If you turn on Youtube, you could easily be swamped by videos poking fun at dumb Americans. But why?
Well it is certainly true that there are dumb Americans – the existence of a political party that has been hijacked by a conman who previously won the presidential election pretty much conclusively demonstrates there is plenty of stupidity in America.
But many of the examples are not stupidity (or “dumb”) but ignorance. And ignorance about Europe, Asia, or Africa – not their home continent. Such ignorance is perhaps unfortunate but reasonable.
There are plenty of folk from all over the world that are dumb – both ignorant and stupid. The average person isn’t too bright and half of us are dumber than that. No, dumb Americans are simply more noticeable simply because they’re speaking English.
English is by far the widest spoken (and read) second language to make it the most widely understood language in the world – even exceeding Mandarin (which is by far the largest first language).
And yes that means the dumb British also stand out, but not to quite to the same extent – Americans simply outnumber us.
Having said that, all those Trump voters do kind of undermine the notion that Americans aren’t really dumber than anyone else in the world.
