television aids and abets stupidity

Previously I wrote about the press gallery's being "invited" to The Lodge to get footage of the PM's watching the Soccer. Yair so a picture speaks a thousand words. Someone should have told that to James Joyce or Marcel Proust - they could jointly have saved a large bit of the Amazon's forests.

But it really does point out how stupid the populace is. I can read and listen but apparently I need a picture that has something to do with the story. Are we getting more stupid or more lazy? Are we living through a culture shift where the stupid are taking over the earth? Is this a natural phenomenon or is it being directed by the TV and the tabloids? It is still a motto of the RSL that "for evil to triumph, the good have only to do nothing." We may need to reassign terms so that it reads, "for stupidity to triumph, the intelligent have only to do nothing."

There was a similar phenomenon in King David's time that led to the need for regularising the proverbs. Had David sucked his people in so much that their stupidity had become a threat to their national survival? Had the Germans become so stupid that the phenomenon arose there in the 1930s? Are we in danger of stupidity overload? Is the phenomenon already present? How can we break the cycle - or have TV and guiley politicians too much black-holed us?