I have a coworker who is a traditional liberal now pretty conservative who is starting to really question things. He's talking a lot about how people seem to be getting stupid and Universities don't teach smart things anymore. He read a book called Coddling the American Mind. I looked into the book and it seems to scratch the surface.
In my opinion the problem at the end of the day is equality. Cultural Marxism aka Critical Theory pushes equality and these concepts have been brought into our education along with feminism which has created an education system no longer about promoting superiority in knowledge and expertise but in promoted equality which of course lowers the quality of everything. Are there any good books that highlight the promotion of equality as the problem with "dumbing down Americans" and how this view of equality has been pushed by the rulers of society for the last century leading to the situation we're in now. Could also tie into how wealth and abundance leads to these scenarios etc... any good books on the subject you'd recommend?
I was just going to comment on that and I'm glad people are already recommending him, Thomas Sowell is an excellent red pill on the way woke ideology affects economic thought among other things. For a more detailed look he should check out Mike Maloney's hidden secrets of money series on youtube. There's also Milton Friedman who has some clips where he openly talks about this sort of thing too.