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January 06, 2004

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Declares Most of America To Be, Quote-Unquote, Stupid

Can you believe this?

The S factor explains Bush’s popularity

By Neal Starkman

...What can explain [Bush’s] popularity? Can that many people be enamored of what he has accomplished in Iraq? Of how he has fortified our constitutional freedoms with the USA Patriot Act? Of how he has bolstered our economy? Of how he has protected our environment? Perhaps they’ve been impressed with the president’s personal integrity and the articulation of his grand vision for America?

Is that likely?

Granted, there are certain subsections of the American polity that have substantially benefited from this presidency. Millionaires and charismatic Christians have accrued either material or spiritual fortification from Bush’s administration. But surely these two groups are a small minority of the population. What, then, can account for so many people being so supportive of the president?

The answer, I’m afraid, is the factor that dare not speak its name. It’s the factor that no one talks about. The pollsters don’t ask it, the media don’t report it, the voters don’t discuss it.

I, however, will blare out its name so that at last people can address the issue and perhaps adopt strategies to overcome it.

It’s the “Stupid factor,” the S factor: Some people—sometimes through no fault of their own—are just not very bright.

It’s not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren’t the people I’m referring to. The people I’m referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They’re perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don’t have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all—far above all—they don’t think.

The nerve of this guy, calling people names, like a schoolkid.

Well, let’s pretend to take him seriously for a minute, for the purposes of discussion.

First of all, oddly enough, in the first paragraph quoted above, he admirably summarizes Bush’s great achievements.

Second, Starkman (although he doesn’t appear to realize it) is rejecting Democracy, which is of course, majority rule via vote, and just happens to be the basis of our political system.

Since he implicity rejects Democracy, what does he want to replace it with? Let’s see—if not Democracy, what other political systems are there? Presumably he wants a dictatorship of the people he considers to be smart!

(via LGF and SharkBlog.)

Update: Don’t miss Iowahawk’s hilarious parody of this article.