Top Stories

Never Have so Many People Known so Little and Been so Imbued With the Confidence of Their Intellect

by Rod Williams, Sept. 13, 2026 - 

One finds fame on platforms like Twitter by being the lamest, the angriest, the least amenable to thoughtful pushback or open debate or introspection. And Zeus forbid that someone reject tribal orthodoxy. The biggest stars of the Twitter age . . . well, let’s just say that rarely have so many people who knew so little been imbued with so much confidence in their intellect. (Democracy in Silos, by David Earsany, NR)

I came across the above the other day, and it expresses well what I have observed and that of which I am persuaded.  People are getting dumber and dumber, and they think they are informed and intelligent.  I think there was a time when people who were ignorant kind of knew they were ignorant. On certain topics, they would defer to experts and better-informed people. Now, many seem to think an uninformed opinion is just as valuable as an informed one, and they distrust experts. There is a certain pride in having "common sense," and a belief that common sense and a passion are all one needs to argue a case for some proposition or to govern.

I think the rise of new media is a major reason for this.  There are "influencers" with no experience and no credentials who are followed by millions. On the right, there is an explosion of podcasters at the junction of the manosphere and Trumpistan. People take them seriously and think they have discovered the truth and that everyone else has been lying to them.  Of course, this is not only true of right-wing political podcasts, but you see the same certainty of one's views about healthcare topics, alien encounters, and other topics. 

In addition to this certainty of having discovered the truth, those who are promoting unorthodox views are able to reach people who in the past, they would never have reached. Sure, before the widespread use of the internet, one could publish anything one wanted. People had the same right to spread untrue or hatefull or just wrong information, but you can only reach so many people by handing out xeroxed copies on the street, and to found and publish a magazine is a big undertaking. Then, one could only reach a small fraction of the population. In the past, there were gatekeepers. A TV discussion panel was not going to program a person of really fringe views or people who just spread wrong information. Letters to the Editor did not get published if they were too outlandish. Now the gatekeepers are gone.

One thing that led to our current state of political illiteracy is the rise of Donald Trump. Without any evidence and despite over 60 court rulings against the stolen election myths and despite the millions paid in settlements for defamation, about a third of Americans still believe the 2020 election was stolen. Another example of people believing things that are obviously not true is that tariffs are paid by the exporting country. They refuse to believe that it is the consumers who pay the tariffs. This should not even be debatable. The importer pays the tariffs, and he passes them on to the retailer, who passes them on to the consumer.  That is a fact, yet many don't believe it. People not only feel entitled to their wrong opinion but also to their own "facts."

Of course, this raises the question: did Trump spread political illiteracy, or is political illiteracy what led to Trump? I think it is a little of both. At some point in the last thirty or so years, schools began focusing on STEM and had to cut other things, like civics and history. Generations of people grew up without an understanding or appreciation of how government works and the conflicts that led to our democracy. People had to wrestle less with competing and complex ideas.  Not only did civic education suffer, but other critical thinking skills suffered, with there being less emphasis on literature, reading, and composition. 

This decline in critical thinking skills and the ability to reason is greater than just what happens in the political realm. I think it is a general dumbing down of society. There are two articles published in The Atlantic that explore this. One is The Post Literate Age published in the October 2025 issue. This article by George Packer, makes the case about people's failure to read and why it matters:

For one thing, did anyone still read fiction? I mean literary fiction, the kind that aspires to complex characters, subtle themes, and careful attention to prose style. Those novels are gone from the best-seller lists—it’s all sexy dragons now. The novel ceased long ago to occupy the cultural center, giving way first to movies, then TV series, video games, social-media posts, and AI content. The novelist as voice of a generation no longer exists. Literary fiction has become more like classical music—the eccentric taste of a diminishing set of the devoted.

I don't think it matters the topic of the novel so much as exercising the brain the way reading requires. As we read less, we are less capable of rational thought. 

The other article that explores this topic is The End of Reading Is Here, by Rose Horowitch published in the August 2026 issue. It points out that "The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse."

Not only are people reading less, but their attention spans are also shrinking and what they do read has been dumbed down. Horowitch points out that New York Times bestsellers today have sentences that are about one-third shorter than they were a century ago.  Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent. Reading scores are plummeting.

Not only is the decline in literacy found in the average American, but the elites are getting less literate also. The article documents this. Some will say that we are getting information from listening to news or podcasts on headphones. The author says that hearing something is no substitute for reading: 

The written word is fundamentally different from oral language. Writing detaches the message from the messenger, allowing for a more dispassionate spread of information than was possible in oral societies. Because writing a phrase takes longer than speaking it, writing forces the author to slow down and reflect. Written language tends to employ more complex sentence structures and vocabulary than spoken language. And unlike speech, it doesn’t disappear into the ether. Readers can return to a text and plumb it for new meaning and understanding. Because writing endures, individuals can temporarily forget what they’ve written but trust that it won’t be lost forever. This frees up the mind to think of new ideas and make new discoveries. ...

Studies have shown that people comprehend less when reading on a digital device than on paper, perhaps because of all these distractions. Devoting extended, undivided attention to a text can now feel like too much to ask. Audiobooks have become a popular alternative to print books at least in part because listening to a book allows for multitasking: You can read while doing the dishes or driving to work.

In this digital age, illiteracy increases: the short-form video and the tweet and the thumbs up and other symbols are replacing reading text and writing text online.  The author points out that as America has become postliterate, Trump is our first postliterate president. 

Trump’s communication style is perfectly suited to an oral society. He employs epithets—“Low-Energy Jeb,” “Little Marco,” “Sleepy Joe”—that are easy to remember and repeat. He contradicts himself as though there is no record of his previous statements. Even his writing is almost indistinguishable from his speech. (It makes sense; Trump reportedly prefers dictation to composition.) His online posts are full of idiosyncratically placed punctuation, capital letters, and exclamation points. Many are memes with little text:

I am pessimistic about the future of America. Trump's policies have weakened America's standing in the world; the world order that kept the peace is falling apart, and America faces an economic crisis. I could think that when Trump passes from the scene, we can restore the old order and reintegrate a fractured world and address our pressing issues; however, I have my doubts.  I fear that an illiterate population, getting dumber by the day, may be incapable of rational thought and discerning the truth from fiction. People want free things and they don't want to pay for them, and they want scapegoats to blame for the problems of the country or their own failings. A post-literate world will be easier to demigod, to manipulate, and to persuade. 

Top Stories