Stupidity: Is It The New Political Power? How grievance, identity, and performance are reshaping self-government

We have spent centuries building societies on the assumption that people can govern themselves. Our institutions are premised on individual responsibility, private property, free expression, voluntary association, markets, constitutional limits, and the belief that adults can generally be trusted to govern themselves.

Competence increasingly seems negotiable, perhaps even disqualifying. Expertise is often treated with suspicion. Complex problems are compressed into slogans. Identity matters more than accomplishment, authenticity more than knowledge, and how a politician makes people feel more than that politician’s ability.

Why? And more importantly, what happens to our democracy when understanding a political argument matters less than producing the politically correct reaction?

That is a different question from whether conservatives or liberals are right. It is a question about self-government itself. The old populist argument was simple: the elites have failed you, so “power to the people.”

The emerging version may be something stranger: you don’t need knowledge; you only need someone or something to blame.

Self-government is hard work. It requires citizens to absorb facts, recognize tradeoffs, distinguish evidence from assertion, remember history, tolerate disagreement, and occasionally accept outcomes they don’t like.

Stupidity is nothing new. Consider the typical liberal ho. She roots for muslim mongrels to waltz across our borders w/her "refugees welcome" sign yet she doesn't know that when they seize power, they are going to relegate her to the status of a pet goat.

Yeah, she deserves it but everybody pays the price of her stupidity. Multiply that times 75 million and we've got a problem.

you only need someone or something to blame

One of the foundational beliefs of the current Left is that the world is divided into Oppressors and Oppressed. I believe Herbert Marcuse is the one who first emphasized this. A very bad man.

Everyone wants to be a Victim.
Everyone wants to point a finger at the Oppressor.

As long as you have someone to blame, you never have to feel accountable for your own sad situation.

“… the democRATs want to import uneducated third world migrants…”

We don’t need to import them. We can make our own. For example, less than 30% of DC high school GRADUATES (only 70% graduate on time) can do math at grade level. The reading scores are slightly better, but still dismal.

After giving the teachers’ unions everything they want, student scores there are still embarrassing. As one wag observed, “Teachers unions aren’t there to improve educational levels of their students. They’re there to increase the income of teachers and reduce their workloads.”

Everyone wants to be a Victim. Everyone wants to point a finger at the Oppressor.

You don't have to be a victim once you recognize the oppressors.

From https://heliconcollab.net/our_work/rockefeller-cultural-innovation-fund/

From 2007 -2013 the Rockefeller Foundation’s Cultural Innovation Fund supported experiments, explorations and innovations by 86 different cultural and community organizations in New York City. In 2013 Helicon Collaborative led an evaluation team to assess how well the program had met the its goals.

In particular, we explored how well the program had met the cultural needs of low income communities, communities of color and immigrant communities — groups whose cultural traditions and expressions have not typically been recognized or widely supported by institutional philanthropy. One of the intentions of the program was to support organizations and cultural forms rooted in these communities as well as encourage arts organizations that want to engage with these communities in new ways.

CONCLUSION

Support for cultural innovation that focuses on equity and resilience is a new and potentially disruptive strategy for arts philanthropy in New York City and nationally. A growing number of artists, cultural groups and community organizations are interested in using artistic practice to achieve equity, resilience and social change. CIF gave some of these organizations resources to develop their practice, and CIF grants demonstrated some of the ways that the arts can advance those objectives. Read the report for ideas about how the arts and culture might be supported to strengthen artistic and community equity and resilience.

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