its not stupidity it's ignorance. american culture has been effectively militatized for the last fifty years, and even going back to the first world war. the massive military industrial complex creates a corporate atmosphere that stiffles ridicules and attacks any critique. that has created an anti intellectual culture. people educated and trasined to think critically cannot just swallow the lies and contradictions of american militarism whole.

there are genuine american critics , like noam choamsky but they are totally marginalized even thought they are the thinkers of our age.

this is part of anglo culture in general. xsince the elizabethean age britain has been on a world wide imperialist campaign. this militarizes the culture. class becomes the civialian rank system and criticism of any intelligent nature is destroyed. after the decline of the british empire and its laissez faire capitalist beliefs the ideas were passed to america. its all about makin money for the military industrial elite. again the once extensively egalitarian american culture has been subverted to become class stratified like britain. this is the militarization of a society which continues to put most of its creative energy into capitalist expansion exploitation and military comntrol of those ventures.

in the old days lord salisbury was at least open about it. he used to say of the conservatives"we are the stupid party" all i need to know is god king and country". the spin is a little better now but the tradition is the same.

in canada we have the same thing with the tories. they ran an ad campaign against the liberal leader because he had attended and taught at harvard and the sorbonne--proving him to be an intellectual.

they don't want people to think. people who think might notice that alberta(the tory heartland) will be a toxic waste land inthe nrothern half and a deseret in the south within fifty years due to massive oil extraction. they are helping the take the money and run capitalists and don't want anyone realizing whats at stake untill its too late and they take their money elsewhere.

just as american right wingers don't want anybody noticing the massive profits in iraq to contractors like haliburton, while the amount of money spent on the iraq war could have easily put america into a path of sustainable alternative energy. however self susstainable energy doesn't make haliburton rich, and doesn't bail out little george w when his oil company went broke.

but we can't talk about that or we are commies