[OP/ED] Why do people often vote against their own interests

[The Grim Squeaker]

The Republicans' shock victory in the election for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts meant the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate. This makes it even harder for the Obama administration to get healthcare reform passed in the US.

Political scientist Dr David Runciman looks at why is there often such deep opposition to reforms that appear to be of obvious benefit to voters.

Last year, in a series of "town-hall meetings" across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama's proposed healthcare reforms.

What happened was an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence.

Polling evidence suggests that the numbers who think the reforms go too far are nearly matched by those who think they do not go far enough.

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.

Instead, to many of those who lose out under the existing system, reform still seems like the ultimate betrayal.

Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

It might be tempting to put the whole thing down to what the historian Richard Hofstadter back in the 1960s called "the paranoid style" of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington.

But that would be a mistake.
Michael West
Drew Westen argues that stories rather than facts convince voters

If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.

They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.

There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.

As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.

Stories not facts

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers.

"I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious.

"Obama's administration made a tremendous mistake by not immediately branding the economic collapse that we had just had as the Republicans' Depression, caused by the Bush administration's ideology of unregulated greed. The result is that now people blame him."

Reverse revolution

Thomas Frank, the author of the best-selling book What's The Matter with Kansas, is an even more exasperated Democrat and he goes further than Mr Westen.

He believes that the voters' preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests.

The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronising liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.
Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank thinks that voters have become blinded to their real interests

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining.

"It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy."

As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.

And the ultimate sin in modern politics is appearing to take the voters for granted.

This is a culture war but it is not simply being driven by differences over abortion, or religion, or patriotism. And it is not simply Red states vs. Blue states any more. It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises.

And when the politicians say to the people protesting: 'But we're doing this for you', that just makes it worse. In fact, that seems to be what makes them angriest of all.

Interesting bits bolded. I included one of the images from a townhall debate, it's just...wow.

[Samuel]

So not only are people stupid, but they don't like being remined that they are stupid. I'm not sure the facts approach can be changed without coming off as patronizing. Finally, if you switch from facts to telling stories, how can people tell the difference between the two?

It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises.

Is he saying that the right views itself this way? Aside from the fact they commit this sins as often in both parties, these are inevitable results of politics. Politicians will be arrogant because they have been given power by the people, they will be slippery because the real world is complex and they will make deals because not everyone will get along.

[Patrick Degan]

This is nothing new.

In Robert Penn Warren's great political novel All The King's Men, when Willie Stark is making his first run for governor, he's quoting all the facts and the figures about what the people of his state need, and getting absolutely nowhere in his campaign, which of course suits his crooked managers since he was set up simply to draw votes away from the political machine's opponent. It's only when Stark gets drunk after being told that he's a dupe that on his next appearance before a crowd, he lets his anger spill over and starts weaving a tale of how "a hick" who thought he was going to do good got talked into running for governor by the boys in the hundred-dollar suits and were just using him, the same way they've used them all, and in so doing suddenly has his crowds spellbound.

Lyndon B. Johnson told in his autobiography about how, in his first run for Congress, his opponent would cruise the backroads of the district with a sound truck, and he had a song written for him which he would perform at all his rallies, while LBJ was out talking about full farm parity price-supports and quoting all the facts and the figures "and I got the tar whupped outta me. I didn't stand a chance." But from that, he learned why he lost and the next time, having a bit more money to back him up, rented a helicopter and flew over his district in it with a bullhorn announcing his next campaign rally. The people there had never seen a helicopter before and it made the impression he needed, and Johnson won that race handily and began his climb upward in Washington.

Politics is theatre, and the ones who know how to play it that way are the ones who make themselves look like winners and invariably end up the winners on election day.

[ArmorPierce]

It seems like it's more than them just not being told they are stupid. They don't want to be made to feel stupid by having to be told about more issues and they refuse to admit that they may not be qualified to talk about the issue at hand.

On a somewhat side note, I know a older woman at my job that believes that Obama is going to enslave her.

[Alyrium Denryle]

It seems like it's more than them just not being told they are stupid. They don't want to be made to feel stupid by having to be told about more issues and they refuse to admit that they may not be qualified to talk about the issue at hand.

On a somewhat side note, I know a older woman at my job that believes that Obama is going to enslave her.

Why? Because he is black and she is afraid that he will exact slavery reparations on the whites by enslaving them in kind?

[adam_grif]

People rarely know what is in their best interests, so them voting against them isn't really surprising. Democracy rewards those who are most popular, not best. A vote from somebody who thinks the candidate is dreamy is worth the same as a vote from someone who has carefully analyzed the situation and voted based on which outcome will be most beneficial for the country.

[Sinewmire]

I'm not American and I can't speak for America. As an outsider, though, my impression is thus:

The Republicans are somehow allowed to have wildly popular radio stations who routine tell direct lies about Liberal policies and candidates.

At the same time, Republicans claim that Liberals are untrustworthy.

My only conclusion is, Americans Are Stupid*. Or at least, enough Americans are stupid enough.

*I realise this is not neccesarily the case, that there are a large number of policital, technological and arts people who are extremely smart in America. It's just that when their government comes to vote on anything, you get large crowds of yokels holding 'Free Money To Poor Will Kill Our Babies' placards.

[Seggybop]

There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.

Kind of a problem given that they are, in fact, idiots.

According to the rest of the article, it seems the problem is more that the Democrats are optimistically addressing them like rational, intelligent agents when instead they should be treating them as brain-dead morons who can only comprehend appeals to emotion. The Republicans, filled with cynicism and disdain, have no trouble treating them like the fools they are.

[MarshalPurnell]

I'd say it's a much more complex problem than just that the voters are stupid. Rather I would say that the voters are ignorant, have no incentive to not be ignorant, and actively dislike the process of losing that ignorance.

On the first point, I would just say that any modern political issue is horribly complex. This is without taking into account the deliberate misinformation and spin-doctoring that all sides engage in. If professional economists can't agree on what caused the recession and what the best option for recovery is, how can the average person be expected to reach an informed opinion? And the economy is just one issue. The health care debate is even more of a mess and coverage of it is particularly facile. Foreign affairs are just as complex, and most social issues involve various shadings of fact and half-truth that are difficult to sort through and inherently tainted by emotional attachments.

And the related second point is that very few broad political issues have any relevance at all to daily life. Whether to go with Keynes or Friedman in the economic sphere has nothing to do with a construction worker's experience of life. In fact it can have a significant impact on his life, but that impact is mediated and attenuated through so many structures that it is difficult to trace the effect to the cause. And economics is by far the one issue that does most affect voters. Other issues are even more abstractly felt. And even if our hypothetical construction worker does obtain a basic undergraduate level of economic understanding, what good does it do him? He can make a better choice when voting, but his vote counts just as much as some twenty-something marking down Nader as a protest vote. Neither of their individual votes stands even a slight chance of actually mattering. Any given person may as well not vote, given how little their vote counts for. It is in group voting that power lies, which is why special interest groups are so powerful.

Finally, the human brain is configured in such a way that most people do not really like becoming informed. It is a basic flaw of the human brain that emotion makes a more powerful impact than reason on our thinking. We tend to cluster together in like-minded groups, mutually reinforcing our views, discarding any information or input that contradicts the narrative our brain has internalized. Indeed we even receive neurochemical rewards for ignoring dissenting views and facts. We also fall prey to any number of basic cognitive biases that get in the way of understanding complex issues that have counter-intuitive properties. The average person thus prefers to be presented with simple, straightforward narratives conforming to their pre-existing biases and wants to do as little thinking as possible. That is how the average person gets through life.

And that is why democracy doesn't work. It just fails in less bloody a manner than other forms of governments.

[Broomstick]

It seems like it's more than them just not being told they are stupid. They don't want to be made to feel stupid by having to be told about more issues and they refuse to admit that they may not be qualified to talk about the issue at hand.

On a somewhat side note, I know a older woman at my job that believes that Obama is going to enslave her.

Why? Because he is black and she is afraid that he will exact slavery reparations on the whites by enslaving them in kind?

Yep. I have heard exactly that by some very, very frightened white bigots who clearly fear that they will be done unto as they have being doing unto others all these years.

[Darth Wong]

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.

Instead, to many of those who lose out under the existing system, reform still seems like the ultimate betrayal.

Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

Because they're fucking stupid and they actually believe the incredible misinformation they see on FOXNews. They believe it utterly, completely, and without reservation because it appears to come from people they can relate to. Corrections from that information come from people they can't relate to, and therefore refuse to listen to. It's not so much deliberate tribalism as the Mother Of All Ad-Hominem Fallacies: when you're not very well educated, you tend to judge information by your emotional reaction to the source.

If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.

They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.

There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.

Bullshit. These same people love it when George W. Bush or Sarah Palin speak to them as if they are pre-schoolers or use incredibly oversimplified and childish, almost stupefyingly patronizing analogies.

As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers.

"I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

No, I'm afraid I have to strongly disagree with the author yet again. I remember that debate, and I remember that it was about identifying with people. The morning after that debate, the news was abuzz with the Eye Rolling scandal. Remember EyeRollGate? It was a moment when Al Gore got so fed up with George W. Bush's stupidities and evasions that he rolled his eyes in exasperation. People who had no grasp whatsoever of the issues seized upon that moment as a way to judge "character", and judged Al Gore as that annoying schoolteacher they always resented, while they judged George W. Bush as a less intelligent but basically nicer guy, just because he seemed more like someone they could identify with.

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious.

"Obama's administration made a tremendous mistake by not immediately branding the economic collapse that we had just had as the Republicans' Depression, caused by the Bush administration's ideology of unregulated greed. The result is that now people blame him."

This would be a very interesting point if it were not based on a completely false statement of fact: the Democrats did in fact repeatedly brand the economic collapse as a failure of Republican policy and the bitter fruit of the Bush Administration. The problem is that they failed to tie it to personality types.

The Right has spent the last 30 years carefully creating personality archetypes, to which they can assign political arguments. If you care about the environment, you're a stupid Gaia-loving hippie, not a scientist or a person with a genuine rational concern about worrisome trends. If you call yourself a pacifist, you're a sandal-wearing college student who knows nothing about the real world, not a person who understands foreign policy and has come to the conclusion that military belligerence rarely solves more problems than it creates. If you support more social programs, you're someone who benefits directly from those programs, not someone whose generosity and compassion lead him to help others. It's all about tying every idea to a reviled personality: when Al Gore hit the public consciousness with the global warming scenario, the first thing they did was to concoct a new personality archetype to attach to it: the greedy "Big Environment" lobbyist who stands to personally benefit from environmental mitigation programs, and is swindling everyone to suit his financial interest. This is how the Right operates, and it is a highly effective strategy because it is also how ignorant people (read: most people) operate.

Thomas Frank, the author of the best-selling book What's The Matter with Kansas, is an even more exasperated Democrat and he goes further than Mr Westen.

He believes that the voters' preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests.

The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronising liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Except that right-wingers are perfectly capable of showing affection for intellectuals when it suits them. I'm reminded of the people who attack the credibility of all scientists when discussing scientific consensus on evolution, but who will proudly quote any scientist who they believe to oppose evolution. And what of those George W. Bush or Sarah Palin speeches which were just sickeningly patronizing? How does he explain that?

As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics.[/b] The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.

And the ultimate sin in modern politics is appearing to take the voters for granted.

This is a culture war but it is not simply being driven by differences over abortion, or religion, or patriotism. And it is not simply Red states vs. Blue states any more. It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises.

And when the politicians say to the people protesting: 'But we're doing this for you', that just makes it worse. In fact, that seems to be what makes them angriest of all.

Again, I call bullshit. Where was this anger at President Bush, who did all of those things, who was incredibly arrogant, who was buddy-buddy with the Saudis, who betrayed numerous stated principles when it suited him, etc?

These people keep thinking it's about behaviour, and it's not. It's about identification. We all tend to have a much greater tolerance for misbehaviour when it comes from someone we identify as "one of us". Imagine a violent crime. Imagine your reaction to the news that someone committed this crime. Now imagine it was someone at the end of your street. Now imagine it's a family member. The closer that person is to you, the more likely you are to think that the person should be granted a second chance, or to take the possibility of "mitigating circumstances" seriously. This is part of our human nature, and right-wing political strategy has been taking advantage of this for decades.

The sandal-wearing pot-smoking hippie. The angry man-hating feminist. The welfare queen with two cars and a nicer house than you. The stuffy intellectual who has "book smarts" but knows nothing about the real world. The radical pacifist who doesn't understand foreign policy and who is really just full of hate for soldiers. These are bullshit exaggerated or outright false personality archetypes that the Right has carefully constructed for decades, and it's about fucking time that the Left got off its ass and started promoting some stupid-shit personality archetypes of their own, to counteract this effect.

[Broomstick]

If you care about the environment, you're a stupid Gaia-loving hippie, not a scientist or a person with a genuine rational concern about worrisome trends. If you call yourself a pacifist, you're a sandal-wearing college student who knows nothing about the real world, not a person who understands foreign policy and has come to the conclusion that military belligerence rarely solves more problems than it creates. If you support more social programs, you're someone who benefits directly from those programs,.....The welfare queen with two cars and a nicer house than you. The stuffy intellectual who has "book smarts" but knows nothing about the real world....

OMIGOD! Mike - you've just described me! No wonder I don't fit in around here and I always seem to vote on the losing side in elections!

[Patrick Degan]

The Democrats did in fact repeatedly brand the economic collapse as a failure of Republican policy and the bitter fruit of the Bush Administration. The problem is that they failed to tie it to personality types.

The Right has spent the last 30 years carefully creating personality archetypes, to which they can assign political arguments. If you care about the environment, you're a stupid Gaia-loving hippie, not a scientist or a person with a genuine rational concern about worrisome trends. If you call yourself a pacifist, you're a sandal-wearing college student who knows nothing about the real world, not a person who understands foreign policy and has come to the conclusion that military belligerence rarely solves more problems than it creates. If you support more social programs, you're someone who benefits directly from those programs, not someone whose generosity and compassion lead him to help others. It's all about tying every idea to a reviled personality: when Al Gore hit the public consciousness with the global warming scenario, the first thing they did was to concoct a new personality archetype to attach to it: the greedy "Big Environment" lobbyist who stands to personally benefit from environmental mitigation programs, and is swindling everyone to suit his financial interest. This is how the Right operates, and it is a highly effective strategy because it is also how ignorant people (read: most people) operate.

Huey Long had that talent in spades —he was especially swift at hanging a derisive nickname on any of his political opponents and making it stick and he always talked about "the slickers in the hundred-dollar suits" who were always trying to take away everything the people had and fooling them into voting for it as well. LBJ as well; he took Barry Goldwater's own campaign slogan "In your heart you know he's right" and turned it around by saying "In your guts you know he's nuts". The problem with liberals and the American Left in general is that they've forgotten how to fight on those terms for the most part.

To go back to the example of All The King's Men, this conversation between Jack Burden and Willie Stark on the last night he was an unknowing dupe for the Harrison machine:

JACK: All right... Look, Willie, you tell 'em too much. Just tell 'em you're going to soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff.

WILLIE: (pathetically) That's what I say.

JACK: But it's the way you say it. Willie, make 'em cry. Make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you. Stir 'em up and they'll love it and come back for more. But for heaven's sake don't try and improve their minds.

Well, after he's gotten drunk for the first time in his life (and Sadie the campaign aide's fucked him into a nice slumber) he goes out the next day for his latest campaign rally with Tiny Duffy on the stage setting him up. But Willie goes off-script:

I have a speech here. It's a speech about what this state needs. There's no need in my telling you what this state needs. You are the state and you know what you need... You over there... look at your pants. Have they got holes in the knees? Listen to your stomach. Did you ever hear it rumble from hunger?... And you, what about your crops? Did they ever rot in the field because the road was so bad you couldn't get them to market?... And you. What about your kids? Are they growing up ignorant as dirt, ignorant as you, 'cause there's no school for them?... No, I'm not going to read you any speech.

But I am going to tell you a story. It's a funny story so get ready to laugh. Get ready to bust your sides laughing, 'cause it's sure a funny story. It's about a hick. A hick like you, if you please. Yeah, like you. He grew up on the dirt roads and gully washes of a farm. He knew what it was to get up before dawn and get feed and slop and milk before breakfast, and then set out before sunup and walk six miles to a one-room, slab-sided schoolhouse. Oh, this hick knew what it was to be a hick, all right. He figured if he was going to get anything done, he had to do it himself. So he sat up nights and studied books. He studied law because he thought he might be able to change things some... for himself, and for folks like him. No, I'm not going to lie to you. He didn't start off thinking about the hicks and all the wonderful things he was going to do for them. No. No, he started off thinking of number one. But something came to him on the way. How he could do nothing for himself without the help of the people. That's what came to him. And it also came to him, with the powerful force of God's own lightning, back in his home country, when a schoolhouse collapsed because it was built of politics rotten brick. It killed and mangled a dozen kids. But you know that story. The people were his friends because he fought that rotten brick. And some of the politicians down in the city, they knew that. So they rode up to his house in a big, fine, shiny car and said as how they wanted him to run for governor. So they told the hick, and he swallowed it. He looked in his heart and he thought in all humility how he'd like to try and change things. He was just a country boy who thought that even the plainest, poorest man can be governor if his fellow citizens find he's got the stuff for the job. Well, those fellows in the striped pants; they saw the hick and they took him in.

THERE HE IS! THERE'S YOUR JUDAS ISCARIOT. LOOK AT HIM —LICKSPITTLE, NOSE-WIPER! LOOK AT HIM! JOE HARRISON'S DUMMY! LOOK AT HIM! LOOK AT HIM!

Now, shut up! Shut up, all of you! Now, listen to me, you hicks. Yeah, you're hicks too, and they fooled you a thousand times, just like they fooled me. But this time I'm going to fool somebody. I'm going to stay in this race. I'M ON MY OWN AND I'M OUT FOR BLOOD!

A lot of people would vote for that guy in a heartbeat after that speech for rather obvious reasons: Willie Stark simultaneously gets the people on his side, tells them a story they can relate to and which fires them up, and caricatures his enemies and turns the crowd against them in five minutes. Which is how Huey Long also operated.

It is a matter of both tendencies mentioned in the original article and by Mike: the tendency of liberals to speak in wonkese instead of in terms which involve the listener personally, and the Right's tactic of casting their enemies as one of a number of caricatures they've crafted to poison the well in advance. Barack Obama solved problem one but ignored problem two, which is part of the reason he seems to be foundering these days, and the Senate Democrats forgot the solution to problem one almost the day after the election and haven't a clue about problem two at all.

[Simon_Jester]

Kind of a problem given that they are, in fact, idiots.

According to the rest of the article, it seems the problem is more that the Democrats are optimistically addressing them like rational, intelligent agents when instead they should be treating them as brain-dead morons who can only comprehend appeals to emotion. The Republicans, filled with cynicism and disdain, have no trouble treating them like the fools they are.

I see a problem here: a vague definition of "them" and "they."

For example: the original article says that seven eighths of Texans oppose health care reform. Does that mean that "they," as in 87% of the state population, are idiots? If so, exactly how do I define "idiot" in terms that make sense when applied to the human species? I can't just place everyone who's less than two standard deviations above the average in the category of "stupid." Stupid relative to what?

For that matter, how do I define "idiot" at all, except by assuming that I must be intelligent and that anyone who disagrees with me must be stupid? That's not a good definition.
________

So we have to distinguish between the people who truly are stupid in relative terms, and people who are otherwise of average intelligence, who are perfectly functional in everyday life... but who have political views wildly at odds with their own interests. We need a different explanation for that, one that goes beyond "they cannot think and are therefore unable to act in their own interests."

After all, past generations of Americans often voted in their own interests, and I see no evidence that Americans have grown stupider over time... except that they now vote against their own interests so much.

[Alyrium Denryle]

For that matter, how do I define "idiot" at all, except by assuming that I must be intelligent and that anyone who disagrees with me must be stupid? That's not a good definition.

I would define an idiot as someone who is (often willfully)ignorant and/or irrational. Being an idiot does not necessarily under this definition imply stupidity. Afteral, clever people are very very good rationalizing bad decisions and decision making systems.

If 87% of the population of texas fits this definition then so be it.

[Oskuro]

Lately I've been promoting this House-style world view of everyone being an idiot. My definition of idiot there, I often clarify, is someone who can not be one, but doesn't want to.

Most people I think have the capacity for rational thought, and they do use it when it suits them (religious zealots, for example, can be quite rational and even scientific when it meets their needs), but in general there's a tendency to not bother and make an effort, so it ends up being about convenience and general lazyness, something our culture has a surplus of.

[ArmorPierce]

Agreed. I think that just about ANYONE can achive in school, be a A-student, do mathematics, etc. The questions is mostly a question of desire and time.

[Stark]

In my experience, even people who are 'rebels' who 'hate school' or whatever can be easily taught in a one-on-one fashion. I think this is well known, and it's just impractical on a grand scale, but personal tutoring is a way to improve a great many students. As Mike has said many times in the past, it's critical thinking (and the lack thereof) that is relevant politically, and peopel who aren't (or can't be) critical will always be manipulated politically. Critical thinking is definately a learned skill, and I think is very much related to the attitudes of the family involved.

[ray245]

In my experience, even people who are 'rebels' who 'hate school' or whatever can be easily taught in a one-on-one fashion. I think this is well known, and it's just impractical on a grand scale, but personal tutoring is a way to improve a great many students. As Mike has said many times in the past, it's critical thinking (and the lack thereof) that is relevant politically, and peopel who aren't (or can't be) critical will always be manipulated politically. Critical thinking is definately a learned skill, and I think is very much related to the attitudes of the family involved.

However, personal tutoring won't be of much use if everyone is simply teaching students the easiest way to pass a paper. Our education system has degenerated into reading up on pass year papers and memorising the correct answer, and trying to guess if the examiners will set similar questions.