A friend who just spent six months abroad concentrating on his work asks in bemused wonderment, “What happened to the US while I was away? How did it lose 15 IQ points and lurch to the right?”
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It didn’t happen. He was probably just used to it while he was here. That, and it is an election year, so the non-sense gets yelled a little louder right about now.
I studied abroad during college. Left the U.S. in early August 2001. Came back in December 2001. I sympathize. You can’t cross the same river twice, indeed.
I’d say 15 MORE points and the ‘right’ is just getting louder, and quoted as if they were rational. In the good old days, wackos showed up mostly in New Yorker cartoons, with prophetic signs, dressed in robes. Now they have their own network and write talking points for anyone who’ll parrot them. Sigh. ‘Remind me again … who do we hate this week? Islamics, gays, fertile Hispanics …’