How Scott Stossel of The Atlantic is like Donald Trump and the stupidity of the average American

Wednesday 2/25/26

The average American is now sufficiently stupid that they're likely to believe that the hockey players on NHL teams based in the United States are all themselves Americans, and hockey players who play for teams based in Canada are all Canadians.

I saw proof of this constantly throughout--and all the more so after--the Olympics.

What i want to know is how you live in a world this moronic and this evil if you are yourself an intelligent and good person? How the hell do you fit in here? What place is there for you? What place is there for you if people who are good and intelligent aren't rising up and doing the work that needs to be done--as individuals and as people who care about others--to improve the world? When there are so few who are both good and intelligent to begin with?

We lack the language/communication skills to do anything, the courage, the selflessness, with just about everyone being hyper-fixated on themselves. The people who get the most--in terms of recognition, positions, money--are almost always people who are beyond evil, and completely bereft of talent, ability. Whether you're talking Donald Trump, Stephen A. Smith, Dave Portnoy, Pat McAfee.

Or look at publishing. Those people are so much like Donald Trump in their world, though they think they're the opposite. Remember Scott Stossel of The Atlantic who knew The Atlantic was discriminating against me, who about said as much to me, who then told me that if I said this publicly--this true thing--I'd never write for The Atlantic again.

Which is nonsense. Things change, people change, leverage changes. Circumstances, power. People get exposed. There are other people. Times change. And all of these people and places of this so-called industry at circling the drain anyway in a world where they have helped kill off reading with the shit they put out there, which no one needs, no one really wants, and you can't get some better version of elsewhere from some random person on the internet. And as for something like fiction, your kid's first attempt at a story for their fourth grade class makes for better reading than any of this MFA-machined worthless, up-its-own-boring-ass hackery.

He threatened me, attempted to intimidate me, bully me by saying that if I said the truth about what he and The Atlantic had done, I would pay the price. In effect he said, "Remain silent about what happened here and how wrong it was, or else." That's Donald Trump-like behavior.

I could put up any of thousands of examples here of what I'll include below. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing curatorial work for aliens. Beings from other worlds who arrive here one day and want to get a quick understanding of what we became, why it all collapsed. Or how bad it got. You have to realize that a single example like this represents like 250,000 examples. It's a kind of per capita thing. I can't include them all, and it'd be a strange thing to sit here and post thirty-two of them, so we'll just go with this guy who goes by andrew_unboxed on Threads.

He's your average American. It's this person. This is what the average American is like. This is the education level of the average American. He's indicative of the literacy level of the average American. The fitness level intellectually, morally, spiritually, politically, physically. You have a nation full of people like this guy. He is the problem. People like this. They are a ball and chain. They drag everything down. They make people like the people I mentioned above possible and a world that is the way it is why the way it is.

Goes on Threads and writes

Canada hasn't won the stanley cup in 33 years. Now that is pathetic

Who do you think he voted for? How many books do you think he read last year? How many books do you think he could read if you wanted to? You think he can understand anything he reads or is the challenge just in sounding out the words and saying you can technically read because of that? Do you think he posts photos of himself on social media with his new WWE graded/authenticated cards? You think he can think? You think he even tries?

Ah, but here's the rub--he thinks he knows. He thinks he knows as well as anyone. Better. Like he was me talking about hockey or the Beatles or prose or whatever he wanted to talk about.

Because that's how the average American is. People tend to think the average American is something else, but it isn't. Then it's like, "Love your country!" Why? Why would any intelligent, decent person love what this is? Why would they love the world? What's there to love? The moments that feel like miracles when someone does something that doesn't benefit them in what is tantamount to a dark alley? Or when you see something that's somewhat intelligent, also in what's tantamount to a dark alley? Or you make or say something great, also in the dark alley? It goes unseen. You can't live off of it. You can't buy food off of it. No, you have to be stupid and a bad person for that. To be "platformed." To be hooked up by other stupid people who are also bad people.

This is your America right here right now.