands basic traffic flow or the causes and effects of certain situations, never mind the basic art of piloting a vehicle, which almost everyone in this country would refer to as "like, super easy!" despite teenagers complaining that driving exams passable by someone in the geriatric ward of a hospital are difficult. Have you been to Europe? And women, I'm very sorry to say but you are the absolute worst at it, that's no secret. I shake my head at you the most, but the look of total confusion on your face when I pass you on the highway is often worth chuckling over so I'll leave that alone for now to rant about another time.

So back to this stupidity thing. We have warning signs on products you couldn't imagine would be necessary (but obviously someone did something stupid enough to warrant the cautionary graphics) and criminals that seem to rake in boat loads of money in compensation for injuring themselves during some robbery or whatever. The whole world makes fun of us - well, Americans take the brunt of it but don't you worry, we're just a few steps behind as usual! A lot of it does stem from the setting of some precedent in the court system but due to my lack of legal know-how I'll leave that one to the experts.

I say Darwin's approach is the best - just take the warning labels off all the products and let the problem solve itself. Gave your child a swiss army knife and they stabbed themselves? Oh well. You put your car into cruise control and it didn't steer itself away from the guardrail? Sorry for your loss. The $30 camera phone you purchased takes bad pictures at weddings? You should have known.

The most recent issue with the Ontario Police force was their brilliant seatbelt blitz during the month of April. Really? Is this something new? If someone hasn't realized in the last 30 years that perhaps wearing a seatbelt is a better idea than not then you should be left to figure it out by yourself regardless of the injury you cause to yourself.

North Americans are just the absolute worst at attempting to devise the most ridiculous blanket solutions to social problems.

People shooting themselves? Ban guns! Drunk people driving at night? Cap alcohol sales at 2am. Don't want your child to watch brutal violence and sex on television? Write to the network and have them cancel the show - it's that easy! No actual parenting required! Actually, if enough of you do it you can get them to censor out all the swearing. Even words like "penis" will be censored out because clearly that is offensive language. How could someone say that on television! Penis. Oh they should be ashamed!

Who am I kidding, it's been like that for at least a decade now. To the point of watching a movie on Fox or some other horrible network late at night that is the same version they had to air at 8pm or whatever the cutoff is, so all the language has been censored out, and not with silence or the ever-amusing <beep> but with someone else's voice who very rarely resembles the actor's in the most remote way. Are we seriously paying for this?

Violence on television. With all of these stay-at-home people who obviously have very little to do with their minds complaining that cartoons from the 80's or whenever have over fifty thousand incidents of violence in each episode. And this violence is causing our children to bring guns to school, and rape women and steal millions of dollars from old ladies. Who's buying into this?

We are so determined to deny responsibility for everything so much so that we'll actually shift the blame to other people or corporations, the latter being the most popular. Drop a can of soup on your toe at the supermarket? Sue the company and you'll probably win millions. And we all know about that woman in the USA spilling hot coffee on her loins. Whether she actually agreed with suing the company is irrelevant.

Unfortunately attitudes will never change and it's only until bad things happen that we eventually wake from our slumber and think differently. We will continue as we have been, and I can only hope at some point beyond which we cannot do anything to counter the momentum of stupidity, other countries will pass by us laughing all the way. Maybe at that point we might take them seriously and realize we're not the best at... anything.

1 comment:

jens said...

Again it's time for my two cents -- I know, you've all been waiting anxiously since this post went up less than twelve hours ago.

First off, while I agree with most of what was said here, I have to strongly disagree on the gun front: Guns are bad, m'kay? Getting rid of handguns, assault rifles and other such weapons should be banned, because there's just no rational reason not to. Gun club members need not respond. I really don't care that you like to go the club on the weekend and fire at paper targets to impress the resident hotties and one-up the Joneses. The benefit you get from your ridiculous hobby is nothing compared to the suffering and loss caused by these weapons. Anyone who believes otherwise desperately needs some social and moral re-engineering.

But on to the finer points of everything I do agree with: One of the biggest things wrong with the US is that everyone is so litigation-happy. Why is it such a stretch for lawmakers and judges to assume a certain level of common sense when dealing with everyday situations ("Hmm, nobody told me this new Ginsu8000, which is designed to slice through steel cans, leather shoes and frozen meat might also be capable piercing human skin. The audacity! They should have warned me! I'm taking them for all they've got!"). I don't have time to dig up any actual stats right now, but just imagine the number of cases filed against large corporations for damages over things that really, really should be painfully obvious: do not cut through a live power cord, do not pour hot beverages on yourself, or for that matter drink them before they've cooled down. Do not throw game controllers at your TV screen. Do not operate your motor vehicle with the parking brake on. I mean, come on!

Now imagine a United States of America where just half the money that right now goes to gratuitous, frivolous litigation and out-of-court settlement of these cases, and instead goes to health care, education, infrastructure and publicly funded R&D in medicine and environmental tech. Just imagine...

That, or maybe Americans would be better off in a system where everything is forbidden unless explicitly allowed (read up on your Tucholsky, my dears).