It’s About How We Define “Smart”

AOC is clearly intelligent and good at what she does, yet many on the right insist she is dumb, much as some on the left insist DeSantis is dumb. This is because people wrongly equate intelligence with virtue. As long as someone thinks "good = smart," they'll insist "bad = dumb." https://t.co/pIVRDMidto

— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) September 12, 2022

Ted Cruz is smart. Ask anyone. But he proposes idiotic ideas, takes stupid stands, and is really virtually indistinguishable from Louie Gohmert. And nobody ever accused Gohmert of being smart.

Then again, Gohmert didn’t fly to Cancun in the middle of the Great Texas Freeze 🥶 and Blackout.

DeSantis is smart, too, right?

Wow. DeSantis says large businesses aren’t really private, and thus don’t have First Amendment rights, because they’re doing the bidding of “the regime.”

— (Stephanie) Slade (@sladesr) September 12, 2022

Is this "smart"? To whom? His supporters in Florida? The MAGA crowd? ‘Cause he sounds as dumb as the boss I went drinking with in the late ‘70’s when “survivalists” were just getting started. He insisted they were right because society was going to collapse at any time; and then I’d be sorry.

And you thought the internet invented apocalypticism; or at least it couldn’t spread without it.

I liked that boss. But I never thought he was smart.

Honestly, diplomas are a poor measure of how smart someone is. And I don’t think DeSantis is dumb because I think he’s bad; I just think he’s dumb.

ADDING:

Desantis, Cruz, etc. are a product of knowing that smart doesn't sell to the members of the Republican Party who aren't interested in the common good but are motivated by combinations of human flaws, racism, resentment, envy, hatred, cowardice that kicks down when kicking up is what's called for, etc. They know they don't have to try to succeed in Republican-fascist politics.

I agree. But where I grew up we called that “low cunning.” We certainly didn’t call it “smart.” (I agree with you on Pelosi and AOC too. I would even extend it to Biden, who is rounding up the GOP and pushing it toward self-immolation with profound political skills.)