[A_perfect_lady]

Intelligence is a delicate thing. I mean, when we say "intelligent" we mean someone with a good memory, who is articulate and has decent pattern recognition. That doesn't mean they aren't also highly suggestible.

I hate taking things from novels to illustrate real life, but I've never gotten over Stephen King's Firestarter. In it, Charlie's father Andy has the ability to "push" someone with his mind... to make basically post-hypnotic suggestions and then give them a psychic nudge that renders them unable to ignore it. In the novel he says that intelligent people were basically the easiest to influence. Dumb people were almost impossible.

I think King was onto something (whatever his own politics might have been.) Intelligent people tend to be receptive and imaginative, as well as a little egocentric and basically insecure. They know they are beta males in the land of brutes. They possess imagination and can dream of perfect worlds without much awareness of how humans really operate. Finally, a little flattery goes a long way. Just as minorities have been convinced that Democrats are their champions, so many intellectuals have been convinced that they are a natural aristrocracy that only Democrats recognize. Therefore...

[A_perfect_lady]

Ew. I say “basically” too much. I should swap it out with “essentially” from time to time, just for variety.

[AlanGreenSpam]

Thanks for your post.

It could be true that intelligent people are easiest to influence, especially because there is so much social pressure to be “open minded.”

In fact, being “open minded” to fascist ideas is really being closed minded to rational thought.