I agree that Trump is as you described: “not a successful businessman, but a mentally deranged failed con artist totally unfit for office”
You may be including the group of people that I’m about to describe, but I feel like asshole or moron doesn’t really fit for them. First, because asshole and moron tend to be descriptors that imply more permanence to their condition, as opposed to someone being mean or wrong in a specific case. Second, because many of these people aren’t morons and don’t act like assholes anymore so than the general population.
This third category of people I would label as Silo’d, miss-informed, and/or manipulated. They tend to be white(but not all of them), tend to not have a college degree(but not all of them), and tend to be men(but not all of them). There are a lot of evangelical christians in this group.
I hope I’m not being too nitty, but in my interactions with these folks, it would be unwise to call them assholes or morons to their faces, obviously no human likes being called names. But more importantly, assuming someone is a moron or an asshole rather than someone suffering from epistemological failure or victimized by manipulation, will hinder our ability to empathize with their current state, and inhibit our ability to persuasively move them to a better or improved state.
This is like the third time, so my normal forbearance has run out: a lessor is a person who rents out a property. The adjective meaning ‘less than’ is lesser.
Now c’mon and spill the beans — threatening women with acid attacks: how often should that threat be non-empty for it to be a viable strat?
An IQ of exactly 140 is about 1/260 for the general population, but it’s not really that uncommon in high-level career fields. The average IQ for Ph.D./MD/OD is ~125. Go to a faculty meeting at any decent college and you’ll run into at least a few 140s. Visit a hospital, and at least some of your doctors will be in that range as well.
I’d wager pretty heavily that we have at least a handful of 140+ on our forum. 140 isn’t freak range. It’s ~National Merit Finalist range.
You could be right that maybe I’m the intolerant asshole. I suppose if someone were just extremely ignorant of current events, I wouldn’t use either asshole or moron to describe them. But in my mind, if you’re an adult who doesn’t live in a cave, you gotta be an idiot to still be misinformed about Trump. Ditto if you’re that easily manipulated. I call it gullible and maybe (wrongly?) equate that with being stupid
I have very little patience with either group and view it similar to the way I view religion. I suppose if someone never sat down and gave it much thought they could still be smart or a non-asshole and still believe in big boats, winged horses, and hating gay people because they think it’s a choice. But jfc man… THINK about shit before forming such rigid beliefs that inform your world view
As for talking to Trump supporters (or the very religious) to their face, I find it very hard to hold any sort of serious conversation with them without being condescending. Maybe I’m the prick?
Edit: I realize I’m talking about people’s mothers and loved ones here. That’s why I said I feel fortunate I’m not close with any Trump supporter because I would either straight up disown them, or at the very least, we wouldn’t be having a drink or breaking bread over the last 5 years
I have loved ones that fall into the categories you describe and I gladly will refer to them as morons, so no harm done here.
I am sorry if anyone here is religious but I have a similar attitude about religious people as I do trump people. But, there’s such a massive overlap there that you may as well be talking about religious people as if they’re trump supporters because it’s something like 90%.
My position is that non utilitarian arguments need to have specific, almost always non infinite, weights. And depending on their weights, they may or may not override the utilitarian argument.
I have a hard time not coming across condescending in those situations as well. So, at times we’re probably both being pricks from other people’s perspectives.
If you haven’t watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix yet, you should check it out. I think you’d enjoy it. Considering most people these days are “informing” themselves online, I think this is key: “Everywhere you turn on the internet there’s basically a supercomputer pointing at your brain, playing chess against your mind, and it’s going to win a lot more often than not…The problem is it doesn’t actually care about what you want, it just cares about what will keep you next on the screen…If you airdrop a person on a video about the news of 9/11, just a fact-based news video, the video that plays next is the Alex Jones InfoWars video.”
There is a lot going on in the manipulation of these people, and powerful actors at work to perpetuate it. If we myopically focus(I am guilty of this) on the individual failures of those being manipulated, rather than on those orchestrating the manipulation and their tools, we’ll be at risk of trying to cure symptoms rather than the disease.
I think the meta aspects behind all of this are fascinating. In addition to the correlation and connections among the adherents and their beliefs when it comes to conservatism, evangelicals, white-nationalism, patriotism, racism, ethnocentrism, etc, etc.
If someone is voting based on exposure to “persuasion tricks,” they may be (generously) categorized as misinformed, but they are certainly not uniformed.
