"The dumbification of America." It's a phrase everywhere right now — but it deserves a more careful answer than outrage alone. This isn't about declining intelligence. It's about advertising economics, testing industry lobbying, local newsroom collapse, and an attention economy engineered to reward outrage over accuracy. This is The Fiscal Historian, where we trace today's cultural anxieties back to the actual economic incentives most conversations never examine.
Sources: media economics and advertising revenue research, standardized testing industry analysis, local news collapse studies, historical research on industry-funded doubt campaigns.