Is, or was?
I agree. Especially when factoring in what seems like a decline from his advanced age.
At least was. He clearly has dementia now. But I don’t know how that relates to IQ.
No. But I think you underestimate the required smarts required to successfully sell snake oil. Selling a quality product is easy. Selling snake oil? A cunning animal can’t.
Objectively: the problem he solves is how to get nearly half of American voters to support him, to buy the crap he is selling, and vote for him, even when it is clearly against their own best interests; what he says gets that result. There are others with same lack of moral compass who want to be able to do that who fail miserably. They may be smarter in other ways but they can’t do it. He has a very particular sort of intelligence. Maybe it is a splinter skill like a savant? But he has it.
Mostly agree. I think his influence is not inexplicable.
While some people cannot reconcile such influence with a person of, at best, average intelligence, I don’t see why great intelligence is necessary to achieve such influence.
Yeah, sure…but not the very simple thing I asked for.
Cough. Ron DeSantis. Cough. White boots.
It isn’t the cunning of the seller. It is the stupidity of the original buyers, coupled with the complacency of the secondary buyers who think the original buyers couldn’t be that stupid and others thinking they might be able to use the seller, the original buyers and the secondary buyers to their own benefit. On those rare occasions when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars (and enough people aren’t taught critical thinking skills)…shit happens.
Sure it can. You just need to have the kind of image and personality traits that attract morons. If there’s enough of them, you can be wildly successful – you can sell snake oil, NFT trading cards, cheap Bibles, sneakers spray-painted gold, stupid picture books, stock in a worthless social media company, and all kinds of other worthless crap.
Clearly it isn’t. The question is whether the majority of his cultists are actual fascists, or just morons.
I do think the case of Ron DeSantis shows that Trump has skills in demagoguery that others lack.
Somebody has already stated this better than I can - “I don’t think the majority of Trump supporters are racists, but a racist candidate is not a dealbreaker for them”.
Likewise, I don’t think most of them are explicit fascists (though I do believe most are dumb enough they’d think most of the individual tenets were fine and dandy), I do think it’s not a dealbreaker for them if their favored candidates were fascists.
Much of the discussion of Trump supporters immediately upthread fails to accurately describe the limited number of Trump supporters I know. The ones I know cannot really be characterized as lower than average intelligence. And - as I’ll try to explain below, I don’t think it is entirely accurate to call the “evil.”
The primary motivator I perceive I guess I’ll call selfishness. The few I know are middle, upper middle class, or wealthy. They basically want to protect and increase what they have, and they feel that anything done for the less fortunate will threaten their security. The ones that come closest to “evil” IMO are the wealthiest. They are crazy successful - largely due to factors other than personal ability and effort - yet they want more and more. That attitude I truly do not respect. But those are a relatively few folk.
Somewhat related, they are just used to being on top. They do not appreciate the benefits they received from the accident of their birth - and from government policies that help persons such as them. Instead, they have a self image of having achieved whatever they have through their own efforts.
Also related, like I said, they are used to a society that favored white christians. Also educated/able bodied/cis/etc. Many of them just accept that as how things ought to be. I suspect it is pretty natural for folk who have enjoyed preferential treatment to fear change which might endanger their preferred position. IMO, such fear does not really make them “evil”.
Then, you add in a willingness to accept their thinking points from a single source. I guess that could be characterized as not curious. But I think it is not unusual for folk to favor analysis that supports their predisposition.
No?
Seriously a purpose of language is to communicate a concept to the intended audience and get the intended response. He is to me saying an incoherent flow of crap. But what he says is effective at having a meaning not necessarily contained in the words understood by his target audience and gives him the desired result.
By definition that is effective communication.
Anyway, back to the OP, RFK jr. is expected to drop out and throw his support to Trump, it’s not much, but it could help in swing state.
No, they do not.
Trump voters generally believe the Democrats are evil. They believe Ukraine is a giant fraudulent scheme (often called “money laundering,” although that doesn’t make sense) and that Democrats are warmongers who desire more war, while Trump is the peace candidate. They believe abortion is wrong and Trump will stop it. They think illegal immigration is evil and that Trump will stop it. They think Trump will root out corruption. They think Trump will create jobs. They think Kamala Harris is an actual Communist.
That’s what they really, honestly think. Just listen to them. Read what they write.
You don’t seem to appreciate how far apart the facts-agreed-upon divide is.
If true, it’s HUGE. RFK consistently polls around 4-5 percent, more or less. If Trump gets half of that through endorsement, it’s a huge, huge deal.
I think most are just single issue voters. If you believe abortion is murder or the only right you care about is owning whatever and however many guns you like, then Trump is your only choice even if you recognize all of his many, many moral deficiencies.
Almost everything you cited is an opinion, not a fact, but I get it. And I don’t disagree with you on that stuff.
Let me rephrase. They see Trump saying the same terrible things that we do, and they have to come up with an excuse for it, just as his spokespuppets do. They know about Jan. 6 and have had to make up bullshit in their heads to excuse it or borrow someone else’s bullshit. They’ve heard Trump openly state his bad intentions, and they blow that off.
In doing so, they are being evil (of course, those who don’t bother to make up excuses at all are also evil). To the extent that they really believe these excuses, they are stupid.
Right. Such people are, IMO, making a very poor calculation, but they are not evil or stupid per se. Well, perhaps stupid for making that bad calculation.
Can’t link from my Fire (I don’t internet good) but I’m seeing new polls out of Maine showing Veep leading in both congressional districts now. Only one EV but could be important if this one comes down to the wire.