Trump's presidency shows America's 'concentration of imbeciles has surpassed any safe level': Ex-Fox News editor

Former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt, who was fired in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, has written a new essay for The Dispatch in which he argues that the Trump presidency has exposed a deeply troubling mental deterioration in the United States.

Specifically, Stirewalt looks at a wide range of recent events, including the Capitol riots and anti-vaxxers' efforts to disrupt vaccine distribution in Los Angeles, and concludes that America has become dangerously ignorant and stupid.

"Foolishness is nothing new in America," he writes. "This is the country of P.T. Barnum, medicine shows and pet rocks, after all. But our current concentration of imbeciles has surpassed any kind of safe level."

Stirewalt lays much of the blame on America's education system, and he blames both Republicans and Democrats for failing to take educating America's students seriously.

"Humanitarian concern for students being dumped into and out of facilities that look like medium-security correctional institutions and act like daycares might not be enough to renew interest in the issue of education," he writes. "But perhaps the consequences of plopping generations of wet clay into the hands of kooks, charlatans and demagogues will do the trick."

Read the whole essay here.