Friday, September 16, 2011

"Obviously Dumb"

I just saw the link from RCP to the Mother Jones article, "How Progressives Should Talk About Solyndra" -- and curiosity got the better of me.
I about spit my water out laughing when I hit this bit:
Watching this unfold over the last week, I keep thinking back to "Climategate." When it first broke back in late 2009, lefties and bloggers and Dem lawmakers just ignored it, because it was obviously dumb.
emphasis, mine.
"Hey, look, these emails show that lead "scientists" in the Global Warming field have been cherry-picking and improperly manipulating data using methods they know are questionable at best - but that deceptive would be a much better word, while they systematically kept research that did not support the anthropogenic global warming theory from being published in any major scientific periodicals."
"Nuh-Uhhhhhh!  That's dumb!"
I looked to see if they went on at all to expound on just what it was that made it "dumb",  although I suspect it is just that it was strong, searing evidence that undermined their worldview.

Is the left stuck in 4th grade?   Do they think the rest of us are?  

Which reminds me of Geraldo on Fox News this morning


 

"If you don't think all these floods and everything else represents Global Climate Change™ ..."

Then what, Geraldo?  Do you think floods and "everything else" are new?  Because geologists and climatologists  ... not to mention historians, can assure you they are not.

1 comment:

Severian said...

Is the left stuck in 4th grade?

To be fair... no.

It's actually junior high.

That's what's so dangerous about the left -- they're utterly emotionally invested in the idea that they're super-duper smart, but they've got the wrong definition of smart.

People who are truly intelligent in the "able to read, understand, synthesize, and draw conclusions" sense -- you know, what the word "smart" actually means -- have a healthy respect for the limits of their own knowledge. More importantly, they're willing to change their mind if presented with new and contrary evidence, or if their reasoning is shown to be flawed.

The left doesn't have that attitude. They don't even have the basic building blocks of that attitude. They can't defend their opinions with facts, because they don't have any. Not that there aren't facts out there -- there IS data in support of AGW -- but the left has no idea what they are, how they're derived, or, crucially, what they mean. All they know is that you're stupid if you don't agree with their talking-point opinion they pulled off Daily Kos. Because, you know, science.

It's flabbergasting, really. I know lots of people who are otherwise very intelligent, but when it comes to their politics, they simply have no clue about the facts and reasoning behind their beliefs. It's not that they're a little hazy on some of the details -- they literally don't have fact one. What IS the "fair share" that "the rich" should be paying, and who are "the rich?" What ARE the effects of tax hikes, and which programs, specifically, should this new funding go to support? If it's, say, "schools" (it's always fucking schools... good God, can't the little brats just read a book fer chrissakes?), what specifically is wrong with the schools that more money would fix? Teacher training? Training them to do WHAT? More technology? What, specifically, is THAT going to accomplish? Etc.

The minute you move past platitudes, they don't have the foggiest. On anything. Tax policy, education, foreign relations, "diversity"... they're all buzzwords, and all 100% content-free. Yet somehow they've got it in their heads that mouthing these predigested slogans constitutes intelligence. You can drop an Obamacare-sized stack of facts on them and it won't even faze 'em.

This is very, very dangerous. If we want to stop an echo, we need to start working on a new definition of "smart," because this word, I do not think it means what you think it means.