Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Republicans Are Stupid
Last year, Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono said, “…we Democrats have a really hard time is connecting to people’s hearts.… But we have a really hard time doing that and one of the reasons it was told to me at one of our retreats was that we Democrats know so much, that is true. And we have kind of have to tell everyone how smart we are and so we have a tendency to be very left-brain.… That is not how people make decisions.”
So while Republicans don’t believe in science, the Democrats are the party of pure logic and reason, and they struggle to understand how the common people use emotions to make irrational decisions. Democrats consider themselves to be the party of intellect.
When Democrats hired an elderly Robert Mueller to investigate the President, it became obvious that Mr. Mueller was confused about the entire proceeding, and he didn’t understand what was in the report that bore his name. Then, they use an autistic teenager to explain climate science to us, and a Florida schoolchild with a learning disability to explain the social impact of gun control legislation. Democrat Congressman Hank Johnson expressed concern that Guam might capsize if development made it too top-heavy. And then was re-elected by intellectual Democrats. You might ask the Democrat presidential nominee why they keep using people with limited mental faculties to promote their agenda, but he doesn’t seem to know where he is. He’ll just get confused by your question, and call you a dog-faced pony soldier.
And if he wins the election in November, he’ll be in charge of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
You would think this dichotomy of their claimed brilliance, compared with their apparent cluelessness, would bother some Democrat voters. And it may. But I don’t think so.
With Democrats, if your heart is in the right place, then the details really don’t matter that much. I think. But honestly, I really don’t know. I don’t get it. You would think that a party of highly intelligent scientific geniuses would prefer to be represented by someone with a more dazzling intellect. Or, at least, with an intellect. But I don’t think it matters to them. At least, it appears not to matter to them.
Perhaps CNN’s intellectual Don Lemon could do a segment on this, and host a discussion with a guest from each party. Say, Lori Lightfoot and Ted Cruz. I don’t watch much CNN, but I’d watch that, even if I weren’t in an airport.
And it’s not just Democrat leaders. It’s the movement itself.
Conservatives can read Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley Jr., or any number of other brilliant thinkers to learn about conservative thought. Meanwhile, the left has, um, Ta-Nehisi Coates? John Cusack? The only real thinker the left has is Karl Marx, and none of them have read him anyway. Which is ok, because he doesn’t make any sense and he died 140 years ago.
But Democrats are the intellectuals, and Republicans are stupid.
Right.
Published in General
They mistake education credentials for intelligence and/or knowledge.
To know how intelligent the Democrats are, one must look
I’ve been evaluating the Democrats on that criterion since about 1965.
My conclusion, borne out by decades of history, is that the proximate cause of Democrats saying what they say, and doing what they do, is that they are unintelligent and ignorant. They are systematically and consistently poor abstract/logical thinkers who are, in the bargain, uninformed about history.
Two points. (1) Anyone who is informed knows that Leftists always appeal to emotion and “think” with emotion. (2) It is annoying to have people that are obviously ignorant of hard science claiming to be the only “believers” of Science. If you want proof of these items, engage a Leftist and debate and they will instantly go to emotional appeals and name calling.
Who does one read to become “severely” conservative? …or, for that matter, “compassionately” conservative? Throw a delusional “Maverick” in between and you have your proof for how gullible (if not stupid) Republicans are (or were).
The way their eyes glass over and they wet themselves whenever someone like Michelle drones on self righteously about “empathy” and other nonsensical babble, it is clear they wouldn’t know a real thinker today if they saw one.
I think I should be embarrassed that at my age I am only now coming to realize that high IQ and advanced degrees and ready wit and verbal skills can disguise political stupidity. Friends and family. It’s easier to reconcile that in remote strangers. It boggles my mind and will take time to absorb.
That’s just mean, that is.
Funny, but mean.
I like it.
The left has nearly every college prof–some of whom are thinkers.
Very few, I would guess. I hypothesize that nearly 100% of academia who are not liberal (a tiny group) are Hayek’s “second-hand dealers in ideas”. They lack critical thinking skills, and are driven purely by animal individual and herding instincts, not the distinctly human desire to learn the truth.
Their core beliefs are at this point in history, and even more so: at this point in the development of human understanding of natural and social science, perfectly indefensible.
When you say “liberal,” you mean classical liberal, right? Not “liberal” as synonym for leftist or progressive?
Anyway, I want to be fair. You’re probably right (or darn close). Still, any number of teachers may be honest conveyors of the facts about Plato, calculus, and electrons as well as real thinkers in their fields–and yet have a leftist politics. In some cases, it may do only minimal damage to their thinking in their areas of expertise and rarely slip out in their teaching.
Republicans *are* stupid… because they let Dems get away with this [expletive] all the time, and for so long.
And because the Republicans couldn’t find anybody in all of Georgia’s 4th Congressional District to beat Hank “Guam might capsize” Johnson in 14 years.
And so forth.
Sometimes smart peoples’ brains just get all filled up! Well, I’ve told myself that in trying to figure out how some very bright people (of whom I am very fond) can say some of the silliest things when they wander off the familiar path.
Yep.
Worse than uninformed. Many think of themselves informed, but in fact they have been systematically misinformed by Howard Zinn and his acolytes over many years. Getting them to understand their own history is more akin to cult deprogramming than to teaching.
Yes, sorry.
I started to bring up this inevitable criticism but decided not to. It’s tempting to think that there are two parts of academia, the ideological zanies and the narrowly focused, intelligent and intellectually honest experts in specialized fields.
But I have been as concerned, and for as long, about the lack of independent thinking in physics education as in the social and political disciplines. The Equal Transit Time Theory of lift is a good example, from physics. It lasted for a century. Even today if you asked the winner of a small boat regatta why he won, he would invoke the Slot Effect Theory of the Jib . There are countless examples that persist today in physics education, for example in the case of the historical development of Special Relativity.
Academia has become in every discipline a herd.
My conclusion, on the other hand, is that Democrats say what they say, and do what they do, because it’s really, really effective at winning elections and passing legislation.
Well, that’s fair enough. Herd mentality thinking sure is a thing in my field. Uninformed myths pass for common knowledge about philosophy–Plato’s a communist! Fact statements are never value statements! Slippery slope arguments are always fallacies! Mill doesn’t care about the rules! Kant doesn’t care about happiness! Confucius wants to preserve all traditions and power structures! –and then they get passed on to students and the general public.
Actually, about the Guam thing. My understanding is that Johnson and Robert Wilkins have known each other for decades. When I watched that vid, I saw two old guys sharing some premium guy humor. I still smh when people insist on missing it.
I’ve done it, and had it done to me. You sit in a serious, productive, almost formal gathering. You look your counterpart in the eye and say something outrageous, and dare him to crack a smile. He has to play it straight. Both of you keep each other’s respect, especially if there’s the prospect of payback. Some people in the room get it. I loved it when I saw two old bureaucrats, substantial and successful guys, having fun in that pretentious hearing.
Politics isn’t tied to intellect. Its tied to wisdom. Intellect and wisdom are unrelated.
The fact that Democrats now openly and flagrantly lie is because it works, not because they are unintelligent and ignorant of what they are doing or because they are systematically and consistently poor abstract/logical thinkers and, in the bargain, uninformed about history.
I think you miss the fundamental question: Why? Why do people become politicians and Why do they make the decisions that they do, and say the things that they say? Liars can be very smart, but their presentation can be confusing and seem stupid to those who presume different motivations. It seems to me that “socialists” or progressives or liberals or Democrats want to benefit themselves alone. On the other hand, conservatives want to benefit themselves and those whom they care about, and they see the best way of doing this is to benefit society as a whole.
Generally speaking, conservatives want to leave their country, and even the world if possible, a better place for their great-grandchildren. Progressive socialists want to leave their great-grandchildren better off apart from the vagaries, turmoil and hardships of the world. This is why Joe Biden, Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer make the decisions that they do; to acquire family wealth despite consideration of raising the standard of wealth in the population generally.
This is why Democrats always, and increasingly openly, advocate taking larger and larger portions of money from some to give to others: to buy votes. Their outward reasons are always lies, lies clever enough to deceive those from whom they take the money. This is also why spending and deficits always increase and why deficits never get paid off. They emotionally manipulate others and pillage society as a whole because they and theirs alone benefit.
Oh, wow. So the question about the island tipping over was intentionally a joke?
Yeah, and I always say to myself, “Aren’t you glad YOU don’t do that, Camper!”
I saw the video, and I thought it was an honest question. I may have missed it. I’ll check it out. Thanks.
When I heard about it, I said “No way.” What really happened was obvious to me when I dug up the clip. BTW, that clip isn’t easy to find. I guess Hannity might have colored my interpretation, he annoys me. I forget where I picked up their previous association, so I can’t insist whether I came across that before or after. I’ve been paying casual attention to Hank Johnson for a long time, whenever his name crops up.
So I’m pretty sure it was two guys joking in a Congressional hearing. That’s the best I can do without asking either
WilkinsWillard or Johnson. (Am I remembering the Admiral’s name right? No! It’s Robert Willard.)I just watched it again. It’s hilarious. Johnson just keeps going, stretching it out.
In a similar vein, and in keeping with the OP (yes, they sure are), I just watched this Fox News clip on Goodyear’s recent left faux pas. Visually, I got the strong impression that the “slide” they were showing was just a visual aid composed by someone with outrage. The label at the bottom gives it away.
I’d make a small wager that slide was not what was shown during the training. The company strongly stated they didn’t make the slide. The media’s theory is that a satellite office made the “training slide” they’re leaning on so heavily. Then Neal “Shiny” Cavuto comes out saying how their mistake was to write it down. Yes, some Republicans are stupid.
It’s clear that a Goodyear training session somewhere was really more of a Marxist struggle session. But the media sucks so bad, so bad.
Later: There’s a photo of the actual slide in Mike Chernovich’s twit trail. The graphic used by Foxy News accurately copies the text of the real slide. So the Good Idiots did write it down.
Johnson himself some time later said it was a joke and he was surprised people didn’t get it.
I got into a back and forth with someone out in that internet wilderness a few years back and used a study (cited by the NY Times, egads!) to back up what I was saying. He said he was a graduate student, and that ended the discussion as far as he was concerned. Poor guy.
They yell louder and don’t face the same scrutiny. In the end, it just means they say stupid things that are widely broadcast. There is no need to fight them. Indeed, lend them a bullhorn.
I worked with people who were by any standard extremely intelligent. They didn’t get the Ph. D.s in hard sciences and engineering by being stupid. But they said what I thought were stupid things on subjects like economics and politics. After a while, I realized that they based their comments on what ought to be rather than what is. If if were a psychologist, studying how they managed the cognitive dissonance would get me my own Ph. D.
Are they effective, or have Republicans been ineffective in opposition? Hear me out a bit here, I posted on this a while back (like, years back). Democrats controlled the House from 1931-1995, or the election cycles of 1930 to 1994, which I think is the more popular way of putting it. There were two non-consecutive GOP-controlled Houses, the last one from ’53 to ’55. The Senate wasn’t much better, but it was better.
In that time, a culture in Washington developed. The culture was, basically, that in order to do business you had to work with/through the D’s. Opposing them in any real sense meant whatever you wanted was dead, and if you couldn’t do anything for anyone, so too was your career in Washington. So, two or three generations or more of GOP Congresspersons and Senators came to Washington and kept their heads down. That culture has only just begun to dissipate.
Whether this is true or not, I can’t say, but it explains a lot of things that made our eyes roll and heads explode, particularly in the late 90’s after Newt’s ouster through John Boehner’s tenure, and somewhat beyond.
With Democrats it is all about the feels. Facts are either useful to further goals or lies to be ignored. They believe their narratives and feelings more than reality itself.