Amos, I beg to differ. This is what I was writing about when I lost my message a few minutes ago, about the jury still being out on the stupidity of the American public:

Vast numbers of voters regularly cast ballots in direct opposition to their own financial and other interests for no other reason than that their favorite demagogues give lip service to proven popular notions of public morality.

These guys may or may not intend to restore the orderly behavior of earlier and simpler times, but they certainly can't and don't succeed in keeping their implied promises to the "social conservative" folks; all they do is mouth the preferred rhetoric. Then, once they take office, most of their energy is directed towards protecting the greedy two percent as they continue to enrich themselves at the expense of all the rest of us, fundamentalists and leftists alike and everybody in between.

So, the masses of sheep happily being led to slaughter are one example of mass stupidity, but theyr'e not the only ones. The very many folks who more-or-less-accurately perceive what's going on, but who sit on their hands and refrain from voting, out of either cynicism or some kind of purist notion that "both sides are no good," are dumb enough to let the demagogues and their followers continue to rule.