All or most political pundits concur: The Republicans have done a superb job of messaging through the right-wing radio networks as well as the tabloids and Fox News television and now through social media. They've used these venues to snooker and bamboozle millions into actually believing that they are the friends of the working class. Never mind they are quite ok in the current setting of Trump Bro Elon Musk wreaking havoc on workers via his DOGE. Many on the left have agonized about this and wondered whether they should create alternative media infrastructures. Here's why this is a lost cause given such "alternative media" would of necessity be designed exclusively for lowbrows, low IQ s. In one therp's view expressed in the NYT:
Part of why the Republicans are so successful is the message rather than the medium. Republicans keep their message extremely simple and focus on topics that have salience for their lower IQ tribe. Explaining the nuances of crime statistics and telling people not to worry about crime is not persuasive when people go daily to CVS and see all the toothpaste and aspirin are under lock and key or feel threatened on the street or subway.
Basically, right-wing talking points now dominate discourse because they embrace simpleton logic instead of complexity. Thus they’ve managed to galvanize millions of voters by focusing on anxiety about crime, migration and inflation- all appealing to the fear center (amygdala) of the brain - which is less amenable to control in low IQ people. This is given their executive functions, based in the neocortex, are less developed, less used . They don't read, don't go to 'legacy' media, prefer the realm of 'tweets', jokes and 10 second Tik Tok vids. For pointing this out, we must thank Anya Schiffrin, the director of the technology, media and communications program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She has shown an essential part of the conservative agenda is what she calls “platform capture”.
Dotard Trump made his intentions clear in countless public rallies, and on that basis, the lower IQ demographic of the American people got conned into choosing him to be their president. They expected getting their grocery bills lower, even housing. Not remotely believing he’d release hundreds of Jan. 6th felons, shut down cancer research, and make war on immigrants who perform the work Americans don’t want. But they ought to have known Trump would do as he said, and used lies (“children are coming to school as boys leaving as girls”etc.) to trigger their amygdalas and get back into power.
The cultural Left can indeed thank one guy for almost single-handedly turning the nation stupid. This would be Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of “America’s Cultural Revolution.” By inventing a plethora of manufactured nonsense words he's forced liberals to retreat on a host of issues, from DEI to critical race theory. He did it by inventing trigger words- terms like 'WOKE' and "CRT" as dog whistles for the low IQ underclass. Alas, it has worked.
Thus Rufo all by his lonesome can claim credit (or blame) for the corporate and
academic retreat on critical
race theory; diversity,
equity and inclusion (better known as D.E.I.); and the environmental, social and governance (E.S.G.)
movement in corporate investing.
Further, while both Democrats and Republicans have abandoned newspapers
in growing numbers the drop among Republicans accelerated much
faster than it did for Democrats in 2016, the year Trump first ran for
president.
Bottom line: Newspapers are a key source of information for Democrats but not Republicans. This means a dumbing down amongst Reepos, and pandering to much lower IQs. This is given the rejection of screened news sources means lies prevail, and Elon Musk with his ‘X’ is the epitome of misinformation and lies which he used to flood swing states with toxic ads, tilting the election to Trump. In effect, the dummies won.
The dummy faction are evidently winning in Colorado
too as per a story in the DenverPost. (Warning for Colorado Democrats, New
Poll Shows Their Popularity Slipping)
Wherein we read:
“A majority of Colorado voters have a negative view of both
the Democratic and Republican parties, according to a recent poll that
also found they increasingly identify Republicans with the working class and
solutions to economic problems.
The poll comes as the national Democratic Party searches for a
path forward in the wake of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to
now-President Donald Trump in November. The strength of Republicans’
identification with working-class issues is a warning shot for a party that’s
lost ground across the country.”
But this is offal, horse manure, because the Reeps don’t give two craps about the working class. If they did why would they be allowing a unelected billionaire (Musk) to wreak havoc with millions of jobs and pry into Treasury computer files - including for Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security? As Sen. Bernie Sanders pointed out yesterday (Deadline Whitehouse) Musk has already enriched himself by another $154 million via his agency raiding tactics - all approved by Trump and the GOP.
Thus the GOP's proclaimed “identification” with working class issues is a myth created by the Reeps. It's all smoke and mirrors. Designed to snooker low IQ voters and it’s evidently working by repeating it ad infinitum over the low info (e.g. Joe Rogan) podcasts, FOX News and social media.
"the merger between formerly nonpartisan institutions like the
media, academia and public health on the one hand — institutions that draw
almost exclusively from the ranks of college graduates — and expressly partisan
and political instruments of the Democratic Party and progressive advocacy
groups on the other hand."
The result, Silver wrote, is that the left “is losing the battle of ideas, the one thing that it’s supposed to win.” In fact, the left is losing the battle of ideas to stupidity, mass stupidity infused from multiple sources and fed by the basic diminution of intelligence in the electorate over the past two decades.
One comment in the NY Times perhaps summed it up best:
"The root of the Democratic party's failure and the
Republican party's success is that the public is so spectacularly ill-informed.
Only 15% of adults read a newspaper? Good lord, no wonder people are so easily
snookered."
Indeed! The true fact: The rise of autocracy/oligarchy/kakistocracy could have been stopped long ago, but not by our brainwashed, low IQ populace. Is the left guilty of some political inadequacy? I guess. It failed to clearly explain critical race theory or what being 'woke' really means: i.e. not comatose or sleepwalking through life. But it may also be - as Lawrence O'Donnell observed two nights ago- it is futile to try to make a rational argument to stupid people. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer's quote on stupidity at the end of this post. It applies here totally.
The Republican party, now a Trump personality cult, has zeroed right in on the soft underbelly of our country: people not with just their own opinions, but quite ominously, their own "facts" - fed them by the likes of FOX and Elon Musk- and the lack of intelligence to discern facts from fables.
We are in an age where the policies the right will pursue--tax cuts for the rich and corporations, tariffs and mass deportations--will not benefit the majority. However, young voters are relying on misinformation peddled by influencers with agendas. Of course, Elon Musk wants to kill "legacy media," because it critically examines what he's up to. Doh! We need newspapers now, more than ever and people who shun them can't be trusted to cast sober, rational votes.
Michael Lewis' book, The Fifth Risk. With his interviews of former Trump staffers and research Lewis exposed an unqualified, unskilled, low class degenerate and grifter whose sole claim to fame has been his manipulation of others, and starring in a 3rd rate reality TV show. From his losing casino operations - whose victims states had to often bail out - to his bogus Trump University, to his steaks with the consistency of shoe leather, everything about him reeks of fakery and mendacity.
Facts have a well-known liberal bias but their acceptance is also indicative of a higher IQ bias. This is because given their more voracious - but discriminating - reading habits, higher IQ people are more easily able to decipher facts from fakery and BS. Alas, however, survey research has long indicated that a very significant slice of the American public do not read even at 8th grade level. No surprise they also do not accept the overwhelming evidence that burning fossil fuels not only pollutes the air we breathe it creates the greenhouse effect. Or that the latter warms the planet's atmosphere and oceans and is rapidly causing conditions that if allowed to proceed unchecked, will make human life increasingly difficult ultimately to the point of extinction.
The less intelligent have also been snookered into seeing immigrants as a threat, despite the fact statistics tell us immigrants as a whole are less likely to commit crime than native Americans as a whole. Yet a majority of Trump voters believed that immigrants have caused the rise in the crime rate. But see, to get the statistics - whether on climate change or immigrants or inflation - one must read, not just mindlessly gobble video bytes from X, FOX News, OAN, Tik Tok or other lowbrow sites.
The conclusions here are sobering: non-reading, non- college educated voters in general are less open to evidence and respect for expertise and are more prone to assimilation of propaganda. Hence, more influenced by tribalism, sound bytes, racism and other less refined forms of dominance, including misogyny. All of which in concert scream low IQ. That a supposed sober, informed and intelligent people could blindly vote a convicted felon into power - who actually stated openly what he planned to do if he got in - shows convincingly the majority of those voters to be really IQ sub-normal. They were not functioning as sober, rational citizens when they cast those ballots. They were not functioning with intelligence.
This is likely what led one British politics professor to predict (in The Financial Times) before the election:
"I don't believe American voters are intelligent enough not to return Trump to power."
As for the future, the increasing entrenchment of stupidity in our nation, thanks to the spread of social media addiction, the lack of reading and the preference for simpleton shlock, means an ever increasing deficit in discernment and a continued bias toward autocracy. Even if we manage somehow to impeach Trump again - and remove him from office this time - the threat will remain.
Former RNC chair Michael Steele put it in perspective last night in an interview with Stephanie Ruhle, when asked how he feels about people-voters who put the price of eggs over the preservation of our democracy. Steele's response was rapid and brutal after rolling his eyes: "Well, I just want to slap them upside the head."
He didn't have to say the other part: That this is what you do to stupid people, to stupid voters who've lost all perspective. One might also add Ben Franklin's famous quote about liberty and security:
"They that give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety"
Or Dietrich Bonhoeffer's quote on stupidity:
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.
Against stupidity we are defenseless; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed, and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person.“
See Also:
by Mike Lofgren | February 14, 2025 - 6:13am | permalink
In his book, The Present Age, the late sociologist Robert Nisbet applied a pithy descriptor to a phenomenon we have seen all too often in public life: the “no-fault” theory of political action, particularly in foreign affairs. “Presidents, secretaries, and generals and admirals in America seemingly subscribe to the doctrine that no fault ever attaches to policy and operations,” he wrote. “This No Fault conviction prevents them from taking too seriously such notorious foul-ups as Desert One, Grenada, Lebanon, and now the Persian Gulf.”
Nisbet did not live to see a spectacular example of his theory. George W. Bush, having failed to prevent the 9/11 disaster his own intelligence agencies foresaw, proceeded to initiate a years-long disaster in Iraq, a catastrophe of his own making. Yet what were the consequences? The American people rewarded him with a second term in the face of abundant evidence of his incompetence and bad faith.
It would appear that Nisbet’s thesis needs revision. What he said was blatantly obvious: of course politicians rarely blame themselves for their own egregious policy failures, for it characterizes the typical behavior of ambitious, self-confident, and often corner-cutting people.
What is more significant, and troubling, is the reaction of the people who elect them: why do they more often than not reward leaders who inveigle them into national calamity? Isn’t there also a no-fault doctrine that applies to the American voter, a doctrine that is for the most part rigidly observed by journalists, pundits, and the self-proclaimed wise men who monopolize the op-ed pages of the prestige newspapers?
- Anti-Intellectualism In The U.S. - A Real Concern...
- And:
Eleven out of 12 White House claims on USAID are inaccurate, misleading or lack context
- by Tracey L. Rogers | February 6, 2025 - 5:59am | permalink» article continues...
It’s a trend that’s been building for a few years now.
Books by predominantly Black authors are being banned around the country. School curricula have been amended to skip the history lesson on slavery and racism. Critical Race Theory (CRT) — and anything that vaguely looks like it — is under attack. And the concept of “wokeness” has been misconstrued and weaponized.
Fast-forward to February 2025 and there’s been a doubling down on these attempts to erase Black history. President Trump’s anti-DEI, anti-“woke” rhetoric has led major companies and even many federal agencies to avoid observing Black History Month.
As I consider the president’s campaign promise to “make America great again,” I wonder if he means to make America “white” again.
No comments:
Post a Comment