let me set this straight
Nov. 15th, 2004 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chhotiiI would not claim that everyone who voted for Bush is stupid and uninformed. Some of them just have different values. For example, if you would directly benefit from lower taxes on capital gains, or you are fanatically "pro-life" (in the "anti-abortion" sense), then the decision to vote for Bush is neither stupid nor uninformed.
However, anyone who still believes that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or that he was having any luck producing WMDs during U.N. inspections, is uninformed. Even George Bush now admits that these claims aren't true.
Fact: people who believe the 9/11 fallacy and/or the WMD fallacy w.r.t. Iraq are far more likely to have voted for Bush. This makes sense, because if you believe either of these fallacies, then Bush's foreign policy makes a lot more sense. Once you know that these claims regarding Iraq have crumbled, it's much harder to make sense of our war in Iraq... unless you conclude that Bush is a fool, or a liar.
Fact: There is some positive correlation between being intelligent and being well-informed about current events. Smarter people absorb more information and make more connections; and they are more likely to seek out more high-brow "serious" news sources. The New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly use big words, which attracts some readers and repels others-- based on verbal IQ, I'd hazard to guess.
This isn't about all Bush voters. And it isn't about whether the type of intelligence required to rebuild a truck engine is just as valid as the type of intelligence tested by the SAT. It's just about the complete mind-blowing idiocy of how we went to war in Iraq-- and astonishment that such a big slice of the American people seem to like having that kind of idiocy in power.
However, anyone who still believes that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or that he was having any luck producing WMDs during U.N. inspections, is uninformed. Even George Bush now admits that these claims aren't true.
Fact: people who believe the 9/11 fallacy and/or the WMD fallacy w.r.t. Iraq are far more likely to have voted for Bush. This makes sense, because if you believe either of these fallacies, then Bush's foreign policy makes a lot more sense. Once you know that these claims regarding Iraq have crumbled, it's much harder to make sense of our war in Iraq... unless you conclude that Bush is a fool, or a liar.
Fact: There is some positive correlation between being intelligent and being well-informed about current events. Smarter people absorb more information and make more connections; and they are more likely to seek out more high-brow "serious" news sources. The New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly use big words, which attracts some readers and repels others-- based on verbal IQ, I'd hazard to guess.
This isn't about all Bush voters. And it isn't about whether the type of intelligence required to rebuild a truck engine is just as valid as the type of intelligence tested by the SAT. It's just about the complete mind-blowing idiocy of how we went to war in Iraq-- and astonishment that such a big slice of the American people seem to like having that kind of idiocy in power.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-15 08:04 pm (UTC)Remember, we once elected a decent and honest man -- Jimmy Carter. He was straight with Congress and wouldn't bully foreign government. In the end, he was a particularly ineffective president, and getting smacked down by the Iranians sealed his doom, to be replaced by Ronald "Give them 48 hours and then declare war" Reagan. I suspect that the public remembers that lesson. (And for that matter, even straight man Kerry can been caught in a couple of howlers.)
It's an error to read people's beliefs literally, since figuratively they're usually right. E.g., while Saddam didn't have any WMD under construction according to the recent report, the same report said he was stockpiling whatever he could away with that would be useful for getting WMD up and running as fast as possible after sanctions ended, and support for sanctions was waining. Or on the other side of the aisle, a lot of liberals think free trade impovershes the US. That's demonstrably false in a number of ways, but what they mean is that free trade causes identifiable groups of people to take it in the neck, and that statement is true in spades.
Another error, and much more dangerous, is the "Big Misdirection" -- the obsession with investigating questions that aren't significant, or rather, the fact that you think they're significant shows how blinded you are to the other side's thinking. The split isn't between those who think Saddam had WMD and those who think he didn't, but between those who thought finding WMD was necessary for justifying overthrowing Saddam and those who didn't. Or rather between "War is morally justifiable only if it is a last resort" (Scott Lehigh, a Globe columnist) and "Most Americans consider military force to be an ordinary tool of statecraft" (Josephy Califano, reviewing the Dukakis defeat). Kerry could never shed the suspicion that he was in the former camp, and in a time of perceived danger, that made the difference.