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Trump Has Made Us All Stupid
NYT ^ | 9 Jan 2020 | David Brooks

Posted on 01/10/2020 5:44:32 PM PST by Rummyfan

Donald Trump is impulse-driven, ignorant, narcissistic and intellectually dishonest. So you’d think that those of us in the anti-Trump camp would go out of our way to show we’re not like him — that we are judicious, informed, mature and reasonable.

But the events of the past week have shown that the anti-Trump echo chamber is becoming a mirror image of Trump himself — overwrought, uncalibrated and incapable of having an intelligent conversation about any complex policy problem.

For example, there’s a complex policy problem at the heart of this week’s Iran episode. Iran is not powerful because it has a strong economy or military. It is powerful because it sponsors militias across the Middle East, destabilizing regimes and spreading genocide and sectarian cleansing. Over the past few years those militias, orchestrated by Qassim Suleimani, have felt free to operate more in the open with greater destructive effect.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: New York
KEYWORDS: davidbrooks; fakenews; moron; newyork; newyorkcity; newyorkslimes; newyorktimes; nytimes
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To: Rummyfan

The Crease in Obamas pants did that to you, DOPE! You are like a little girl...….grow a pair.


81 posted on 01/11/2020 3:18:42 AM PST by Ann Archy (Abortion....... The HUMAN Sacrifice to the god of Convenience.)
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To: Rummyfan

That was actually a good read. Although he’s an anti Trumper, he’s seeing what we’ve been saying about the left for years.


82 posted on 01/11/2020 4:12:43 AM PST by TwelveOfTwenty (Prayers for our country and President Trump)
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I sometimes watch youtube videos for fun. Tim Pool describes this concept aptly...

Democrats believe Trump continuously walks around slipping on banana peels, and accidentally does perfect back flips each time.


83 posted on 01/11/2020 4:50:54 AM PST by dsrtsage (Complexity is merely simplicity lacking imagination)
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To: norcal joe

I just finished reading the whole article, not behind a pay wall. I even read some of the comments, wow, they hate Trump.


84 posted on 01/11/2020 8:12:22 AM PST by thirst4truth (America, What difference does it make?)
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To: Rummyfan

Classic liberal, I mean progressive, I mean communist, projection. IOW it’s 180 degrees out of phase.


85 posted on 01/11/2020 10:58:20 AM PST by Disambiguator ("Progressives" want government in action. Conservatives want government inaction.)
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To: thirst4truth

All the comments there on the article are NYT picks, in agreement and, it’s as if they are written by the same robot.

Propaganda.


86 posted on 01/11/2020 11:08:39 AM PST by right way right (May we remain sober over mere men, for God really is our only true hope.)
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To: Rummyfan

Trump has Shown All you Socialist Libtards to be Stupid.


87 posted on 01/11/2020 12:27:13 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not Averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Rummyfan

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told Fox News: “If you see a wounded veteran missing a limb or seriously disfigured the odds are pretty good they were wounded by an IED that was designed and deployed under the direction of Soleimani.”

In April 2019, the State Department announced that Iran was responsible for killing 608 U.S. troops during the Iraq War, with Soleimani responsible for 17 percent of all deaths of U.S. personnel in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.

A source who served in Iraq and saw the photos told Fox News that Soleimani died in much the same manner as the Americans he killed.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-special-operations-forces-soleimani-strike-aftermath-photos

Our worthless CIA under Bush II and Obama never took this POS/Soleimani out and let him continue to kill and maim our service men.

The survivors and the family members of those killed should sue Bush II, Obama and Brennan for failing to do their job to kill the ememy and protect our soldiers/marines on the ground in Iraq!.

Instead, they spied on Candidate Trump, President Elect Trump and even President Trump and allowed this POS/Soleimani, to kill 17% of our US Personnel in Iraq from 2003 to 2011!


88 posted on 01/11/2020 12:28:32 PM PST by Grampa Dave (Democrats sue Iran over right to use "Death to America" as their 2020 campaign slogan!)
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To: Obadiah

“Mr. Brooks, like his elitist brethren demonstrates their innate haughtiness.”

Dunning Kruger.

Atheist John Clees is apparently a friend of Dunning. The way he repeated what Dunning told him is that the characteristics needed to understand that one is wrong are the same characteristics one needs to be right.

If you lack those characteristics, you’ll never be right or understand that you are wrong.


89 posted on 01/11/2020 12:34:18 PM PST by dsc (As for the foundations of the Catholic faith, this pontificate is an outrage to reason.)
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To: Rummyfan
Donald Trump is impulse-driven, ignorant, narcissistic and intellectually dishonest.

Davey's right!

Trump is a mirror!

And Davey is looking at himself!

90 posted on 01/11/2020 1:53:05 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (Democrats only believe in democracy when they win the election.)
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To: McGruff

I love to have the patent on this product if it existed.

91 posted on 01/11/2020 2:07:33 PM PST by Grampa Dave (Democrats sue Iran over right to use "Death to America" as their 2020 campaign slogan!)
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To: Rummyfan
Trump Has Made Us All Stupid

You were already stupid, David.

92 posted on 01/11/2020 2:44:12 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (Democrats only believe in democracy when they win the election.)
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To: Grampa Dave
91 posts an I get in the first FUDB. Wow!

David Brooks is part of the class of idiot yet intellectual - IYI - as Nicholas Taleb calls them. Common sense solves 99 percent of the problems we each confront. If our own innate common sense fails us we get a Darwin award and someone else’s genes take over. The problem for the IYI crowd is that they have hyper inflated degrees and need a job employing the skills they supposedly learned and the assumed exclusive license to practice conferred by that degree. Commmon spense is a threat to their livelihood and well-being. Given any problem there first move is to reject common sense and try to imagine a solution that only they are genius enough to think up, you know like committing suicide to save the planet or some variant of the theme.

David Brooks shows he is a card carrying member of that crowd.

93 posted on 01/11/2020 2:52:46 PM PST by AndyJackson
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To: Rummyfan

the trump effect caused a lot of people to double down on stupid as well as causing almost all comedians to lose their sense of humor...


94 posted on 01/11/2020 3:11:51 PM PST by heavy metal (your reward will be in heaven not on your paycheck...)
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To: AndyJackson

David Brooks is part of the class of idiot yet intellectual - IYI - as Nicholas Taleb calls them. Common sense solves 99 percent of the problems we each confront. If our own innate common sense fails us we get a Darwin award and someone else’s genes take over. The problem for the IYI crowd is that they have hyper inflated degrees and need a job employing the skills they supposedly learned and the assumed exclusive license to practice conferred by that degree. Commmon spense is a threat to their livelihood and well-being. Given any problem there first move is to reject common sense and try to imagine a solution that only they are genius enough to think up, you know like committing suicide to save the planet or some variant of the theme.

David Brooks shows he is a card carrying member of that crowd.

Our colleges, media and democrats are controlled and operated by the Intellectual Yet Idiots, who have been controlling our lives for decades.

Nassim Taleb Exposes The World’s “Intellectual-Yet-Idiot” Class!

What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligenzia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence and fall into circularities?—?, but their main skills is ability to pass exams written by people like them.

With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3th of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons.

What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligenzia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence and fall into circularities?—?but their main skills is capacity to pass exams written by people like them.

With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3th of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons.

Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats wanting to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. They can’t tell science from scientism?—?in fact in their eyes scientism looks more scientific than real science. (For instance it is trivial to show the following: much of what the Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types?—?those who want to “nudge” us into some behavior?—?much of what they call “rational” or “irrational” comes from their misunderstanding of probability theory and cosmetic use of first-order models.) They are prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule.

The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local premium today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in many countries, the government’s role is ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP).

The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and rarely seen outside specialized outlets, social media, and or the IYI.

Beware the semi-erudite who thinks he is an erudite.

The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When Plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated”.

What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences. While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one-vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools, and PhDs as these are needed in the club.

More socially, the IYI subscribes to The New Yorker. He never curses on twitter. He speaks of “equality of races” and “economic equality” but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver.

Those in the U.K. have been taken for a ride by Tony Blair.

The modern IYI has attended more than one TEDx talks in person or watched more than two TED talks on Youtube. Not only will he vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable and some other such circular reasoning, but holds that anyone who doesn’t do so is mentally ill.

The IYI has a copy of the first hardback edition of The Black Swan on his shelves, but mistakes absence of evidence for evidence of absence. He believes that GMOs are “science”, that the “technology” is not different from conventional breeding as a result of his readiness to confuse science with scientism.

Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains. In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the “removal” of Gadhafi because he was “a dictator”, not realizing that removals have consequences (recall that he has no skin in the game and doesn’t pay for results).

The IYI is member of a club to get traveling privileges; if social scientist he uses statistics without knowing how they are derived (like Steven Pinker and psycholophasters in general); when in the UK, he goes to literary festivals; he drinks red wine with steak (never white); he used to believe that fat was harmful and has now completely reversed; he takes statins because his doctor told him so; he fails to understand ergodicity and when explained to him, he forgets about it soon later; he doesn’t use Yiddish words even when talking business; he studies grammar before speaking a language; he has a cousin who worked with someone who knows the Queen; he has never read Frederic Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshot, John Gray, Amianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadiah Gaon, or Joseph De Maistre; he has never gotten drunk with Russians; he never drank to the point when one starts breaking glasses (or, preferably, chairs); he doesn’t know the difference between Hecate and Hecuba; he doesn’t know that there is no difference between “pseudointellectual” and “intellectual” in the absence of skin in the game; has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past 5 years in conversations that had nothing to do with physics; he knows at any point in time what his words or actions are doing to his reputation.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-16/nassim-taleb-exposes-worlds-intellectual-yet-idiot-class


95 posted on 01/11/2020 3:17:17 PM PST by Grampa Dave (Democrats sue Iran over right to use "Death to America" as their 2020 campaign slogan!)
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To: Rummyfan

Brooks has the typical 7 year old mentality of a liberal, “I know you but what am I??”


96 posted on 01/11/2020 4:28:05 PM PST by CodeToad (Arm Up! They Have!)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...
Oh, the media didn't need President Trump for that -- they've been stupid all along. It's an interesting third option though:
  1. President Trump is a genius, or a least a lot smarter than us.
  2. President Trump is really stupid and vulgar, as we said, but he still beat our asses anyway.
  3. We didn't used to be stupid, but somehow President Trump *made* us stupid.

97 posted on 01/13/2020 7:47:30 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: Rummyfan
Trump didn't make anyone anything. He didn't make anyone stupid, or nasty, or divisive, or shrill, or closed-minded, or intolerant.

He has simply exposed what already existed.

98 posted on 01/13/2020 8:11:46 AM PST by Bruce Campbells Chin
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To: Rummyfan

Not all of Us, Dumb Ass, or should I say ‘Stupid Ass?’


99 posted on 01/13/2020 8:21:31 AM PST by Radix (Natural Born Citizens have Citizen parents)
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To: Rummyfan
But the events of the past week have shown that the anti-Trump echo chamber is becoming a mirror image of the lying media's false description of Trump himself...

The author omitted a few words.

100 posted on 01/13/2020 8:30:46 AM PST by MortMan (Americans are a people increasingly separated by our connectivity.)
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