>> “The mistake we made was to assume that voters believed in...and desired...self sufficiency.” <<
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It has to be understood that by definition, almost half of the Bell Curve graphs people that lack ‘normal’ intelligence. (and ‘normal’ ain’t necessarily enough to be truly self sufficient)
The vast majority of people are in the normal range on the Bell Curve. That’s why it’s a bell shape. Very few people at the far edges.
A lot of the problem is that the pundits speak a very high level of English compared to that understood by the normal people at even the top of the curve, not to mention all those normal people on the left-hand side before you reach abnormal.
We need to dumb it down if we want to communicate. If we don’t, the people dumb it down for us, and take only the most visual, simplistic words out of context and use them mistakenly to our disadvantage. With the help of that part of the media who have their degrees in distortion.