I think this comic strip gets it right: we live in the Age of the Dumbass. After the golden age, the silver age, the bronze age, and the age of iron, we find ourselves in this age of dumbassery.
By the way, my late brother used to occasionally send me Pearls Before Swine strips, just because we shared a sense of humor.
Sorry to hear about your brother.
My sister and I share a similar sense of humour as well, as we used to send PBS strips to each other.
Huh. For a second, I had to check this wasn’t Mano Singham’s blog.
@StevoR: There were no puns involved.
I saw a PBS yesterday where Pig is watching TV news surrounded by horrible headlines. He then grabs a red balloon, blows it up, and floats out the window toward the horizon. Rat cries out, “I didn’t know that was an option,” while Goat cries “I want a balloon.”
I want my red balloon.
It’s been a very long time since I saw “La balloon rouge” so I read the synopsis in Wikipedia. I had forgotten about the bullies, but the end is hopeful.
@3. cates : True – but Mano Singham does regularly post cartoons from that series.
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blockquote>we live in the Age of the Dumbass.
We have social media to thank for that.
Every age thinks itself special.
That particular sentiment recurs, of course.
e.g. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4212/pg4212.txt
[CULTURE AND ANARCHY: AN ESSAY IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CRITICISM
1869, FIRST EDITION
MATTHEW ARNOLD]
“And,–to keep to our point of the influence of religious
establishments upon culture and a high development of our humanity,–
we can surely see reasons why, with all her energy and fine gifts,
America does not show more of this development, or more promise of
this. In the following essay it will be seen how our society
distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and
America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and
the Populace nearly. This leaves the Philistines for the great bulk
of the nation;–a livelier sort of Philistine than ours, and with the
pressure and false ideal of our Barbarians taken away, but left all
the more to himself and to have his full swing!”
Maybe its just USA that is the land of the dumbass and the home of depraved?
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov