Once again I must evoke the 1978 novel “IQ 83,” by science fiction author Arthur Herzog. A man-made virus escapes a lab and begins reducing the intelligence of Americans to idiot levels. “Is We Getting Dummer?” shouts a typo-filled New York Times headline (not that Times headlines over the last several years have been a lot better). The suspense of the plot involves the desperate scientist responsible for the disaster rushing to find a cure before his own IQ dips so far that he starts watching “Three’s Company” reruns and laughing at them. Two hints that the nightmare may be coming true imposed on my consciousness yesterday.
The first is the headline above from Science News. We’re constantly told to “follow the science,” despite constant reminders that our scientists are politicized, careless, sloppy and dishonest. To make things worse, the support staff and journalists who write about scientists’ work and want us to trust their conclusions aren’t too bright. How many people read that headline and didn’t think, “Wait, WHAT?” How could that get into print?
Then there was this: “A new national survey from the Cato Institute, conducted in collaboration with Morning Consult of 2,253 Americans ahead of July 4th and America’s 250th anniversary, finds nearly half (46%) of Americans don’t know what America’s 250th anniversary commemorates.”
Wow. Do we have a great educational; system or what? In truth, we shouldn’t need our schools to teach our children about the founding of our nation. That information is ubiquitous: all anyone needs is to pay attention. Possess intellectual curiosity. Be raised in a family that thinks, reads and discusses current events.
An IQ of 83 doesn’t have to come from a virus.
Ethics Alarms 
They must have concluded that Mayan Conquistadors brought them back after discovering Spain. The writers must think that Spain was part of Hispaniola. Hence the term Hispanic. What a maroon!
As for the native Americans and Spanish horses, I don’t recall the text of the article, but it seems plausible to me that Spanish horses arrived on the coast of North or Central America shortly after Christopher Columbus (1500’s), and proliferated into the Great Plains long before European colonists such as Lewis and Clark (1803) arrived in the Great Plains. The headline is just ambiguous about where the European “arrival” in discussion occurred.
The Spanish are Europeans.
Obviously. The question is, at what geographic region is the “arrival” talking about? I think the horses “arrived” at the Plains faster than any Eurpeans did.
What?? The Spanish brought the horses. There were no horses in the Americas. Native Americans couldn’t “corral” horses until they were here. They were here because the Spanish brought them. Spain is in Europe.
This is pretty simple to resolve. According to the article, the horse arrived in early 1500 to Mexico. The indigenous there, though they had the taco, the chili 🌶️ pepper and even chocolate, really liked the horse. So, over the course of 3 decades the horse was incorporated into Mexican life and traded to other groups quickly. By mid 1500 the horse arrived to the Plains. And it was incorporated into Plains culture before that group of Indians ever encountered the first Europeans coming from the later arrival of Europeans to the English colonies.
Aliza, they encountered the Spanish, traveling north. Ie the Europeans from Spain? This is about Taos, NM, not far from the Colorado/New Mexico border.
Older settlements from Spain conquistadors can be found all over Texas, New Mexico, California and other southwestern areas.
“The long and proud history of the Town dates back to August 29, 1540 when Capitan Hernando Alvarado as part of the expedition of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado arrived in the Taos Valley for the first time.”
Horses were brought in through trade with the Spanish long before any towns were settled on behalf of the Spanish. You’re thinking the west was explored from east to west, but that’s not the case, the Spanish, from Spain, arrived first traveling up from Mexico, complete with construction of churches, south to north first then a second larger wave arrived east to west with the railroad, homestead act, and gold rushes. You can say in a few places, it was settled a 3rd time in places west to east as well in the most rugged and unforgiving areas of Southeastern Utah. The Mormons decided it was too wild and came back east from Salt Lake City.
That sounds right of course. When I said “Mexicans” I means Spanish and Indigenous (who moved north in the time frame you mention).
You’re thinking the west was explored from east to west
I was referring to what I understood of the article’s assertion: that Plains Indians had horses (that came from the south by way of Spanish/Mexicans) when the English colonials advanced from the east.
There is a fun trivia question that when I tried it so far no one has got the answers: “Can you name the 4 domesticated animals of the Americas, before the Europeans came?”
“Wild Horses Spread to North American Plains Earlier than Previously Thought.”
I have a couple of clients who are actual Spaniards and speak excellent English but with a ‘Spanish’ accent.
To my twisted mind that raises the ironic question: The Spanish are Europeans, they were in fact the original Conquistadores. But because their native language is Spanish, does that make them ‘Hispanics’?
The idea of white European colonialists being Hispanics tickles my fancy for some reason.
This might clarify (from a language/dictionary site):
Usage Note: Though often used interchangeably in American English, Hispanic and Latino have slightly different ranges of meaning. Hispanic, from the Latin word for “Spain,” has the broader reference, potentially encompassing all Spanish-speaking peoples in both hemispheres and emphasizing the common denominator of language among communities that might sometimes seem to have little else in common. Latino—which in Spanish means “Latin” but which as an English word is probably a shortening of the Spanish word latinoamericano—refers more exclusively to persons or communities of Latin American Spanish-speaking origin. Of the two, only Hispanic can be used in referring to Spain and its history and culture. In practice, however, this distinction is of little significance when referring to Spanish-speaking residents of the United States, most of whom are of Latin American origin and can thus theoretically be called by either word. · Since the 1980s Latino has come to be much more prevalent than Hispanic in national media, but actual Americans of Spanish-speaking Latin American heritage are far from unified in their preferences. For some, Latino is a term of ethnic pride, evoking the broad mix of Latin American peoples, while Hispanic, tied etymologically to Spain rather than the Americas, has distasteful associations with conquest and colonization. But in recent polls of Americans of Spanish-speaking Latin American ancestry, Hispanic is still preferred over Latino among those expressing a preference, while those having no preference constitute a majority overall.”
And the Native Mexicans are a subset of the Native Americans.
The poorly written title still is evidence of craptastic IQ. Here, I will rewrite it to fit your point:
From article: “Spaniards brought horses to Mexico in 1519. Indigenous peoples then took the reins, rapidly transporting offspring of those equine newcomers north along trade routes. As a result, a new study finds, many Native American populations across the Great Plains and the Rockies had incorporated horses into their ways of life by the early 1600s, decades before encountering any Europeans.”
____________
The “getting dumber” part is interesting. I often refer to the thought and intellectual activity of the Dissident Right and the European New Right and of course get into trouble here because some of their ideas (coherently so) take issue with Liberalism generally and seek philosophical and political alternatives to it (from this derives the perception that I am ‘anti-American’).
The Grand Question is How did it come about that after the conquest of the world following WWll, and with all the fantastic accomplishments resulting from material and technological advances, that it becomes increasingly more evident that people are “dumbing down”?
This is where my own ‘critical stance’ comes from: reading people like Tomas Sunic (Against Democracy and Equality):
“The crisis of modern societies has resulted in an incessant ‘uglification’ whose main vectors are liberalism, Marxism and ‘the American way of life.’ The dominant ideologies of modernity, Marxism and liberalism, embodied by the Soviet Union and America respectively, are harmful to the social well-being of peoples because both reduce every aspect of life to the realm of economic utility and efficiency. The principal enemy of freedom, asserts the New Right, is not Marxism or liberalism per se, but rather their common belief in egalitarianism. Marxism, incidentally, is not the antithesis of liberalism — it is simply the most dangerous form of egalitarianism that runs rampant through all sectors of the Soviet and American polity.”
If one takes this harsh assessment seriously, then the social and economic (consumer) system developed by the American business class after WWll and ‘installed’ on America, is in fact both logical and necessary. The average American citizen does not really have a purpose as a true citizen, and his real purpose is to be a docile, manipulatable peon. What education would she or he need other than being able to write and perform addition and subtraction?
This is why I say: You(-plural) have a deep sense that everything has gone wrong, but you(-plural) have so little idea why it has come about.
Why, in the name of all that is Sacred, do I get into so much trouble simply because I make bold efforts to answer the question?!
As much as I want to guffaw at the headline and ridicule “those people”, I have a close friend who recently informed me that his on his trip to England only realized that England is an island after the airplane landed.
Where’s that wood-chipper?
On the bright side, my friend is by nature ethical and full of wisdom… Just not education.
It is interesting to consider Spengler’s views in relation to America in the present:
(From Wiki): “He predicted that Western Civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency around the year 2000, which would lead to 200 years of Caesarism (extra-constitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of government) before Western civilization’s final collapse.”
See, my view is that everyone notices the death-processes, but it is hard to face what their implications are for we as individuals.
The bit about Caesarism is pretty interesting, no?
I can’t decide which part of “follow the science” is most dishonest for the left. The easy one is “some women have penises.” As a former employee of a nuclear plant though, it’s the hatred of nuclear for the most logical and scientific way to address CO2 emissions.
Plains Indians encountered Spanish horses before they encountered Spanish people…
The headline seems pretty plausible.