Linus Pauling and Vitamin C, for instance.
A lot of Trumpists just don’t care. They don’t care he’s the figurehead of an insane movement that is evil, cruel, destructive, chaotic, regressive, lying, fascistic, and full of contempt and malice for the rule of law. They, openly, loudly, and proudly do not care.
I don’t hear them call the left “elitists” as a whole; just people like Warren. Most of them think that the left is clueless about how the real world works whether it be economics, social issues, etc.
Because public education raises taxes AND doesn’t pay for their child’s private schooling
That’s how propaganda works
I know what you mean; I think there’s more to it than outright laziness though; there’s something about being convinced you’re right and that you’re on the right team that is awfully appealing to people- it’s like it lets them turn off that little skeptical, questioning part of their brains because they know they’re on the right side of things and other stuff is wrong.
I mean, how many of us here are realistically questioning everything we know is right? I’d wager not many consistently do it- there are things that are right and true, things we question, and things we know are wrong as well.
Which is not exclusive to that side of things by any means.
Trump made it OK for his followers to be openly hateful. Up until 2015, the GOP encapsuled its prejudices in dog whistle-type messaging, but that was too subtle for a lot of people.
Trump brought it out in the open back in 2015, and that’s why he won the nomination then, and why the party has turned into his personal cult. His platform last year was openly one of vengeance and retribution against anyone and everyone that his white Christianist fans were against, whether it was immigrants from south of the border, transgender persons, uppity women and blacks, you name it. And just enough nonsense about bringing prices down to get just enough normies to win.
While the thread has moved on from this specific topic, I did want to comment on Kennedy, our junior US Senator.
Kennedy is perfectly adept at using the English language. He does have a natural Southern accent. However – his current public presentation while he’s been a US Senator is commonly (but not universally) understood locally to be something of a put-on.
The house may decide for themselves. The first video, 45 seconds, is from a 2004 Louisiana state senate debate where Kennedy ran as an avowed Democrat (!). The second clip, about 7 and a half minutes, is from an April 2022 Dan Abrams broadcast – viewing the first two minutes is sufficient.
Isn’t it a Shakespearian reference?
Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refinéd gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
King John, Act IV, scene 2.
this is not even close to being true. The slickest salesmen and con men as well as many people who speak for a living are extremely eloquent and convincing. While crafty, I would not say they are, as a group, especially intelligent. And in contrast, many scientist and engineers are some of the most intelligent people you may ever meet, but the nerdy, socially awkward scientist is not only one of the most well-worn tropes, it is also quite often accurate.
Two tings I came to believe after the 2016 election:
- Trump’s victory was an indictment of our educational system. His supporters aren’t stupid so much as ignorant and deficient in critical thinking skills.
- In hindsight, we may have overemphasized that “anyone can grow up to be President” business.
I think the majority (and perhaps almost all) of the MAGA cult would think that the world of Harrison Bergeron would be a desirable place to live.
Willful stupidity is worse than natural stupidity since somebody who is just naturally stupid will learn, eventually. Just slower. The willfully stupid will never learn because they refuse to.
Also, there’s a huge overlap between the willfully stupid, the bigots and the just plain malignant. Both because they base their beliefs on falsehoods that can’t be examined, and because being bigoted and cruel to the point you bring ruin upon yourself IS stupid.
Of course it’s a Shakespearean reference, and quite a well-known one. Problem is, and I could be mistaken here and owe Speaker Johnson an apology for using him as my example if I’m wrong, is that Will S. was giving “gilded gold” as one of his examples or impossibilities or ludicrous redundancies (you don’t paint colorful flowers, nor do you need to make sweet-smelling flowers smell sweeter by throwing perfume on them etc.) while Johnson was using gilded gold as his example of something real. But I may be wrong–I didn’t hear his actual speech, just some news accounts of it.
Thanks for digging up an example of something I was too lazy to research (and which I apologized for bringing up here as not relevant to actual dumbness.)
Which returns us to dumbness and eloquence:
Yes, yes, yes, as I’ve asserted, there are plentiful exceptions to my “rule” that inarticulate = dumb, and eloquent = smart.
We each have our own standards for judging others’ intelligence. Rarely are these standards very objective and never are they unarguable. In my personal experience (where I needed to make snap judgments about others’ intelligence as part of my job, and other times just for the fun of it), the ability to express oneself eloquently was a reliable earmark of intelligence. I needed to take into account the exceptions, but I found that I had gotten pretty reliable gauging very smart people and very dumb people by the way they spoke and wrote, much more reliable than college transcripts, SAT scores, letters of recommendation and the like. You probably have different methods of gauging intelligence that you find valid, but this one is the best I’ve found working for me. We can argue all evening about what “dumb” even means (and we seem to be doing so) but I think we have a fairly clear understanding of the general concept, and how it differs and doesn’t differ, for example, from “intellectually lazy.”
And I’ve worked with many intelligent scientists and found them occasionally “socially awkward,” but much less so the closer I got them to talking about their fields. Not sure where social awkwardness fits into the dumb/smart continuum.
I’m not trying to give you a hard time, but if you are making a “snap judgment” about a person, that suggests you don’t know them and have just met, and thus the only thing you have to go on when making a judgment about their intelligence is what they are saying to you in the moment. You are essentially articulating a tautology. You perceive a person who is eloquent, confident, articulate, and fast talking as intelligent. Thus any person who speaks in such a manner is course smarter than one who speaks more slowly, seems less at ease, or otherwise doesn’t communicate in a manner which you rate highly. That doesn’t make it so though. Do you see the issue here as you have described it?
Without getting too autobiographical here, one my functions on my former job was weeding out the hundreds of job applications for academic positions in a great hurry. I’d be asked to select a few dozen strong applications within a week or so, allowing the personnel committee to review those. I didn’t have, nor did anyone want to give me, nor did i need, more than a few minutes with each 10- page application, so i would often use my judgment as to the applicant’s general intelligence based solely on the cover letter, sometimes just the first few sentences.
I might have done some highly qualified candidates a disservice by dismissing them too quickly in this basis but overall I did a pretty effective job of whittling the applications down to 10% or fewer within a few days, the last of which was devoted to reading further into the applications (the CV, maybe a bit of some other documents). If i hadn’t, I’d still be reading applications (i retired from this job years ago. ) i think, and my colleagues thought, i did a pretty fine job of weeding the smart ones out of a very large pile of mostly dummies (with Ph.Ds, mind you).
In that same job, I’d do things like this all the time, sometimes orally, sometimes in writing–evaluating transfer students, for example, as to which level I should place them into, usually on the basis of a transcript but also in a quick interview where I would see if a student was smart enough to swim in the pool I was placing him into. I won’t say I was never wrong, but I didn’t get many complaints either from the professors into whose classes I placed transfer students.
I think most of the reason that it is president now, is misogyny. Throw in a heaping spoonful of bigotry and racism too.
Does that make Trump voters stupid? I’ll let everyone make that choice for themselves.
There is a nation wide news reporter/commentator on political subjects that was trying to be ‘middle of the road’ I guess. He said that we should also look at the good things that Trump has done.
That’s like complimenting your neighbor for his nice lawn after he murdered your family.
While most Trumpites are desperately in need of critical thinking skills, that doesn’t mean they’re unintelligent in other aspects.
Cult members find all sorts of excuses for their Leader’s shenanigans.
Not necessarily stupid, but likely fearful. Fear can certainly – and commonly does – override the rational mind.
Good point. Fear. Losing ‘status’.
*IS blanking ?
I think more than anything it’s:
- Media diet
- Media literacy
If you have a good media diet, then poor media literacy is survivable, because you’re getting good information. On the other hand, if you have only bad media available, good media literacy can help you make sense of it.
If you don’t have good media literacy, you’re going to tune into Fox, who will fill that vacuum by telling you that they’re they only source of truth and everyone else are liars. So right out of the gate, you’re getting bad content, and a false media awareness that’s telling you everyone else is “biased”. And if Fox is telling you what you want to hear, you have little motivation to seek out other viewpoints. Then you’re cooked, in a state of complete epistemic closure where nothing else can get in.
Ignorant and stupid people of course are easy targets for this sort of thing, but they’re absolutely not the only ones. This can absolutely sucker in people like engineers and dentists who think their expertise in one domain makes them experts in every domain, but again have that same blind spot with regard to media literacy, and seeking out confirmation of their own biases.
Sums it up perfectly.
I know Trumpers in my own life who have eschewed newspapers, magazines, and TV news from legacy media (which they previously consumed) in favor of a 100% Fox News diet for their “news”.
You see, it is everyone else that is “lying”.