So, it seems to me that we’ve come down to three main categories:
The intellectually challenged - these are people who struggle with anything abstract or complicated. They truly cannot follow an argument that comprises more than one paragraph. They can be subdivided into 1.a. those who are easily led by a sense of belonging, and 1.b. those who are easily led by making them feel smart. The right has Trump rallies for the former, and Q-anon for the latter. The Left has done nothing to communicate with these folks.
The intellectually lazy - these folks don’t want to have to think, though they could if they tried. They went to schools which alternately stultified and punished any real thought to the point that they just got through and then refused to ever read a book again. The Right feeds them simple sound bites with rhyming schemes that make them feel cool when chanted or repeated on the internet. The left hands them a tome or a pamphlet full of eight letter words and then whines when they use it start the bonfire. The right is successfully increasing the number of schools that operate in a manner to create these folks, and the left shakes their heads but has no interest in running for the school board.
The Grifters - Trump and his ilk, but also the White Supremacists and Theologists who want a nation which supports only their kind. They are never telling the truth when you try to argue with them, so nothing you say or do will convince them. If you are not telling them how to get more money, with less effort, at the expense of entire categories of people they don’t like, then nothing you say will ever phase them. But they do enjoy upsetting you and wasting your energy and time.
It’s more than that. Most of us choose the media we like. We choose sources that largely align with our own prejudices and opinions. At a more mundane level - do you applaud when at a sporting event, a member of the opposing team makes a good move?
Democracy is flawed, but no one yet has come up with a better system. As a Brit, I think that America would benefit from a system that severely limited the money raised and spent in the name of electing individuals and political parties to office.
I think the idiocy of treating every discussion as a zero-sum battle of “sides” in which one party “wins” or “loses” is why we can’t have nice things. And both sides do it.
I always liked this quote:
I guess maybe because Dummies don’t really have “ideas” where they are prepared to test and validate with empirical evidence and adjust accordingly. They just believe what they believe and can’t suffer to be wrong.
And I think to a certain extent our society encourages people to follow their “beliefs” and ignore any obstacles or naysayers who stand in their way. Because great things are rarely accomplished by reasonable people (at least according to George Bernard Shaw).
You don’t think the Left has a share of those who “are easily led by a sense of belonging” and “those who are easily led by making them feel smart”? I’d disagree. I’ll grant that the fraction is much higher on the current Right but both those apply to sizable numbers on this side of the aisle too.
FWIW I suspect the bulk is less intellectually lazy than it is intellectually blinkered.
Decisions and behaviors are infrequently made a pure intellectual bases; emotional states often come first (e.g. resentment, fear, sense of justice, belief in a greater good …), satisfied by beliefs, and then ideas and finding/interpretation of “facts” to support those beliefs that satisfy those emotional states. That is how we all work to various degrees as human creatures.
A belief that “the other side” is “dumb” compared to how smart “we” are may partly address some emotional state, but it is not helpful. To the degree that it motivates the despair over our system of democratic representation that was in the OP, it is harmful.
It doesn’t. There was no great resorting since then. Quite the opposite. That was the whole point of Trump 2016. People kept expecting this mass exodus and it didn’t happen. Which means mostly the same people stayed put, held their nose, whatever.
I used to be married into a mostly Republican family. Politics and religion. Don’t talk about it. It’s like a switch goes on, the conversation changes tone. I couldn’t stand it. Can’t we just talk about other shit, there’s plenty else going on but once it got “political” attached to it all reason went out the window.
We need to go back to that. Get more diplomatic. Those former relatives, passing an IQ test wasn’t a problem. That had nothing to do with politics.
In Western thought (which is mostly a Liberal philosophy despite other influences and onslaughts), the individual is the primary unit. Not the collective or the family or the corporation. They all take second or third place.
But that’s been investigated, by among others Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. To further abbreviate what Adam Curtis has briefly described in the linked video, the “self” is just an imaginary handhold in our CPU, which itself is bombarded with too much, all over, without end. The lamentable conclusion is a world where people can’t exercise free will, or make good decisions for themselves or as a society. It reminds me of the Kurt Weil lyric from The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny: “We can’t help ourselves, or you, or anyone.”
I tend to interact more with folks on the left. I’ve become way frustrated by the number of people whose political interactive style is “oh how could you SAY that, that sounds like something Evil So-andSo would have said, and besides, it contradicts the current values that we’ve embraced, where is your head? You are wrong and you need to apologize and grovel, but doing so won’t be sufficient, I hope you realize that”.
I get so annoyed at running headlong into the attitude that “all the important people have already weighed in on this issue, and decided the Truth, and you’re wrong, and there’s no reason we should listen to you”. That’s so fundamentally undemocratic and elitist, I can’t believe they don’t hear it in their own voice when they speak it.
It’s not that the folks on the right don’t do the equivalent, but they scarcely even pretend to be the good guys so it’s not as surprising when they do it.
Moderating: @I_Love_Me_Vol.I This is off-topic with a high probability of leading to a hijack. I will hide it for you. There is a pit thread very suitable for this observation if you like.
No, not all the “important people” but all the experts. The world is gray and complex, never black and white. It requires experts. And I’m sorry but their views are more important. I’m not a doctor, so any medical views I have are practically worthless, no matter matter how many times I read Taber’s Medical Dictionary, or Grey’s Anatomy. Some knowledge, even more than the average, is not to be treated as valuable as expertise. This goes for all fields of study, but especially the sciences. It just seems like ego that “dumb” people can’t stand that they’re opinions are not treated equally to those of experts and that they are not accorded equal respect.
I wasn’t referring to matters that would be tossed into Factual Questions here on the board, BwanaBob, so much as the subject matter that would rightfully belong in Great Debates or IMHO. I’ve bounced off people on the left who have had the attitude (and associated behavior) attached to
• whether or not “transman” is offensive to transgender men
• whether “nice guys” are unequivocally creeps
• whether any questioning of the “chemical balance” theory of mental illness means you’re a scientologist
and other such things where, no, we don’t really have experts, or, rather, we don’t have consensus on who they are.
The hell they don’t, that’s the super power of feeling Righteous.
But I agree with the superiority mindset of a subset of liberals. It’s my firm belief that is why British comedians do so well over here even if they are as unfunny and uncouth as Jim Jefferies. They make Liberals feel better by making fun of ‘dumb’ religious/poor/southern/conservative Americans knowing full well they have UKIP at home and speak like a gutter rat. English accent = cultured foreign opinion I can use to look down on fellow citizens. Even if they deserve it sometimes it’s gross to see.
Me as well, until perhaps someone proposes something better, and makes a compelling argument for it, and amasses compelling evidence in its favor. Until then, we’re stuck with democracy.
Regarding the OP, I maintain that stupidity is a force of nature and that everyone is stupid about lots of things. But as the OP notes, some lack the ability or will to fight their own stupidity.
To some extent the problem is with populism and its distrust of expertise. There has always been a lot of that in the US, less so in countries like the UK, France, and Canada to name three. Tom Nichols’ 2017 work seems relevant: The Death of Expertise - Wikipedia
