Laughing at stupid humor isn’t a new thing…Kings employed fools.

So, Donald Trump hires Elon Musk and Twitter media platform of fools. And you don’t get the connection of why Kings employ fools? Interesting.

Hate to speak I’ll of Sagan but this is quite…unprofound

Ok, so it isn’t profound. But it describes the problem we need to solve in the United States of America year 2025. That people give one-line answers in Elon Musk’s Tiwtter (X) style to serious problems, and are anti-education, anti-literacy, anti-books, anti-learning, anti-study like Car Sagan was teaching in 1995.

Kings employed fools.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1995

Laughing at stupid humor isn’t a new thing

Yes, of course laughter at dumb stupid things isn’t a new invention. What is new is the advent of electric media systems, television (HDTV) and the 2007 introduction of the Apple iPhone media venue. It is more the quantity of time spent consuming Beavis and Butt-Head that Carl Sagan was emphasizing in his book. He specifically said “popular” and that the “lesson” was that learning was to be avoided in favor of consuming Hollywood entertainment.

If people are spending 8 hours a day consuming Dumb and Dumber style content on their electric media devices, then we have the crisis we are witnessing since year 2015 with the rise of RFK Jr, Elon Musk, Donald Trump as the most charming entertainers in all world history on the White House platform of amusements.

Video gamers often discuss “ping time” / “lag time” in playing online games. And they also discuss frame rate, “frames per second” in screen they use to interface with the game. What Carl Sagan is describing in year 1995 is more about “Dumb and Dumber / Beavis and Butt-Head (Diaper Donald Trump?) per second”, like “memes per second” rate of consumption. And how many days per week someone consumes “Dumb and Dumber” content such as the Reality Social Media show of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

I suggest study of media ecology theory from 1985: [email protected] …

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985