Are we falling into the trap of American stupidity?

Is stupidity catching? I do hope not.

At some point, somehow, I must have signed up to a website called Quora. It’s where people ask questions, and other people give a range of answers. I genuinely don’t remember signing up, nor what topics I was interested in at the time, but for the last few months I have been getting several emails a day, alerting me to the latest questions and answers on Quora. And the general thrust of all these is: Americans asking stupid – and I mean mind-blowingly, arse-clenchingly, eyeball-poppingly stupid, questions. I suspect that a lot of these are trolls or even bots, trying to get a rise out of us Brits, but in amongst this morass of idiocy, there must, one assumes, be some genuinely thick people asking actual questions.

Let me share some gems from my inbox that have left me questioning whether evolution is actually working in reverse across the Atlantic:

“Why do average Americans have a higher IQ than Brits?”

Well, sunshine, if this question is any indication of American intellectual prowess, I’m going to suggest that particular study might have been conducted by the same people who think the earth is flat and that bleach cures COVID.

“British people, are you aware that once America entered WWII we could’ve just went straight for Japan and let you fend for yourselves? Don’t you think a little gratitude is in order?”

Ah yes, because nothing says “we’re here to help” like threatening to abandon your allies mid-war. Imagine if the fire brigade turned up to your burning house and said, “We could put this out, but first, how grateful are you going to be?” Also, “we could’ve just went”? The grammar alone is making me want to declare independence from the English language.

“Are British people in awe when someone from the United States visits their country?”

Only in the same way one might be awestruck by a traffic accident – you can’t help but stare, but mostly you’re just wondering how it all went so terribly wrong.

“Don’t the Britishans understand that if they moved to the free world USA they would have access to all sorts of new experiences like 3 warm meals per day, safe tap water, good dental care etc?”

“Britishans”? Is that what we’re called now? And yes, we’re absolutely desperate to experience the freedom of medical bankruptcy, school shootings, and tap water that occasionally catches fire. Our “unsafe” tap water and terrible dental care (ranked better than America’s by the WHO, but who’s counting?) pale in comparison to the American dream of rationing insulin because the amount of profit being added means most people can’t afford it.

“Can Europeans afford travelling? I have never heard anyone speaking European here in Texas.”

This one actually made me snort coffee through my nose. “Speaking European” – presumably the single language that 750 million people across 50 countries all speak fluently. Perhaps they expected to hear conversations in fluent European such as “Guten morning, comment ça va? Molto bene, grazie!”

“Why are there so many light bulbs in the UK even though the light bulb is an American invention?”

By this logic, Americans shouldn’t be allowed to use the World Wide Web (British invention), penicillin (British), television (British), or the telephone (British). But then again, perhaps some of them would benefit from less access to the internet.

“Is it true that British people want the UK to be an American state?”

Yes, absolutely. We’re desperate to trade our free healthcare, paid holidays, and gun-free schools for the privilege of pledging allegiance to a flag every morning and tipping everyone for doing their jobs properly.

“Do they have internet in Britain like we do in the United States?”

I’m not sure how to break this to you, but the World Wide Web was invented by a British scientist at CERN. We’ve had the internet slightly longer than we’ve had disappointment in American geography education.

“Why did the UK copy so many American city names?”

This question is so magnificently backwards it deserves a slow clap. Yes, we time-travelled forward from the Middle Ages to 1776, saw what Americans would call their cities, then travelled back again so we could copy them pre-emptively. York (founded 71 AD) was clearly inspired by New York (founded 1624). We’re just that forward-thinking.

The truly depressing part isn’t that these questions exist – every country has its village idiots. The problem is that they seem to represent a genuine cross-section of American educational achievement. This is what happens when you teach children that their country is the greatest in the world without teaching them anything about the world itself.

It’s the result of an education system that treats geography as optional, history as propaganda, and critical thinking as suspicious. When your schools are more concerned with teaching students to stand for the national anthem than to think for themselves, you end up with adults who believe Europe is a country and that America invented electricity.

The irony is that many of these questions come from people who genuinely believe they’re superior to the rest of us “foreigners.” They’re so convinced of American exceptionalism that they can’t conceive of other countries having functioning infrastructure, education systems, or – heaven forbid – cultures that predate their own.

But here’s what worries me: are we starting to import this weaponised ignorance? Are we beginning to see British people who think being uninformed is somehow superior? Who mistake confidence for competence and volume for validity?

Because if we start producing our own versions of these Quora questioners, we’ll know that American stupidity isn’t just an export – it’s become a contagious disease.

And like their healthcare system, we really can’t afford to catch it.

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Jonathan is a publisher at Winter & Drew Publishing.

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