Americans, in general, are idiots

To approach Pro's initial contention, the fact that 40 percent of Europeans have mental disorders is very relevant to the topic of the debate. At its core, this debate is about the perceived stupidity or ignorance of Americans, or in other words, their general mental state. The fact that its rather inflammatory notwithstanding, it's pretty likely that someone with a mental disorder will generate the same perception. Indeed, someone with dementia, anxiety and even depression or insomnia, will behave in ways that can be construed as "idiotic." While this is apparent when it comes to someone with dementia, it is also the case with chronically anxious people, who will be so distracted by their affliction, that they will have trouble conducting their everyday life, and will often come to absurd conclusions. Someone with depression will often be listless, as they will lack motivation, resulting in little to no success in typical engagements. Someone with insomnia will have significantly reduced mental capacity as a result of his or her affliction. The result is that 40 percent of Europeans have trouble functioning on a normal level compared with the rest of the world. This could be why the European Union seems to have such greater economic problems than does the United States. Many countries, such as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, are suffering from economic decline to the effect that the massive amount of viable real estate currently available generates little to no interest, due to the lack of circulating money that will render those properties marginally profitable. In Spain, for example, the unemployment rate is massive -- over a quarter of the population is unemployed. In the United States, unemployment hovers between 6 and 7 percent, which is alarming in our highly developed and highly influential economy. All that said, these are real issues that actually affect the world at large -- not some perception of a European halfway across the world developing opinions about a country that clearly know little about based on polls that used a sample population of a little over a thousand people to reflect a the perspectives of a country that contains over 400 million people. In other words, your assertions about the American zeitgeist are based on a poll that was conducted on .001 percent of the population. It's easy to claim that a country is being "dumbed down" when it's so critical of itself. The United States is constantly criticizing its own education system, more often than not to incite incentive for improvement. Although there are general problems, which include low graduation rates (77 percent), Americans have a very high literacy rate (99 percent) and both mathematical and scientific literacy higher than adults in Japan and Europe. That doesn't sound idiotic to me -- it, instead, sounds like an education system that needs improvement. It also doesn't reflect your ridiculous claims that Americans don't realize that the Earth revolves around the sun, or that it's older than 10,000 years. Ultimately, though, a person's religiosity has no real casual connection to his or her education or intelligence, whereas a person's mental health does. So, granted, the United States is religious, and more religious than many (but not all) European countries. That notwithstanding, a minority of those Americans that claim a religion are actually religious. Americans do not "dedicate a large proportion of their lives" to religion. They dedicate a much larger proportion of their lives to education and the attainment of money, which is more than what can be said of much of Europe. I'm not saying that there should be any qualms with Europeans, or that those from Europe are at all idiotic -- or even more idiotic than Americans. But, this is to say that your perspectives about Americans are misguided and more insulting than convincing. There is no evidence that other countries are "beating" the United States (and, in what? We're still the world leaders in economic leverage, military power, and social influence), and its silly to believe that the same country that brought the world AC electricity, radios, televisions, computers, the internet, and iPhones, are "dumbing down." Your move. http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.reuters.com... http://en.wikipedia.org...