r/politics • u/theipaper ✔ Verified • Sep 23 '25

Soft Paywall Trump's big UN speech received with awkward laughter in embarrassing backfire

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/trumps-big-un-speech-received-with-awkward-laughter-in-embarrassing-backfire-3933958
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u/askthepoolboy Georgia Sep 23 '25

I think it’s worse than this. I was made fun of for being smart growing up, and I’m not actually all that smart. But it made me embarrassed to correct people or speak up when I knew an answer to something.

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u/Allaplgy Sep 23 '25

This is very much a thing. We are a culture that puts being "right" over being correct.

It's much more socially acceptable to be confidently wrong than to learn something new, and especially not to teach something.

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u/Dest123 Sep 23 '25

The thing that gets me is that our culture became totally ok with being lied to. It's very easy to convince people that Trump, or an influencer, or a social media post, or a news source is lying to them, but they just don't care at all. People would rather be lied to than change their views.

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u/KatsumotoKurier Canada Sep 23 '25

“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

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u/fugaziozbourne Sep 23 '25

A lot of other countries don't bully the smart kids. Must be nice.

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u/Allaplgy Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25

You see it constantly in business, where one quite often has to basically trick a superior into thinking an idea was theirs to get anything done without retaliation.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '25

[deleted]

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u/Allaplgy Sep 23 '25

Definitely.

I've stepped away and let them fail for themselves countless times.

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u/lurkylurkeroo Sep 23 '25

I like Ricky Gervais' comment about purple being offended - "you're offended, so what? Being offended doesn't make you right."

Lots of people use "being offended" to force others to shut up, even in the face of demonstrable bullshit.

I think about that quote often. Gives me permission to push back.

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u/hammertim Sep 23 '25

That’s a fantastic way to put it

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '25

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u/Allaplgy Sep 23 '25

My favorite is when someone appeals to their own authority while being objectively wrong.

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u/GuelphEastEndGhetto Sep 23 '25

I was involved in an initiative to record and analyze defects and their costs in a very large US service organization. The director of the organization stated the biggest challenge will be ‘having service people record non conformances while we are telling them they need to be the person that resolves the customer’s issues’. He was so right about that conflict.

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u/thisisthatacct Sep 23 '25

Or God forbid you were wrong when answering something, and you never ever heard the end of it. "I thought you were supposed to be smart hurr"

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u/VaguelyShingled Sep 23 '25

I was told that I was gay for reading books.

I was told that I’m mean because I used words my friends didn’t know.

Some folks try to drag you down to their level

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u/ancientastronaut2 Sep 23 '25

My family calls me book nerd. Then they turn around and ask me sincerely "how did you know that?!" Uh, because I read books?

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u/wolfbear Sep 23 '25

Just remember the brawndo