Stupidity Redux

Mansplaining MAGA Membership

Just a brief follow-up to Tuesday’s post – specifically, regarding stupidity in America. Many of you (well, okay, none of you) have clamored for data to support my assertion that there are many stupid people in this country, and that they are potentially voters. I believe I can support this with logic, critical thinking, statistics, and other sleight of hand.

For starters, consider the Stanford-Binet IQ scale. While this measure has been called into question for various reasons, it remains a “standard” by which we consider intelligence. The scale establishes a score of 100 as a mean – average intelligence. It then slopes away in both directions as people get smarter and dumber, like so:

I could, perhaps, rest my case at this point. As you can all plainly see: if you are of exactly average IQ, 50% (that is, half) of people are less intelligent than you. They are not as smart as you are. Of course, there are many factors that influence where you might fall on this scale, such as nutrition, education, exposure to intellectual stimulus, and so on. It doesn’t take a 120 IQ to understand that these are the same factors that influence the now-famous no-thanks-to-me status as “Deplorable.” I am asserting, based upon some obviously specious thinking, that the Deplorables mostly exist on the left side of this scale. I don’t expect to be challenged on this because I doubt if any of the people in that category understand the term “specious.”

More to the point, the conventional wisdom (i.e., Jay Kuo) is that 30-35% of Trump supporters would vote for him NO MATTER WHAT. These are the people he was talking about when he said he could shoot someone in the middle of 5^th Avenue, and he wouldn’t lose voters. That sounds about right, assuming he gets a jury of his peers. Yes, I hear you all mumbling back there – “but what about the Supreme Court?” All I can say to that is that the courts are meant to represent a cross-section of America.

Here's the clincher, again thanks to Jay Kuo. Some wit (David Montgomery?) decided to poll Americans on their views of things from Medieval times, with some striking results:

Yes, that’s right – Nine percent of the American public are “very or somewhat” in favor of the Black Plague, with anther 17% undecided. A solid 16% think the Inquisition was a good idea. I leave it to you to figure out why almost half the population is up in the air on Gregorian Chants.

Well, obviously, those people were kidding. They only said they supported the Black Plague to own the libs. Sure. Of course. Right.