While stupidity is as old and pervasive as the human species, which over-compensated by calling itself sapiens (the wise ones), ASS is very new. For most of its existence, humanity has sought to reduce its innate stupidity and ignorance through education, training, and relatively reliable methods of generating and transmitting new information. Lately, all have broken down and remain unreformed although eminently fixable. The breakdowns artificially stimulate human stupidity by making it more difficult to engage in rational analysis or discussion.

At this point, almost all formal education in the US, K-PhD, is government-controlled, even when technically privately provided. It fails most students not only by not helping them to think critically but by filling their minds with falsehoods. As its former centers of excellence rapidly deplete the reputational capital they built over centuries, a nasty negative feedback loop has developed wherein stupid administrators hire stupid faculty to teach stupid students to be even stupider. Some of those stupider students then become even stupider administrators and faculty who move the next generation of students yet another step closer to Idiocracy.