Calling our opponents dumb is being polite, or maybe a psychological defense mechanism against the horror of the alternative.
If you are dumb it’s not your fault. You didn’t, know better. If you are ignorant you can learn.
If you are smart and you still made the choices knowing the outcomes, then we have to go to other explanations: greed is the next least bad, and certainly it plays a part, but honestly that doesn’t usually follow. The vast majority of conservative supporters have no chance to benefit from their policies, so we have to go further to find an explanation.
Cruelty. They want the suffering, the death, the destruction of human potential. Or maybe sadism. They enjoy inflicting pain and deprivation.
The mind recoils, so we call them dumb, because the world in which the ignorant masses are being misled by nafarious elites is less soul crushing to contemplate than the world where the masses act out of cruelty and sadism.
If you are dumb it’s not your fault. You didn’t, know better. If you are ignorant you can learn.
This works because you consider intelligence as something congenital, but I am of a different opinion.
It is just an opinion, I am not a sociology scholar, but at least maybe we can agree than if I turn out «intelligent» it’s thanks to the resources and attention that I have received as a child.
Take it as a joke, but let’s say: I am intelligent because my mother always read me novels in bed before sleep, and found pride in doing maths by thought. What about who didn’t receive this privilege?
I don’t intend by this to nullify the individual agency. But maybe you should be open to teach if you want others to learn. Because it would have only taken the lack of that little pushes in the right direction, and I would also be «on the other side».
That is also horrible. The right’s view of human nature is that people are fundamentally violent, greedy, selfish and cruel. Life before governments was “and endless struggle of man against man for control of women, land, and wealth. It was nasty, brutish, and short.”
Governments provide a check on our natural impulses by centralizing power into a single authority. Capitalism harnesses greed and selfishness into mutually beneficial business deals. If you don’t work, you a deserve to starve. Big you can’t work, you live by the grace of Christian charity.
This is all nonsense of course, justifications post hoc by the powerful so of course they deserve their power. But if they are right… The mind recoils.
Sure, under the Soviet Union, or something like it. They weren’t a the arch villains I grew up being told they were, but the USSR had a long list of flaws and broken promises.
We have more than enough evidence of exactly the opposite to dismiss this possibility. All the problems are less extreme in the countries with public healthcare and that don’t worship corporations
Calling our opponents dumb is being polite, or maybe a psychological defense mechanism against the horror of the alternative.
If you are dumb it’s not your fault. You didn’t, know better. If you are ignorant you can learn.
If you are smart and you still made the choices knowing the outcomes, then we have to go to other explanations: greed is the next least bad, and certainly it plays a part, but honestly that doesn’t usually follow. The vast majority of conservative supporters have no chance to benefit from their policies, so we have to go further to find an explanation.
Cruelty. They want the suffering, the death, the destruction of human potential. Or maybe sadism. They enjoy inflicting pain and deprivation.
The mind recoils, so we call them dumb, because the world in which the ignorant masses are being misled by nafarious elites is less soul crushing to contemplate than the world where the masses act out of cruelty and sadism.
This works because you consider intelligence as something congenital, but I am of a different opinion.
It is just an opinion, I am not a sociology scholar, but at least maybe we can agree than if I turn out «intelligent» it’s thanks to the resources and attention that I have received as a child.
Take it as a joke, but let’s say: I am intelligent because my mother always read me novels in bed before sleep, and found pride in doing maths by thought. What about who didn’t receive this privilege?
I don’t intend by this to nullify the individual agency. But maybe you should be open to teach if you want others to learn. Because it would have only taken the lack of that little pushes in the right direction, and I would also be «on the other side».
Which could also be that they are correct.
That is also horrible. The right’s view of human nature is that people are fundamentally violent, greedy, selfish and cruel. Life before governments was “and endless struggle of man against man for control of women, land, and wealth. It was nasty, brutish, and short.”
Governments provide a check on our natural impulses by centralizing power into a single authority. Capitalism harnesses greed and selfishness into mutually beneficial business deals. If you don’t work, you a deserve to starve. Big you can’t work, you live by the grace of Christian charity.
This is all nonsense of course, justifications post hoc by the powerful so of course they deserve their power. But if they are right… The mind recoils.
It can be true and people still have the freedom to create a socialist society.
Sure, under the Soviet Union, or something like it. They weren’t a the arch villains I grew up being told they were, but the USSR had a long list of flaws and broken promises.
We have more than enough evidence of exactly the opposite to dismiss this possibility. All the problems are less extreme in the countries with public healthcare and that don’t worship corporations
Wrong thread? This is about