When I was finishing my industrial instrumentation diploma at BCIT in 1999, my instructor, Bob, once spoke of the differences between Canada, the USA, and Europe, regarding instrument mechanics. He was speaking on the topic of BCIT instrumentation graduates finding work in the United States.
“They have no idea who or what we are,” he said, referring to America’s understanding of the role that I and my fellow instrumentation technicians were being prepared for. “Down there they only have two types of workers: engineers, and grunts on the factory floor.”
In Canada and in Europe, the idea that you might have an intelligent worker capable of taking an engineer’s specifications and building a mine or a mill is generally understood. But Americans weren’t familiar with this type of worker because in America there were two classes of workers in industrial sites. Smart people (engineers) and stupid people (grunts).
America’s consensus regarding industrial worker capability was that most Americans’ capabilities were limited with respect to higher cognitive functions. Most workers were pretty good at following instructions, if those instructions were simple ones. And this was why, he said, in American industrial sites, everything was spelled out and people followed instructions to the letter. Initiative was not a common quality.
A smaller part of their population had a greater ability to reason things through. To strategize and plan; to evaluate and assess; to solve problems and imagine creative solutions.
Now we see a government in the US of A where stupid people form a majority in the three branches of government that comprise their political system. When it comes to voting, the more capable people—the engineers–tend to vote for the Democratic party, and the less able people—the grunts—tend to vote for the Republican party. Unfortunately there are more stupid people than smart people in the United States.
This partly explains why they elected a man-child into their highest political office; grunts are easily led, and are led to vote for someone they can relate to.
There are other factors at play. Social media gives foreign actors enhanced abilities to manipulate American public opinion. Cyberespionage enables foreign governments to target American politicians in a number of ways. Greed itself, baked into the American economic system, has an insidious corrupting influence of American citizens, lowering ethical standards across the spectrum of civil society.
There’s a saying “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I hope the upheavals our southern neighbours are experiencing now make their government stronger (by which I mean more truthful, more just, more equitable, more reliable, more charitable, and kinder), rather than the alternative.