The Shape of Our Problems

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Before I start this, let me explain that “stupid” is not meant to cover “nonintellectual”. There is a tendency among those of us who are good with words to consider anyone lacking that facility “stupid.”

For years Dan and I joked that each of our colleagues thought we’d married someone mentally deficient. I, because Dan is often not verbally fluent (though fluent in writing. Younger son has same problem), his because I can’t do big math off the top of my head.

But even beyond that, I’ve known a lot of blue-collar manual workers who were genuine geniuses. What they weren’t was intellectual. They would solve weird problems in machine maintenance or household organization in a blink, where I plain couldn’t, but when it came to reading some abstract article, they just couldn’t.

Those people aren’t stupid. They’re just not experts on what you are.

There is, however, genuine “stupid.” Like iron class dumb, who cannot solve anything, or think its way out of a paperback, even a very soaked one.

I submit to you that even before he was senile, that’s what Biden was. ROCK BOTTOM DUMB. Yes, possessed of a certain amoral cunning, but note he took payments from places and people no one would half a brain — let alone a moral code — would.

I submit his lack of moral code comes from his ABJECT stupidity.

When you’re that dumb, you are always surrounded by people who are talking “above your head.” And because each person considers him or herself “average” such persons assumes that the people talking above their heads are doing it on purpose. They are being mean, in befuddling our dunce.

Over time, this turns into hatred of everyone smarter, which is to say almost everyone.

I’m not saying Biden is alone. But I’m saying since the left started hiring and promoting based on ideology, not competence, they’ve been going lower and lower on the intelligence scale.

Until now only the Biden administration remains. A concatenation of very evil people whose only saving grace is not being able to think through second order effects. Or sometimes even first.

And all of whom are convinced the rest of the country, aka most normal human beings, are deliberately confounding them.

They hate us with a burning passion, yes.

May the Lord bless us and keep us. This is the shape of the trouble we’re in.

221 thoughts on “The Shape of Our Problems”

  1. “I want to have a proper rogue’s gallery. You know, real competition. People that if I lose to them, I know that it’s because of sheer f(YAY!)king fate. Not because we didn’t give a hundred and fifty percent each.
    “You know what I got here? Paste-eaters! Lollygagging paste-eaters! People so stupid that they need a small child to make sure they don’t drown in the shower! And they’re still winning because the machinery that people made keeps feeding them enough to keep them moving!”

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  2. In addition stupid people tend to not hire smart people as underlings or promote them because they feel threatened by them.

    This means that once stupid people get near the top of an organization the entire org will start to select for employing stupid people. Examples of this are widespread and getting more common as stupid diversity hires gain seniority

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    2. Yup. A’s do their to hire other A’s (but there is never enough supply). B’s hire C’s. C’s try to hire D’s, but they’re so bad at assessing talent that they end up with F’s or R’s or W’s or orangutans or rutabagas or winding Grandpaw’s watch next Tuesday.

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      1. Not how I’ve heard it.

        A’s are professors, or hired by “big firms”. B’s hired by smaller firms. C’s and dropouts are the ones hiring, because no one would hire them, so they started their own businesses.

        High grades too often are a measure of what one can regurgitate in a specific moment in time and know what to study. But throw them in the deep end and expect them to thrive, without help? Probably not.

        I’ve always said that if I can do something, it is something anyone can do. I’ve been proven wrong. I am not one of the A students. Might have worked up to B status, barely.

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            1. Thank you. I was reading this last night, and was incredibly confused.
              …………………

              Oh. Thank you. I wasn’t the only one confused (mistaken).

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      1. I’ve “heard” that Biden was chosen as Obama’s VP because “Nobody would assassinate Obama because then Biden would be President”. [Very Big Sarcastic Grin]

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        1. I’ve heard similar. And then the Turnip In Chief (Or perhaps Jill) decided the same strategy could work for him and he searched long and hard until he found His VP Ms Harris. I think this is a variant of the Peter Principle. Who knew that a bit of fluff parlor psychology tuned into dark humor would prove so true.

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          1. All indications were that Harris was that TPTB wanted Harris as the nominee in 2020. And then she met Gabbard during the debates…

            I think the brainlessness of Harris caught the Dem leadership by surprise. People who worked for her knew about it. But she hadn’t been in the spotlight enough for others to realize just how stupid she is. My parents watched her debate Loretta Sanchez for the Senate seat, and commented on it (according to them, Sanchez is also an idiot), but I figured it was just the usual Democratic levels of foolishness.

            I didn’t realize how very, very wrong I was until after she took office.

            And the worst of it is that a lot of her “idiotness” appears to be self-inflicted due to her laziness, and refusal to read items her own staff prepared for her.

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            2. I agree. In late ’19, the Dem party grandees and Propaganda Press clearly wanted Kommie-la as the nominee. And we may thank Tulsi Gabbard for torpedoing her.

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              1. I don’t see how that would have been any worse for us. Same ventriloquists, different dummy. Worse for the Democrats, that I can see. Kamela couldn’t have campaigned from the basement, so everybody would have seen the stupid on full display.

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                2. Maybe, maybe not. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that Harris might be more difficult to control than Biden. A Harris presidency could potentially be a very different beast than a Biden presidency if she pays as much attention to her handlers as she does to the people who give her subject matter briefings.

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    4. In Atlas Shrugged, Robert Stadler tells Dagny Taggart that the surest sign of a second-rater is the fear of meeting someone competent. Stadler, though already far advanced toward corruption, is still delighted to see a new discovery in physics by someone other than himself; it almost redeems him in Taggart’s eyes.

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  3. That sort of person is also very susceptible to flattery. Meaning the ambitious underling who knows how to stroke the Boss’s ego can go far, for a while.

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  4. I grew up around Mafiosi. They are almost without exception stupid. Cunning, ruthless, and sometimes shrewd yes, but stupid. What you see on TV and the movies is not what it is.

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    1. According to a report I got today, the GDP grew by 5.8% in the third quarter. Are our guys eating too much Chinese take-out or what?

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      1. That’s the Atlanta Fed model. It’s driven by some recent airplane sales and increased house building. Add in massive government spending and a drop in imports and there you go. GDP is funny that way.

        I doubt it’ll be that strong and the consensus is still 0 growth, but the good thing about the Atlanta Fed model is that it’s entirely mechanical and. They’ve published the data and model.

        The real problem is that many of the high frequency economic numbers, like employment, are survey driven and response rates are way down. Also, the way they adjust them has a very long lag and the statistics get revised for years. My experience is that the revision pattern is an extremely good indicator of where we are.

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        1. Rather like the USDA reports. Never look at the harvest reports as they’re published–look at the revised numbers six months or a year down the line.

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          1. That’s right. They’re not actually lying, though it seems they are. The methodology is public, one just needs to understand it and ignore the press

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              1. Are you implying, as it seems, that publishers are trying to confuse their authors? Heaven forfend!

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                1. No. They’re not lying. They’re calculating royalties by formulas dating to the 19th century or so, which means, in the era of ebooks, etc it gives some VERY WEIRD RESULTS but honestly, I don’t think for MOST of them there’s villainy involved. Just following the same things that worked for 100 plus years.

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                  1. Actually, they are lying, because they are contractually obligated to pay royalties on copies sold and are paying on a number that is demonstrably not the number of copies sold. The formula doesn’t yield the number that they are required to use.

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                    1. Yes. I do realize that. But it used to be — and still is somehow — very difficult to impossible to calculate. So there was the formula which approximated the right numbers.
                      BUT you’re correct. I should have said “they aren’t intentionally lying” and don’t think they’re lying.

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        2. Interesting. I keep getting reports that work out to, “Maybe everything will turn out right after all!” And between my natural pessimism and my profound trust of this administration (ahem), I’m not nearly so sanguine.

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          1. Always remember that almost everyone is “talking their book”. The Fed sincerely believes that if they keep saying soft landing they’ll get one. That’s actually all they have, but explaining that would definitely turn into TLDR.

            Further, the “talk” is always informed by the most recent 4-6 week performance of the stock market. I actually did a study of this, I’m weird that way, over the downturns since 2000. When the market is up then expectations are up and vice versa. There’s sense to it since the market is a good — not great, good — indicator of future performance, it becomes circular since the market being up means the economy will be up which means the market will be up …..

            I believe in credit and credit isn’t happy. Not happy at all. See today’s SLOOS release for Q3 among many others. The internals are not good,

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            2. Heard recently regarding the stock market that something on the order of seven companies are driving the market. With the rest of the companies having flat or negative growth. And out of those seven drivers, only two are showing actual positive earning/growth. ‘Course it was some guest on a talk station so who knows. . .

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              1. That’s more or less true. You could argue it’s two, Nvidia and Eli Lilly. AI and obesity. This is the most narrow advance since the “Nifty Fifty” back in the late 60’s/early seventies. That ended very badly and I suspect this one will too. Of course, it could be different this time but I believe in Bob Farrell’s rules, particularly #7 “Markets are strongest when they are broad and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue-chip names.” and of course #4 “Exponential rapidly rising or falling markets usually go further than you think, but they do not correct by going sideways.”

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      3. If you look at the numbers, both Obama and Biden would give one number for inflation, unemployment, etc…then quietly revise it a month later. And the revision was always to the disadvantage of the administration.

        In other words, they were lying.

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    2. Criminal masterminds often aren’t. It’s that whole “stupid but motivated” thing, too.

      There are, unfortunately, a lot of criminal minded people who would do just fine “going straight” but unfortunately “just fine” usually means “middling” and they just can’t stand to be “middling.”

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    3. Did you ever hear the story about the Mafia group that decided to open a pizza shop as a front, and then it started outperforming their black-market activities, so they pivoted to just serving pizza? Don’t know of the truth of that, but it would demonstrate what the smart folk would do.

      (“Criminally good pizza.”)

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      1. I would believe it– just as I believe that modern mafia are as described.

        The origins of Mafia make a lot of the romance make sense, even if they were still objectively horrifying in a free country.
        (Short version, if you paid off the mafia to protect your business, it stayed protected; if you paid off the soldiers, they were back tomorrow, and they’d mess with your daughter.)

        Mother Angelica had some stories about well-dressed-men-of-unstated-employment getting some redemption. I can totally see them going “I make money as a pizza slinger? I sling pizza!”

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  5. I’ll give some credit to the stupidity of our self appointed better’s, more to their ignorance but most to their sociopathic malice and forethought as the cause the disaster that’s these days.

    They simply hate us, they would destroy us if possible even if such leads to their own detriment and are quite willing to punish us for being any way they can , every day they can.

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  6. It’s what they really mean by ‘White Privilege!’ They can’t imagine that anybody can be smart or competent, so any success must be due to some vast secret conspiracy. That’s why they reward failure and punish success.
    ———————————
    Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

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  7. Slight disagreement.

    Orwell said something about “mistakes that only intellectuals could make”.

    While I’m sure that there are plenty of stupid people out there who get into “powerful positions” by knowing the correct people and by repeating the proper dogma, I wonder how many smart people out there who show great stupidity because they are intellectuals and have no connection with Reality.

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    2. Don’t conflate “intellectual ” with intelligence. Many intellectuals got there for basic pattern recognition.

      If they were truly intelligent they would be doing something in their field rather than hiring ghost writers and spending their time trying to prove they’re smarter.

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      2. The intellectuals who taught them, as a general thing, were also dumbasses.

        Please remember that in English at least, the adjective ‘intellectual’ and the noun ‘an intellectual’ are false friends. The adjective comes directly from Latin intellectualis, and means ‘pertaining to the intellect’. The noun fell out of use long ago, and when it was revived, it derived its new meaning from the German Intellektualismus, ‘belief in the supremacy of the intellect’, and still more from French intellectuel, ‘a member of a profession which earns its living by the products of the intellect’.

        A person may be an intellectual without having any detectable intellect at all; the universities crank out such people by the thousands. Intellectual people, that is, people with powerful intellects, do not often find themselves welcome in the ‘soft’ fields of study where the people called ‘intellectuals’ abound. The most intelligent engineer is not classified (in English) as ‘an intellectual’, but the most stupid journalist can be.

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        2. As a retired engineer, I can confidently say that most competent engineers don’t consider “intellectual” to be a compliment.

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          1. I have known enough engineers (my late father among them) to confirm this.

            I have also known enough journalists to confirm that they don’t think engineers are smart enough to count as intellectuals. I suppose they are bound to confuse glibness with intelligence, since glibness is all they have.

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    1. Obama. Without question. Biden’s too stupid to notice when people are insulting him. He just kind of accepts it. Obama is just smart enough to figure it out, and his ego is all bound up in showing people how much smarter he is. It drives everything else. He’s very like Gul Dukat. He wants people to know they did wrong in defying him.

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      1. I don’t know. Go back and look at the picture of Obama putting the Medal of Freedom around Joe’s neck. The pathetic look in his eyes that he is finally being Recognized is a thing I never saw in Obama.

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        1. That’s for recognition in general, I think, not for recognition for his intelligence, specifically. I agree that Biden desperately requires and craves validation, but that’s about his insecurities. Obama isn’t insecure, he’s just delusional.

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          1. That, or it’s about him being recognized by Obama. I can totally see him attaching himself like a dog. “he likes me, he really likes me.”

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          2. Have to disagree here Chrismouse. Embrace the power of AND. Obumbles like Clinton before him is driven by the fact that his genetic father rejected him and then that he wasn’t the favorite of his step father. Obumbles is MASSIVELY Insecure, and is probably at best a third rater, would probably have been fine being a cog in a tiny crap law firm on Hawaii. He got advanced WAY to fast to mature (though even 3-4 terms in the senate probably wouldn’t have helped) as a politician. He is a sneaky bastard of a campaigner (or associates with those who are). Hell he kneecapped Shrillary and lived to tell the tale, how many have managed that? He was like a 2-3 term no account State senator (no bills nothing) who became a half term junior Senator. He has MASSIVE narcissistic disorder which also includes huge amounts of paranoia. The only attributes he has are an ability to tan better than most and recite a well prepared text from a teleprompter with some feeling. He’d be a target of pity but for the fact that he so thoroughly screwed up the country in his 8 years in office, and now he won’t let go using his cat’s paw (with apologies to cats everywhere, their paws are clean and nice) to continue to screw things up.

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            1. I don’t disagree that he has insecurities, but his ego is such that he has managed to turn them into “reasons I am amazing.” He’s one of those who might be on the right side of the bell curve but thinks he’s off the curve because so many people have told him over and over how wonderful he is. But it’s also very fragile–he must continue to be told over and over or he will get cranky.

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              1. It seems to me that you’re both describing different symptoms of malignant narcissism.

                FWIW, I think O has slightly above average intelligence, but Sleepy Joe is well below average

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                  1. Yep. One, of many, downside to affirmative action is that you don’t really have to strive or compete. Expectations are set too low.

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                1. I’m of the opinion that his “intelligence: took the path of cunning. Eventually, that path dulls intelligence as it is a total misuse of the faculty.

                  Went Engineering and did well in the math and physics. You and I could probably have a conversation that would result in MEGO syndrome in Obama in the first 30 seconds.

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            1. Yep the only other time Bidens face looks that ecstatic is when he’s sniffing some prepubescent girls hair… He could have died then and died happy, sadly didn’t happen…

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        3. Those two giving medals to each other, and the Medal of Freedom no less…there may be no better encapsulation of the mental poverty and meanness of this country’s politicians.

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    2. Biden is close to being a house plant now. His needs and wants are for the bathroom and a pudding cup. Just watch him walk one of these days. Nursing Home Shuffle.

      He’s done like dinner, and whatever it is they give him to jazz him up for public appearances, it is speeding the decline.

      Obama is like the reincarnation of Il Duce. His frigging -head- looks like Mussolini’s. He also appears to be not very clever. He’s like a con artist who took the con much too far, and now he’s riding a tiger he can’t get off.

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      1. I believe O was socialized to Indonesian politics, meaning being corrupt and authoritarian, to him, is “just what you’re supposed to do,” Doesn’t excuse him, does make me wish the voters had seen it. (I did, but then again, I saw through Billy Boy early and not just because of his Party affiliation)

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        1. O was brought up a communist. Every adult in his life seems to have been either an outright commie or very left wing. Rich of course, you have to be fairly well off to afford left wingery.

          His Malayan step father was from a commie family who was on the “wrong” side of the Malay Emergency when General Templer beat the chi coms at their own game, Pournelle brought that up in one of his later co-dominion books.

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        2. Compare film of Obama and Mussolini; the mannerisms both used are near identical, down to the angle of head tilt and facial expression, much less the arm movement. Biden may have delivered the Triumph of the Shrill speech but it was Obama and his people who wrote it and choreographed it.

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      3. There was one photo of him that SCREAMED “Mussolini” in both pose and smirk.
        I found it quite disturbing. I know, Ancient Creature here, but I still figure more folks should have recognized that.

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        3. I know the one. I think I exclaimed “Mussolini!” when I first saw it. Leni Riefenstahl, eat your heart out.

          Then all the innumerable ones with halos…

          When you see the barkers working that hard, you know the carnival is crap.

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      1. I see him as more low-key than that. He mostly wants to sit and watch sports. Occasionally he’ll go out and Be Important, but only occasionally.

        Just, you know, never contradict him to his face. THEN he will flare up.

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  10. If I may be a little contrary, I think we should tread carefully with this. Remember in 2016 when Trump was elected and people were saying things like “Trump is so stupid. Trump is an idiot”? My response was typically “Yeah, so many idiot billionaires in the world. Now we’ve got an idiot billionaire that is also President. Calling anyone that becomes President an idiot says more about the one calling them that than it does about the President. Idiots don’t become either billionaires or President”

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    1. While the Reader is convinced we haven’t seen the bulk of Brandon’s family ill gotten gains, it is unlikely he is a billionaire. The richest a**hole in Congress at the moment is Senator Mark Warner, who is worth around $250M. Despite the blatant corruption, the Brandon crime family can’t hold a candle to the Clinton Foundation for example. BTW, it appears that the Clintons are winding up the machine again. https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/08/21/international-elites-rush-to-embrace-clinton-global-initiative/

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      1. Apologies, I must have been unclear. The billionaire reference was about what people were saying about Trump lo those years ago.

        The point remains, it’s hard to become President. Very, very hard. Few people can manage it. My take is it would be beyond the capabilities of an idiot.

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          1. This. Sleepy Joe is just a body. The fact that he’s stupid and corrupt is all to the good since it makes him controllable and discardable should that be useful.

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        2. He’s not a drooling moron in the sense of actively low IQ, no. As the BBESP said, he has cunning. But politicians are always managed by somebody, and he needs more management than most.

          The machines can take even the barest input and package an attractive output.

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        3. Biden is literally a drooling dementia patient, and has been since before the 2022 election. He’s the Prez. When he was the Vice Prez they never let him talk on TV in case he put both feet in his mouth.

          Hitlary has been #ChardonayAllDay since the 1990s, and would have been Prez except Barry irritated Donald Trump one time too many. She’s been the bionic woman since 2010, running around with “equipment” under that pantsuit to keep her functioning. If not for Trup coming in so big he beat the Margin of Fraud, that drunk would be Prez.

          Monomaniacs and Übergrifters become billionaires and presidents, they’re shockwave riders in the right place a the right time. Millionaires, by contrast, earn their money IMHO by wit, craft and labour.

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    2. Yeah, but no. What keeps shocking me is how ROCK BOTTOM stupid they are. THey really are. Part of their protection is that no one believes they’re that dumb. I’ve seen your other comment, though I haven’t freed it yet. It’s not difficult to become president if you’re in the liberal machine. There are very smart or at least cunning people there. None of them are the politicians.
      What they said about Trump is the other way. It’s that in the US now “Smart” means “leftist” that’s the way it’s used.

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      1. “Trump is stupid”.
        “W is stupid.”
        “Reagan is stupid.”

        Anyone else seeing a pattern? 8-)

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        3. Dr. Pournelle mentioned having Reagan over to his home. Reagan commented that Pournelle had read more books than even Reagan had.

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          1. I’m of the opinion that Reagan was a good man. Not perfect by any means, but I think he carried the spirit of the Death Valley Days he narrated for his whole life.

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        1. Hypernominalism again. You can win at political games just by out-talking the other guy. Doing the actual job requires dealing with reality, which cannot be out-talked.

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    3. People do not remain billionaires by being idiots. But business, as the Ghostbusters will tell you, is far more reliant on actual achievement and measurable results than the public sector, especially for politicians.

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  11. The wise person is grateful to be around those smarter than himself. Doubly grateful, for the chance to learn and for being tolerated or even accepted.

    The rest of us are frustrated or even angry at those folks who have something to teach us.

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    1. no. I was talking about the extremely dumb. They don’t realize other people are smarter. They think everyone is like them, and they’re on purpose preventing them understanding. Like speaking a secret code.

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      1. Ah, that would account for all the myths about “dogwhistles” and other Secret Squirrel Codes that the right supposedly uses. (I generally make some remark about my decoder ring being lost in the mail.)

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        1. It does go quite a way toward explaining that obsession. Somehow I never hear those racist/whateverist dog whistles, either…

          My approach to those claims is that if you have to tell everybody else the dog whistle is blowing, you’re probably a dog.

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          1. So, for the record, we had two perfectly normal girls put in our gifted class. They became very unpleasant over 4 years. They thought we were making fun of them, or talking above them on purpose.
            As to why they were there? to fool bureaucrats.

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        5. That accounts for part of it. The rest of it is due to the extreme Nominalism of Leftists. They tend to hold, along with Wittgenstein, that language is a self-contained game with no reference to external reality; and what’s worse, language is the only reality they know or care much about. They honestly believe in ‘point deer make horse’, and think they can turn a deer into a horse by calling it one. If right-wingers see the deer and call it a deer, that can only be because they have an organized conspiracy to call it that, not because of anything in the deer itself. In most instances, the ‘dog whistle’ consists in paying attention to reality.

          This also, by the way, accounts for the ‘euphemism treadmill’. Drunkards became alcoholics became substance abusers, because the Hypernominalists thought they could remove the stigma of alcohol addiction by changing the name; but in truth, the stigma is attached not to the name but to the condition itself. Since ‘the condition itself’ is not part of the language game that the Hypernominalists think they are playing, they are perpetually mystified that their word-magic fails to work, and attribute that failure to the dark machinations of a cabal of opposing wizards.

          I leave it as an exercise for the reader to identify some of the thousands of other cases in which this foolishness has occurred.

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          1. Witness the endless parade of words/phrases referring to people with extremely dark skin. Each one was declared ‘offensive’ after being in use for a while, replaced with something else, which was itself declared ‘offensive’ in due time. Sometimes the replacement term is almost identical to one of the old ‘offensive’ terms.

            Grandma had an old, old childrens spelling book that would have given the Wokerati fits with its entry ‘D is for Darky’ showing a black man dressed in an elegant gray formal suit with matching top hat. Why is that offensive when a white man wearing the same suit is not?

            90% of ‘White Supremacists’ work for the FBI…
            ———————————
            If one’s reputation can be ruined by the truth, it should be.

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        6. The belief that your opponents communicate in a super-secret coded manner that reveals how evil they are is normally known as clinical paranoia.

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      2. Sometimes I wonder if such people are using what brain cells they have defending against the threat of learning anything.

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        1. It’s basic signal theory. You can use a circuit to transmit or to receive, but not both simultaneously.

          People who are that short of functioning brain cells can use them to transmit ego signals (‘See how great I am!’) or actually, you know, to receive information. Not both. Those with more working neural capacity can sometimes manage both, but never efficiently, because the human brain loses most of its horsepower by trying to multitask.

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        2. This is why the left thought “Russian Collusion” would work. They’d sold out to anyone with enoug money to pay them, they assumed that Trump had to have done that.

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        3. This is why the left thought “Russian Collusion” would work. They’d sold out to anyone with enoug money to pay them, they assumed that Trump had to have done that.

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    2. This one reason why ox love LibertyCon. Brain Scientists! Rocket Engineers! Etc. Ox LIKE hearing about things from those smarter than ox. Maybe ox not wise, but at least not damnfool.

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  12. Sometimes telling someone that he’s stupid is not an insult. Sometimes it’s valuable information that a person needs but doesn’t have.

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    1. Sometimes it’s not an insult. Frequently it is. For instance, when an argument has crashed and burned and the arguer is not prepared to admit it.

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  13. A constant reminder: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” and “The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that there is a limit to intelligence.”

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    1. You beat me to it.
      I just haven’t figured out how to suss out the conspiracy theories from the ‘just dummies being dummies’ these days. I suspect that there’s some of each happening, and my biggest worry is that the ‘actually intelligent but evil’ actors are setting up the useful idiots as the scapegoats, for when the wheels really fall off.

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    2. I kind of hate this saying. Biden’s massive stupidity enables his malice. That stupid piece of shit (sorry to insult shit) truly believes all this whit supremacy bull he spouts because he’s stupid. But that garbage make him monumentally malicious. I’m shocked that there haven’t been mass shootings based on his craven bullshit. But then again even the people he’s selling the white supremacists are everywhere lie to are all much smarter (and better) than he is.

      So I’m done granting a pass for incompetence to these malicious fuckers. Where only lucky their incompetent or their malice would grind us to dust.

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    3. I kind of hate this saying. Biden’s massive stupidity enables his malice. That stupid piece of shit (sorry to insult shit) truly believes all this whit supremacy bull he spouts because he’s stupid. But that garbage make him monumentally malicious. I’m shocked that there haven’t been mass shootings based on his craven bullshit. But then again even the people he’s selling the white supremacists are everywhere lie to are all much smarter (and better) than he is.

      So I’m done granting a pass for incompetence to these malicious fuckers. Where only lucky their incompetent or their malice would grind us to dust.

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      1. A bit off-topic, but what software and hardware are you using to comment? Lately every single one (AFAICT) of your comments has double-posted. One or two might be an accidental double-click instead of single-click on the button, or other human error. But such a consistent result is probably a software or hardware bug unique to your computer/phone, since nobody else seems to be hitting the same issue.

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  14. I thought about this. The thing is, if this was uniformly true the entire Left project would either have completely collapsed and been swept away by now, or never gotten off the ground. Instead I propose that there is a core that is highly competent and hires highly competent people, but is simply Evil. That core uses the rest as tools, disposable and easily replaced implements to achieve their aims.

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    1. Nope. The Left is composed of grifters. They ride the horse in the direction it is going. They don’t feed the horse or try to turn it. So it looks like success, but really it is parasitism.

      Parasites don’t survive the death of their host. How many Good Lefties were ruined by the Fall of Detroit? Many. They sucked its blood until it died, and then they starved.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. That would only work if they were sealed off from outside input– since they are not, and even have the tactic of skinsuiting/subversion as an actively taught technique, they can keep going.

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  15. There is a tendency among those of us who are good with words to consider anyone lacking that facility “stupid.”

    :blink:

    Oooh…. that is why ChatGPT has so many folks all a tizzy.

    I’m…well, I’m still tired of the news stories that boil down to “the language model made a form-perfect report, but the content is inaccurate, this is News rather than A Statement Of The Obvious since it is a language model which means it has no data,” but it makes stuff make more sense.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Biden has Charisma as his main stat, and “Gab” as his basic skill. It is remarkable how long he has stayed verbal while having dementia, to the point of maintaining an interesting tone of voice when he literally has no idea what he is saying.

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        1. Or at least, once the machinery is established, it can run without necessarily using much central processing. Like being more fluent in a language when asleep or drunk, which happens.

          Liked by 1 person

  17. It bothers me that they are still winning. And what does the other side have to put up? Chris Christie? Nikki Halley? At least Trump and Vivek look interesting.

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    1. And DeSantis at least gets stuff done, without (generally) looking interesting. But seems a bit too tainted by GOPe for my comfort.

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        1. The Reader thinks anyone who thinks DeSantis is a “return to what I perceived as normal.” had best look carefully at his record in Florida. He clearly is a wooden campaigner but his actions as governor don’t look GOPe to the Reader. Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence et al on the other hand…

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I’d agree his actions as governor (aside from initially going along for a few weeks with the COVID shutdown BS) don’t scream GOPe. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing a lot more GOP governors following his lead on anti-Woke policies and replacing leadership of Leftist-controlled institutions. OTOH, a few of the people screaming to get behind him very much are GOPe – and there is his time as a JAG at Guantanamo Bay that makes me a bit cautious. But not so cautious that in the general election I wouldn’t jump at the chance to vote for him against anybody the Democrats are remotely likely to be running.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. The GOPe is at most 20% of the party at this point. Their man was Larry Hogan…who realized that not only could he not get the nomination, he could not win his own state primary.

              And if you’re a GOPe type, DeSantis is a populist that is less grating than Trump.

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              1. Alas, the GOPe occupy a lot of government and party leadership slots at the state and federal levels, way more than 20%.

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      2. I agree that he is tainted, making him a Statist and not the alternate Trump that a lot of people hoped he would be. His persona has gotten a lot more plastic imho. I don’t trust him.

        Liked by 1 person

      1. Exactly… They have been working this country for more than 50 years. We are seeing the “fruits” of their actions– step by step, inch by inch.

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    3. They’re not winning. They’ve descended into thuggery, which by definition is losing. When all you’ve got is The Mob, but your faction makes up 1/12th of the population, you lost.

      All that remains is the Reckoning. 1/12th of the population is enough to make a big freaking mess. But not enough to win.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. They don’t only have the political crowd, they have the K-12 schools, colleges, Hollywood, etc. I am with a group that watch socialist streams and the talking points they were talking about five years ago (you can find it on youtube) are the Dem’s talking points. A lot of people are swimming in Marxism and don’t even know it. That is why they are winning.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. Another thing to remind you of is that all credentialing for all of the teachers have been captured by the Marxists. The entire teaching pool is tainted. THIS is why we must be a proponent of homeschooling or alternatives of this type. Private schools also use the same teaching pool.

        Liked by 2 people

    4. The main negative that I’ve seen about Vivek is that he’s kind of like a conservative ivory tower type – lots of good theories, but he comes across as not having enough real world experience.

      Note that I haven’t seen him myself, so I can’t comment on that opinion of him.

      On another note, Insty had a link up yesterday to Halley being accused of racism by some media personality because she criticized Harris.

      lol

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        2. That’s not what’s hilarious about the accusation. The thing that’s hilarious about the accusation of racism is that both Halley and Harris are Indian-American (dot, not feather).

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I’ve been amused by the claims of White Privilege cast against people who tan, with the frequent case that the accuser is considerably more pale than the Deplorable.

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  18. Liberals ARE intelligent. They have the amazing ability to hold two totally contradictory ideas in their heads at the same time, even if one of them is objective reality, and to claim that both are true, or that their fantasy is true and reality is not. As my old Daddy used to say, “they are blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other.”

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  19. I’ve been experimenting with simulating stupidity, by depriving myself of sleep.

    (Yep, it’s totally an experiment and not me just irresponsibly doing anything else besides sleep, no sirree.)

    My focus is gone, I’m even more easily distractable than usual, the words are barely there… and it takes significant effort to think through a sequence of events.

    On the plus side, I can’t think ahead to how badly whatever I’m doing might hurt me if it goes wrong.

    Probably the worst part is I know that this is not optimal performance.

    Which is where that saying about “dead people not knowing they’re dead and the pain being other people, same as when you’re stupid” comes in.

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  20. The sure sign you’ve got a truly dumb person? They are too insecure to simply say they don’t understand something when it comes up.

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    1. That can sometimes be a traumatized person– and bad teachers churn them out in mass groups.

      One of my husband’s first jobs when he’s teaching a class is persuading the students that not only does he want questions, he needs questions, and if they don’t work with him to get him to state things so they understand he can’t do his job.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. So much this.

        It’s easier to assume that someone who won’t ask questions is stupid.
        It’s better for everyone concerned to assume that the person has been traumatized.

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        1. It took me years to realize the explosive declarations of my mental lacking mapped not to ME, but to teachers who had to be all knowing.
          And that was with a good teacher (my mom), who actively taught me the “well, how would you look that up?” trick for if you couldn’t remember an answer. (It keeps your authority, and the kids get exposed to how to get information. And if there’s a kid trying to pull a fast one, you tell them that THEY will go look it up, and write you a one page summary.)

          Liked by 1 person

      2. In an internet first, you’ve convinced me to reconsider my position. Or else, perhaps I chose my words poorly. There is a certain group of people that are intimidated from asking questions. But there’s another group that don’t want to appear unknowledgeable and will not admit they don’t know what you’re talking about.

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        1. Intellectual pride. I had a huge problem with that for a while. Now I am back to being overly self-deprecating… Much comfier.

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        2. Perhaps, were looking in a different direction?

          Heaven knows the “nod along with no understanding” are painful– and they DEFINITELY exist.

          I just want to make sure the folks who have a chance– well, have a chance. ^.^ And I don’t know about for you, but for me– it helps me keep going, too.

          Liked by 1 person

      3. This. You deal with someone who has power over you who is cruel and sadistic, one of the first things you learn is to never admit you don’t know something.

        1) You won’t get any help.
        2) You will, in fact, be laughed and mocked for not knowing something “so simple”.
        3) Everyone around will be encouraged to laugh, mock, and physically abuse you. Because you’re now the acceptable target for being “so stupid”.

        ….Yeah. Traumatized people don’t ask questions.

        Which is exactly what a sadistic power-hungry type wants, because if you ask questions you might figure out something is very wrong with the situation….

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  21. Oh, and Colorado Springs public schools apparently got some kid in trouble for wearing a Gadsden flag. His mom recorded the interview with the school, and shared it with the internets.

    Apparently the -history- teacher was under the impression that Don’t Tread on Me is a pro-slavery slogan from the Civil War.

    And the kid seems like a good kid. He is even Hispanic, so you would think he would get victim points, but apparently he is not the right kind of Hispanic. Typical.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Correction: it was a charter school called The Vanguard School.

      The antagonist woman in the video does this weird thing where she looks down and away from the mom and kid, while saying terrible things, and her face also looks like she is sucking a lemon.

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    2. Insty’s got a link up about the latest news. Among other things, the school has – completely coincidentally, I’m sure – decided that it’s cancelling Back to School Night.

      ^^;;

      Liked by 1 person

  22. CHICOM Joe was always stupid, but I don’t think this is the root of his evil. One need not be a genius to be good. There are plenty of people of quite moderate intelligence who have outstanding character.

    The Dems have CHOSEN evil. They are corrupt by choice. Their lies are deliberate.

    I think part of this may be linked to a decline in religious faith. A religion gives people a code of conduct with better provenance than the whims of Kings or Congresses, a code backed with the threat of inescapable punish and the promise of undeniable reward. An atheist is quite prone to indulging his depravity whenever he thinks he can get away with it.

    It does not help that over the last century, Western Civilization has lost its self-confidence – and has thrown its moral compass overboard. There are few people who can reason out ethics from a blank sheet of paper.

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  23. That makes sense in both directions. If you are smart but you don’t think you are you think the folks that don’t understand the stuff you do must be lame because even a dummy like yourself gets it…

    Liked by 1 person

      1. They hate you and they want you to die. If you won’t die, then they want you to be submissive peasants.

        It’s exactly like the situation in the Maui wildfires. The only people who survived were the ones who disobeyed their local government. And besides Glenn Reynolds, NOBODY IS POINTING THAT OUT.

        That’s local, immediate, the people who might know you. Why should national government care about you more than that?

        Liked by 1 person

  25. The only thing really saving us is how stupid the evil effers are. Fortunately even the “Smart” ones have glaring black holes of a blind spot so their plans always come up short.
    Doesn’t mean they won’t do a f#^kton of damage.

    Liked by 2 people

  26. Sleepy Joe might be short of money soon since Zhongrong Trust is exploding as we sit.

    I’m for bed since I suspect I’m going to be very busy tomorrow.

    Liked by 1 person

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