Anne Applebaum is remarkably stupid, there’s no argument there. Even someone as dumb as she is knows better than this, though. She’s just toeing the line here. The left has latched on to “Democracy” as their verbal bludgeon and they’re banking on their remaining constituency to be dumb enough to go along with nonsense like this.
So to be accurate, Anne Applebaum is both incredibly stupid AND a shameless liar.
I debated this point in my mind. It's beginning to feel like they've talked themselves into their own bullshit -- they've descended into self-gaslighting, and they believe what they say. We'll never know what's inside that pudding-mind, but I increasingly struggle to believe that they're smart people who know that they're lying. They just look inbred, at this very late point.
They are inbred! Private schools, elite colleges, elite watering holes, special diets, only the books, newspapers, magazines electronic media that they approve of, wealthy, spoiled and homogenized mostly white. They hate the lower and middle classes, tolerate the upper middle class. Ask Anne Applebaum how many of her associates have served in the US Military. For three generations now they have ruined everything they have touched and are dragging the world to a nuclear confrontation and are so blinded by their narcissism that they don’t see it. If you actually measured their IQ you would find it rather low. But herd mentality helps hide their lack of intellect and ability. Thanks for a great piece this morning!
"Ask Anne Applebaum how many of her associates have served in the US Military."
Actually, it could be a lot. The military has for quite some time been a hotbed for Leftist troublemakers. Oh, not at the pointy end of the spear, but hordes of lawyers, "intelligence" operatives, etc. In fact, I notice that very often when some nitwit is posting stupidity on X, they turn out to be ex military.
I served from 1975 to 1982 as an Infantry Officer in the US Marine Corps, none of the current crop of ass hat senior military managers would have survived to the rank of major then, they would have been slowly eased out after 10 years. But this bunch? Sure they know ole Annie, they all go to the same grad schools, don’t deploy, are in “joint” commands, legislative liaison, pentagon, do just enough to punch battalion, regimental command tickets and get that first and oh so important first star. They are the court jesters at the Anne Applebaum cocktail parties in Georgetown. They are not nearly as inbred, but so dumb for the most part most of us veterans can not stand being around them for more than five minutes. Look at “hear no evil” Austin, “see no evil” Milley and “speak no evil” McKenzie the three blind mice behind as example the NEO in August of 2021 at HIKA Afghanistan. So yeah, in the classic case of the multigenerational inbred class (eyes set too closely together, sloping foreheads and Syphilic noses, low IQ) they need entertainment so they send for faux brave desk generals who use funny acronyms and dazzle the crowd with unlimited bs. So your right on!
All rising in the ranks as Obama purged the bench of based senior officers over the course of his administration. What did we get for it? Look at the list of intelligence and military who are endorsing “Jezibel Harris”. (Same crew: “The Hunter laptop had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation”.) 😵💫
I once saw a Duke University admissions officer speak about the admissions process, and she had the most stupendous circumlocutions to avoid stating plainly that they had a quota against East Asians.
She also had *epic* CrAzY eYeS.
At some point the self-delusion truly warps the mind.
OP didn’t say they’re smart people who know they’re lying. He said they are merely smart enough to know they’re lying. They probably retain basic civics, at least Applebaum, but civics is strictly irrelevant.
“If lies get the work done, we lie all day, to the point we look inbred with the strain.”
I think some of them are finally maddened by the cognitive dissonance of their own discourse, but for this to be so, they must still vaguely remember the truths they shit on for a living.
Many of them may be literally inbred. Anthony Sutton noted the custom among the men of the US East Coast old-money establishment of using their mother's family name as their middle name [e.g. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and George Herbert Walker Bush]. Sutton noted this in the names on the membership list of Yale's Order of Skull and Bones. Many of the family names thus immortalized went back to the Mayflower. Sutton noted how interbred this clique was and speculated about possible mental derangement that can result from too small of a gene pool. When I read that, I had to apply it to George Dubya Bush's weird gaffs and sudden bursts of anger. Now, I can't avoid thinking about the mental incapacity of the Washington crust with it's parasitic worms worms writhing underneath it.
This definitely applies to the top tier of the CIA. The tendency among them to believe their own bullshit has to be considered significant. How else to explain the continued fantasy that in Russia it is still perpetually winter of 1984, as it is in every cheesy spy movie, and the nation is a mass of starving conscripts whom Putin whips into the slaughter at the front line. I have had this vision of Russia explained to my astonished face by a neighbour who spent years of her career in Afghanistan during the 2001 to 2021 war.
Recently Andrew McCabe said that many of his colleagues are worried that if Donald Trump is elected they may (Shocking!! Outrageous!!!!) be thrown in jail. Some FBI and CIA people are wondering if they should flee the country.
RT reports: FBI agents fear being jailed by Trump – ex-deputy director
Andrew McCabe has suggested that former intel and law enforcement officials may have to flee the country
Jun 6, 2024 23:35
Let's calm down, fellas. I'm sure we must know some guys who know some guys who can, ah, solve that we problem?
They have to self-gaslight when their identity is wrapped up in being the party of educated, responsible adults who are good at governing.
But reality keeps smacking them in the face because the leader of their party is a low-IQ grifter and the middle-class and working-class are fleeing their poorly-governed states and cities.
look to the history of the Soviet Union. it’s easier for most politically minded people to go along, believing that one’s ‘side’ is more important, that partisan loyalty is the only vital consistency. bear in mind that the mass of soviet citizens checked out of politics altogether, and played the games inherent in the system to get more vodka, watch out for opportunities to get consumer goods like Czech shoes or Rumanian underwear.
To say Anne is an idiot is looking out of the wrong end of the telescope. The elites don’t believe in democracy or a republic. They want more people to vote because dumb and ignorant people are easy to manipulate.
Also, America has become, to its detriment, more and more democratic. First, we stopped requiring white men to own property or pay taxes. Next, we stopped letting state legislators pick senators. Next, we invited blacks to vote, then women. More recently, we dropped the age requirement from 21 to 18, which is really hilarious now with so many 30 year old guys living with their moms. Felons are soon to follow. Illegal aliens are already voting.
Quite possibly true, but their descent into stupidity predates the jabs, although I'm willing to agree that the whole process has sped up in the last few years.
I think this reading is correct. And it shows them employing the merest gutter-level linguistic signalling. The problem with the word “republic” for the majority of Dem voters is that it appears in the word “Republican,” whereas “democracy,” well, that’s obviously “the Democrats.”
In other news: America was founded as a democracy *by the Democrats*—who *also*, you know, were the party that defeated the South and ended slavery.
I think what is worse is that Anne Applebaum isn't really stupid, she’s actually smart. she is just the kind of smart person that can believe incredibly stupid shit. like Putin wanting to invade all of Europe and destroy America or that mild forms of populism are domestic terrorism.
I say this because I own two of her books, Gulag and Red Famine. both about the horrors of Stalinist Russia. they are well written and researched books about unbelievable atrocities. of course they also could exist to make Russia look worse. she seems to hate Putin with the intensity of a thousand Neo-Con cold warriors.
it’s also possible that she’s just fucking insane tho.
Not waiting for her books on the starvation blockade of Germany following the WWI armistice, the firebombing of German civilians in WWII, or the nuking of two Japanese cities that was opposed by many of our top military leaders as both unneeded and illegal.
There's minerals and other natural resources in Ukraine alone to the tune of over $12 000 000 000 000 (in its raw form at that!), completely untouched.
And what's in Russia dwarves that by a wide margin.
I think it's even worse. Today's establishment hates Putin and the rebirth of Russia after the Western-backed looting of the Yeltsin era; Biden just denigrated Russia again on D-Day, despite Russians having borne the brunt (27 million dead!) of defeating Hitler. But the establishment killed JFK in 1963 in part for trying to make peace with Khrushchev, and when they needed help in WWII, they pretended a mass murderer was our celebrated freedom-fighter friend Uncle Joe Stalin.
It’s as if the foreign policy establishment just couldn’t wait to shoehorn post-Soviet Russia back into an adversarial role. Gave them something to do and a justification for their paychecks.
Many of you think Anne Applebaum is scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I would argue that the barrel has no bottom. Once you're into equality of outcome, politicizing experimental medicine, and chopping kids' tits off, ignorance of James Madison or ancient Rome is the least of your concerns.
Anne Applebaum is the quintessential IYI - Intellectual Yet Idiot. Idiocracy predicted that humanity would descend due to low IQs. Instead, we are self destructing because high-IQ "intellectuals" lack any self awareness or common sense.
They have mid-wit IQs, which is higher than average and just enough to fall for their own propaganda. And a lot of them know perfectly well they are perfidious social wreckers, but they don't care because they want money and power. It's also worth noting that a LOT of these people are actually true believers. They believe EVERYTHING in The Narrative: climate change, systemic white racism, trans men are REALLY women, Trump is a fascist, or whatever the latest crap is. As the late, great James Burnham put it (in a 1960s context), "The difference between a Liberal and a Communist is that the Communist knows what he's doing." In this formulation, Applebaum is a Liberal.
(Nah, kidding but I'm going to ramble a bit because this is one of my hobby-horse/Gordian knots of topics to ponder. Also, spelling-errors. My keyboard has some keys responding slower than others.)
From memory:
Most academics (as in people with a career in academia, any field) falls in the 110-135 span on the the IQ-scale.
Smarter than the average, sure. Which causes this problem:
They know they are smarter than average, which makes them think they "know better" than everyone, on any issue or toppic, even in practical matters.
Which means they don't listen to professionals in other careers when they raise objections or points things out or warns of bad effects, outsomes et cetera - because the academic just "knows better".
And around and around it goes, and as it is coupled to social skills (manipulativeness, likeability et c) what the effect becoes over time is this:
The most arrogant or blinkered who are also the most adept manipulators and coat-turners rise to the top which enables them to define and design how anyone following their tracks must be and behave, to have a career in academia.
It's not ideology or fatih-dependent, but personality-dependent, and it started (this time around) in the 1960s, when universities and such in all western nations started opening their gates to ever-increasing numbers of students (due to various types of funding, degrees becoming mandatory for careers, advancement of same and so on) and many professions being gradually moved from learn-on-the-job type training to learn-the-theory-first schooling (which is neither good or bad in its own right, it's context/discourse-dependent) - good intentions, initially good results, but inevitably no. of graduates in the population was made into a value in its own right for politicians to hold up to be able to say: "We have increased this number yea much, and that means our nation is bettererer than evah!".
Whereas average-to-low average IQs and above 135ish ones both are more grounded and down-to-Earth (for different reasons, mind) when it comes to this stuff; the genius is smart enough to doubt himself, as is the average person who has instinct and experience enough to think "Can this be right?" when they accidentally add the percentages together when trying to calculate the total discount of 15% off per good.
Which the too-clever-for-their-own-good crowd isn't and doesn't. However, the 110-135 type is only a problem in academia and politics, because there they are exceptionally sheltered from any real consequences of their blinkered arrogance.
In a normal job, career, keeping house or what have you they aren't a problem because they are up against material reality all the time.
Ergo: no-one to enter into any theoretical field before age 30 might actually solve the problem.
This seems accurate to me. I saw this during Covid. One person I know, valedictorian of her college class and obviously very bright, but fell for all the Covid dictates and became unrecognizable. It had to be some sort of brain warping. I wish I knew.
I love how the more intelligent they believe they are, the more stupid they sound. The rotting of our intellectual “betters” is accelerating, isn’t it? I was never much of a Trump fan, but honestly have become much more so. As a force that drives people into such inane babbling, it's just a sight to behold. And I’m enjoying the show. 😂
That's why Trump has colonized their brains so effectively: they can't conceive of someone who they *think* is a rube is capable of achieving as much as Trump has. And even more so: you get the sense that Trump just....*loves* life and is profoundly happy. You look at pictures of Applebaum and that ilk and they're almost always frowning, growling, or have shit-eating grins that highlights the emptiness of their eyes.
I mean - he doesn’t even seem worried, does he? He’s out talking to huge crowds, making jokes at his enemies’ expense, trolling them, and just mingling with…gasp…PEOPLE. The nerve of him for spending time with the PEOPLE!
Exactly. You can see that he revels in it, draws strength from it - physically he hasn't looked better, he's truly in fighting trim - and doesn't need to conduct himself with any artifice behind a wall of empty, pseudo-academic jargon. Career nomenklatura apparatchiks like Applebaum are incapable of that basic human connection, and their resentment and secret envy of it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to conceal. To compensate they have to delve further and further into their own self-delusion.
Never having heard of Ms Applebaum, I looked up her website. The only thought I came away with is that it must be very difficult to achieve any degree of self awareness when one in consumed with such hatred of others. She's a perfect fit for The Atlantic!
Willful ignorance is the best way to describe these people. I believe it was around 2016 when Democrats and the media began to repeat muh democracy over and over again as the biggest thing being threatened by the Great Orange Beast, and as many authoritarians have said, the more you repeat a lie, the more people will believe it’s true.
I think 2016 was also when they realized they didn’t have any big policy victories that made life better for the commoners who actually work for a living, so they had to create messaging about anything except their policies.
Years and years ago, during the Obama administration, a friend said something about us being a democracy. I explained that no, we were in fact a constitutional republic. I got a look of dumbfounded, open mouthed disbelief. I said the Constitution limits the mob rule of 50%+1 and protects the minority in this way. In other words, I explained, some of your most important rights can just be voted away because 50%+1 of the other voters think you shouldn’t have them. I don’t think I was understood. However, this was also a person who thought that Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda were synonymous. She did not understand that one was an individual person and the other was the group headed by that person. (PS she, of course, had a masters degree and thought of herself as both smart and a “good person”™️.)
“Idiocracy” takes place in 2500, so there’s still plenty of time for our ruling class to catch up with it. Having said that, Anne Applebaum is a pretty good likeness for the smug yuppie lady from the beginning who keeps making excuses for not having kids, including passive-aggressively blaming her husband. “It’s not MY sperm count!”
My only problem with Idiocracy is that the timeline is *way* too long. It's not going to take 500 years to get the society in Idiocracy; it's going to take 50. Tops. If I'm feeling particularly down, I'd say 5.
I mean - "Ow My Balls" wouldn't be out of place on any of the smaller streaming services today, much less 500 years from now. And the omnipresent ads? Already there!
Anne Applebaum is remarkably stupid, there’s no argument there. Even someone as dumb as she is knows better than this, though. She’s just toeing the line here. The left has latched on to “Democracy” as their verbal bludgeon and they’re banking on their remaining constituency to be dumb enough to go along with nonsense like this.
So to be accurate, Anne Applebaum is both incredibly stupid AND a shameless liar.
I debated this point in my mind. It's beginning to feel like they've talked themselves into their own bullshit -- they've descended into self-gaslighting, and they believe what they say. We'll never know what's inside that pudding-mind, but I increasingly struggle to believe that they're smart people who know that they're lying. They just look inbred, at this very late point.
They are inbred! Private schools, elite colleges, elite watering holes, special diets, only the books, newspapers, magazines electronic media that they approve of, wealthy, spoiled and homogenized mostly white. They hate the lower and middle classes, tolerate the upper middle class. Ask Anne Applebaum how many of her associates have served in the US Military. For three generations now they have ruined everything they have touched and are dragging the world to a nuclear confrontation and are so blinded by their narcissism that they don’t see it. If you actually measured their IQ you would find it rather low. But herd mentality helps hide their lack of intellect and ability. Thanks for a great piece this morning!
"Ask Anne Applebaum how many of her associates have served in the US Military."
Actually, it could be a lot. The military has for quite some time been a hotbed for Leftist troublemakers. Oh, not at the pointy end of the spear, but hordes of lawyers, "intelligence" operatives, etc. In fact, I notice that very often when some nitwit is posting stupidity on X, they turn out to be ex military.
Lindsay Graham. Mark Miley. Lloyd Austin. Case closed.
Bingo
I served from 1975 to 1982 as an Infantry Officer in the US Marine Corps, none of the current crop of ass hat senior military managers would have survived to the rank of major then, they would have been slowly eased out after 10 years. But this bunch? Sure they know ole Annie, they all go to the same grad schools, don’t deploy, are in “joint” commands, legislative liaison, pentagon, do just enough to punch battalion, regimental command tickets and get that first and oh so important first star. They are the court jesters at the Anne Applebaum cocktail parties in Georgetown. They are not nearly as inbred, but so dumb for the most part most of us veterans can not stand being around them for more than five minutes. Look at “hear no evil” Austin, “see no evil” Milley and “speak no evil” McKenzie the three blind mice behind as example the NEO in August of 2021 at HIKA Afghanistan. So yeah, in the classic case of the multigenerational inbred class (eyes set too closely together, sloping foreheads and Syphilic noses, low IQ) they need entertainment so they send for faux brave desk generals who use funny acronyms and dazzle the crowd with unlimited bs. So your right on!
All rising in the ranks as Obama purged the bench of based senior officers over the course of his administration. What did we get for it? Look at the list of intelligence and military who are endorsing “Jezibel Harris”. (Same crew: “The Hunter laptop had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation”.) 😵💫
Like!
me too
Do a deep dive into her husband. "Incestuous" doesn't come close to describing it.
Radosław Sikorski, https://search.brave.com/search?q=who+is+Rados%C5%82aw+Sikorski&source=web&summary=1&summary_og=084239f92cc2afdf0676f7
Yes. I gotta believe a new haplotype has evolved. I mean just look at the cRAzY EyEs.
Heck it may have even hijacked an entire chromosome.
I once saw a Duke University admissions officer speak about the admissions process, and she had the most stupendous circumlocutions to avoid stating plainly that they had a quota against East Asians.
She also had *epic* CrAzY eYeS.
At some point the self-delusion truly warps the mind.
you could probably pick all your political candidates by just a picture of their eyes....all the way from POTUS to the local dog catcher. serious.
The eyes have it.
lol, agree
Bug-eyed Adam Schiff comes to mind. I call it "Big eyes, Big Lies".
Stealing. Lol
If so, you will likely conclude that it is an X chromosome based on the preponderance of evidence.
You're on another naughty list...;)
I have lost count of how many I am on...sad.
Lolol!
OP didn’t say they’re smart people who know they’re lying. He said they are merely smart enough to know they’re lying. They probably retain basic civics, at least Applebaum, but civics is strictly irrelevant.
“If lies get the work done, we lie all day, to the point we look inbred with the strain.”
I think some of them are finally maddened by the cognitive dissonance of their own discourse, but for this to be so, they must still vaguely remember the truths they shit on for a living.
like
Many of them may be literally inbred. Anthony Sutton noted the custom among the men of the US East Coast old-money establishment of using their mother's family name as their middle name [e.g. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and George Herbert Walker Bush]. Sutton noted this in the names on the membership list of Yale's Order of Skull and Bones. Many of the family names thus immortalized went back to the Mayflower. Sutton noted how interbred this clique was and speculated about possible mental derangement that can result from too small of a gene pool. When I read that, I had to apply it to George Dubya Bush's weird gaffs and sudden bursts of anger. Now, I can't avoid thinking about the mental incapacity of the Washington crust with it's parasitic worms worms writhing underneath it.
This definitely applies to the top tier of the CIA. The tendency among them to believe their own bullshit has to be considered significant. How else to explain the continued fantasy that in Russia it is still perpetually winter of 1984, as it is in every cheesy spy movie, and the nation is a mass of starving conscripts whom Putin whips into the slaughter at the front line. I have had this vision of Russia explained to my astonished face by a neighbour who spent years of her career in Afghanistan during the 2001 to 2021 war.
Recently Andrew McCabe said that many of his colleagues are worried that if Donald Trump is elected they may (Shocking!! Outrageous!!!!) be thrown in jail. Some FBI and CIA people are wondering if they should flee the country.
RT reports: FBI agents fear being jailed by Trump – ex-deputy director
Andrew McCabe has suggested that former intel and law enforcement officials may have to flee the country
Jun 6, 2024 23:35
Let's calm down, fellas. I'm sure we must know some guys who know some guys who can, ah, solve that we problem?
Regarding your reference to Russia and 1984, the Greatest TV Commercial of All Time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CaMUfxVJVQ
This is the vision of Russia our elites are still holding on to. If they weren't so dangerous we could almost laugh at it.
We’re up all night to get fun. They’re up all night to get lucky.
The Red Army Choir MVD - Get Lucky Daft Punk cover - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS_jksqkeYs&t=2s
Flee to where? Is there a country that stupid..
Canada, take it from me, I live here
I do not like littering. I am sorry. My like does not register so reach around and give yourself a pat on the back from me.
They have to self-gaslight when their identity is wrapped up in being the party of educated, responsible adults who are good at governing.
But reality keeps smacking them in the face because the leader of their party is a low-IQ grifter and the middle-class and working-class are fleeing their poorly-governed states and cities.
like
They are true believers. This bullshit literally runs in their veins.
look to the history of the Soviet Union. it’s easier for most politically minded people to go along, believing that one’s ‘side’ is more important, that partisan loyalty is the only vital consistency. bear in mind that the mass of soviet citizens checked out of politics altogether, and played the games inherent in the system to get more vodka, watch out for opportunities to get consumer goods like Czech shoes or Rumanian underwear.
To say Anne is an idiot is looking out of the wrong end of the telescope. The elites don’t believe in democracy or a republic. They want more people to vote because dumb and ignorant people are easy to manipulate.
Also, America has become, to its detriment, more and more democratic. First, we stopped requiring white men to own property or pay taxes. Next, we stopped letting state legislators pick senators. Next, we invited blacks to vote, then women. More recently, we dropped the age requirement from 21 to 18, which is really hilarious now with so many 30 year old guys living with their moms. Felons are soon to follow. Illegal aliens are already voting.
Exactly …. It’s lunacy 🤯
Quite possibly true, but their descent into stupidity predates the jabs, although I'm willing to agree that the whole process has sped up in the last few years.
I think this reading is correct. And it shows them employing the merest gutter-level linguistic signalling. The problem with the word “republic” for the majority of Dem voters is that it appears in the word “Republican,” whereas “democracy,” well, that’s obviously “the Democrats.”
In other news: America was founded as a democracy *by the Democrats*—who *also*, you know, were the party that defeated the South and ended slavery.
I am from the UK and I note that “Republican” contains the word 'can' whereas "Democrats" contains the word 'rats'.
like
I think what is worse is that Anne Applebaum isn't really stupid, she’s actually smart. she is just the kind of smart person that can believe incredibly stupid shit. like Putin wanting to invade all of Europe and destroy America or that mild forms of populism are domestic terrorism.
I say this because I own two of her books, Gulag and Red Famine. both about the horrors of Stalinist Russia. they are well written and researched books about unbelievable atrocities. of course they also could exist to make Russia look worse. she seems to hate Putin with the intensity of a thousand Neo-Con cold warriors.
it’s also possible that she’s just fucking insane tho.
Not waiting for her books on the starvation blockade of Germany following the WWI armistice, the firebombing of German civilians in WWII, or the nuking of two Japanese cities that was opposed by many of our top military leaders as both unneeded and illegal.
when will these boomers get over their obsession with Russian boogeyman?
do they miss the Cold War that much?
There's minerals and other natural resources in Ukraine alone to the tune of over $12 000 000 000 000 (in its raw form at that!), completely untouched.
And what's in Russia dwarves that by a wide margin.
Ain't stranger than that.
thars gold in them hills..!
I think it's even worse. Today's establishment hates Putin and the rebirth of Russia after the Western-backed looting of the Yeltsin era; Biden just denigrated Russia again on D-Day, despite Russians having borne the brunt (27 million dead!) of defeating Hitler. But the establishment killed JFK in 1963 in part for trying to make peace with Khrushchev, and when they needed help in WWII, they pretended a mass murderer was our celebrated freedom-fighter friend Uncle Joe Stalin.
It’s as if the foreign policy establishment just couldn’t wait to shoehorn post-Soviet Russia back into an adversarial role. Gave them something to do and a justification for their paychecks.
I'm voting f-ing insane
Lolol!
She’s not stupid, she knows EXACTLY what she’s doing. Hijacking a language.
WE. WON’T. PARTICIPATE.
Democracy is our diversity is our community is our values who we are
Perhaps a quick clip of the Pledge of Allegiance is in order here: "...and to THE REPUBLIC, for which it stands..."
LIKE
Many of you think Anne Applebaum is scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I would argue that the barrel has no bottom. Once you're into equality of outcome, politicizing experimental medicine, and chopping kids' tits off, ignorance of James Madison or ancient Rome is the least of your concerns.
Best comment of the day. Heck, best comment on our current state of affairs too.
LIKE
Anne Applebaum is the quintessential IYI - Intellectual Yet Idiot. Idiocracy predicted that humanity would descend due to low IQs. Instead, we are self destructing because high-IQ "intellectuals" lack any self awareness or common sense.
Maybe they don't have high IQ'S?
They have mid-wit IQs, which is higher than average and just enough to fall for their own propaganda. And a lot of them know perfectly well they are perfidious social wreckers, but they don't care because they want money and power. It's also worth noting that a LOT of these people are actually true believers. They believe EVERYTHING in The Narrative: climate change, systemic white racism, trans men are REALLY women, Trump is a fascist, or whatever the latest crap is. As the late, great James Burnham put it (in a 1960s context), "The difference between a Liberal and a Communist is that the Communist knows what he's doing." In this formulation, Applebaum is a Liberal.
Well met
Triggered!
(Nah, kidding but I'm going to ramble a bit because this is one of my hobby-horse/Gordian knots of topics to ponder. Also, spelling-errors. My keyboard has some keys responding slower than others.)
From memory:
Most academics (as in people with a career in academia, any field) falls in the 110-135 span on the the IQ-scale.
Smarter than the average, sure. Which causes this problem:
They know they are smarter than average, which makes them think they "know better" than everyone, on any issue or toppic, even in practical matters.
Which means they don't listen to professionals in other careers when they raise objections or points things out or warns of bad effects, outsomes et cetera - because the academic just "knows better".
And around and around it goes, and as it is coupled to social skills (manipulativeness, likeability et c) what the effect becoes over time is this:
The most arrogant or blinkered who are also the most adept manipulators and coat-turners rise to the top which enables them to define and design how anyone following their tracks must be and behave, to have a career in academia.
It's not ideology or fatih-dependent, but personality-dependent, and it started (this time around) in the 1960s, when universities and such in all western nations started opening their gates to ever-increasing numbers of students (due to various types of funding, degrees becoming mandatory for careers, advancement of same and so on) and many professions being gradually moved from learn-on-the-job type training to learn-the-theory-first schooling (which is neither good or bad in its own right, it's context/discourse-dependent) - good intentions, initially good results, but inevitably no. of graduates in the population was made into a value in its own right for politicians to hold up to be able to say: "We have increased this number yea much, and that means our nation is bettererer than evah!".
Whereas average-to-low average IQs and above 135ish ones both are more grounded and down-to-Earth (for different reasons, mind) when it comes to this stuff; the genius is smart enough to doubt himself, as is the average person who has instinct and experience enough to think "Can this be right?" when they accidentally add the percentages together when trying to calculate the total discount of 15% off per good.
Which the too-clever-for-their-own-good crowd isn't and doesn't. However, the 110-135 type is only a problem in academia and politics, because there they are exceptionally sheltered from any real consequences of their blinkered arrogance.
In a normal job, career, keeping house or what have you they aren't a problem because they are up against material reality all the time.
Ergo: no-one to enter into any theoretical field before age 30 might actually solve the problem.
Damn buddy. Well met.
This is the best analysis regarding this I've ever heard.
Yeah. What's considered "high" now wasn't in the past.
Credential Brain is not, in any way, shape or form, synonymous with intelligence.
This seems accurate to me. I saw this during Covid. One person I know, valedictorian of her college class and obviously very bright, but fell for all the Covid dictates and became unrecognizable. It had to be some sort of brain warping. I wish I knew.
Romans 1:22-32 professing to be wise....
Lord Jesus have mercy on us🇺🇸
Thank you. That’s a great passage.
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I love how the more intelligent they believe they are, the more stupid they sound. The rotting of our intellectual “betters” is accelerating, isn’t it? I was never much of a Trump fan, but honestly have become much more so. As a force that drives people into such inane babbling, it's just a sight to behold. And I’m enjoying the show. 😂
That's why Trump has colonized their brains so effectively: they can't conceive of someone who they *think* is a rube is capable of achieving as much as Trump has. And even more so: you get the sense that Trump just....*loves* life and is profoundly happy. You look at pictures of Applebaum and that ilk and they're almost always frowning, growling, or have shit-eating grins that highlights the emptiness of their eyes.
I mean - he doesn’t even seem worried, does he? He’s out talking to huge crowds, making jokes at his enemies’ expense, trolling them, and just mingling with…gasp…PEOPLE. The nerve of him for spending time with the PEOPLE!
Exactly. You can see that he revels in it, draws strength from it - physically he hasn't looked better, he's truly in fighting trim - and doesn't need to conduct himself with any artifice behind a wall of empty, pseudo-academic jargon. Career nomenklatura apparatchiks like Applebaum are incapable of that basic human connection, and their resentment and secret envy of it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to conceal. To compensate they have to delve further and further into their own self-delusion.
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He is well loved and he knows it. That’s a huge source of joy.
People! It's like he doesn't know they're made of carbon and exhale carbon dioxide that makes plants grow.
They started attacking the schools decades ago. We’re starting to see the fruits of their labour to take over the institutions.
“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”
Never having heard of Ms Applebaum, I looked up her website. The only thought I came away with is that it must be very difficult to achieve any degree of self awareness when one in consumed with such hatred of others. She's a perfect fit for The Atlantic!
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"Democracy" just means "what good people want." And it's vaguely connected with voting. Just like "fascist" means "bad person."
Democracy is rule by mob law.
Well, that's pretty much what we've got now.
Our language mirrors our culture as both lose their elegance (in the classic meaning of the word) beauty and precision. This is heartbreaking.
I’ll say it again just like it’s been said hundreds of times. Democracy is rule by Democrats.
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Willful ignorance is the best way to describe these people. I believe it was around 2016 when Democrats and the media began to repeat muh democracy over and over again as the biggest thing being threatened by the Great Orange Beast, and as many authoritarians have said, the more you repeat a lie, the more people will believe it’s true.
I think 2016 was also when they realized they didn’t have any big policy victories that made life better for the commoners who actually work for a living, so they had to create messaging about anything except their policies.
Years and years ago, during the Obama administration, a friend said something about us being a democracy. I explained that no, we were in fact a constitutional republic. I got a look of dumbfounded, open mouthed disbelief. I said the Constitution limits the mob rule of 50%+1 and protects the minority in this way. In other words, I explained, some of your most important rights can just be voted away because 50%+1 of the other voters think you shouldn’t have them. I don’t think I was understood. However, this was also a person who thought that Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda were synonymous. She did not understand that one was an individual person and the other was the group headed by that person. (PS she, of course, had a masters degree and thought of herself as both smart and a “good person”™️.)
Victims of modern "education"!
geez
America was founded as a Republic. Unfortunately it has devolved into a democracy.
Last stop before tyranny.
“Idiocracy” takes place in 2500, so there’s still plenty of time for our ruling class to catch up with it. Having said that, Anne Applebaum is a pretty good likeness for the smug yuppie lady from the beginning who keeps making excuses for not having kids, including passive-aggressively blaming her husband. “It’s not MY sperm count!”
My only problem with Idiocracy is that the timeline is *way* too long. It's not going to take 500 years to get the society in Idiocracy; it's going to take 50. Tops. If I'm feeling particularly down, I'd say 5.
I mean - "Ow My Balls" wouldn't be out of place on any of the smaller streaming services today, much less 500 years from now. And the omnipresent ads? Already there!
Welcome to Costco…I love you.
Your brain turns to soup once you start thinking in campaign platitudes.
Saw a meme somewhere recently that Joe Biden's brain worm has died of starvation. Could be a broader pattern.
Fortunately only about 20 people will actually see it. Unfortunately they will all believe it