So there’s an underserved demographic that Trump appeals to. But I don’t want to mince words: many of them are ignoramuses. The idea that sensible policy is something you can dream up without study or expertise is just pride and folly. If I want brain surgery, I’d visit Ben Carson. If I want my car fixed, I hire an auto mechanic. To think that the Presidency is one of the rare jobs that doesn’t require special knowledge or background is crazy.
I blame Fox News, talk radio and yeah TV news. At best, it’s all assert-assert-assert. Very little weighing of evidence. It’s not surprising that those who get their information from such sources both have a higher than average self perception of their knowledge and a lower than average test scores when asked simple factual questions about the news. So when I say ignoramus, I’m not just pitching an insult: I am characterizing a phenomenon.
Cite: The outsider delusion and the fallacy of ‘getting things done’
Crosspost:
I’m pretty sure the author was speaking figuratively about ADHD. The argument isn’t really, “Trump has ADHD, so he’s unqualified.” Firstly, I’m not sure ADHD is a disqualification. Secondly no diagnosis was presented. It was really just a colloquial characterization of Trump’s current public shtick.
The point I was making with the article though was that Trump’s speech is conceptually incoherent. Drum emphasized that he wasn’t cherry picking lines. But for the purposes of demonstrating the point, I’ll cherry pick a sentence from Trump that I used in another thread. It’s a word salad which makes no substantive argument.
[QUOTE=Donald Trump]
Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
[/QUOTE]
If you want a contrast, you can see it with Hillary’s workmanlike speeches here and here. They are rather old school. They lack the flashy insults. But as you read them, they make a coherent argument. You may not agree with that argument. But it is there. With Trump you have a claim, followed by chains of one sentence brags about his background.