Jordan Peterson shows us why Donald Trump’s
IQ is likely to be be well above average. Many people must have worked this out for
themselves via similar reasoning even if they are not keen on Trump or the notion of
IQ. Some won't have worked it out, but we know about those people too.
In which case, by assessing their respective careers one
might suggest that Theresa May is a little more intelligent than her detractors
tend to imply and Jeremy Corbyn is as thick as a plank. Not to be taken too
seriously of course, but compared to Trump, both May and Corbyn are probably
rather dim.
6 comments:
People seem to have a desperate need to believe that leaders and celebrities etc. are stupid. Dan Quayle never said that he was going to brush up on his Latin before visiting Latin America; ditto for Bush saying that the French have no word for "entrepreneur"; and Prince Charles was being self-deprecatingly ironic when he made the quip about talking to his roses. Yet people cling to these with extraordinary persistence. Most Guardian readers, for example, seem to think that Tories are just thick. My guess is that political leaders are far above average intelligence, but tend to be ideologically blinkered, seduced by power, bewildered by complexity, and fairly nasty people to begin with. The type of skills which get one to the top of a political party or noticed in the media are not inconsiderable, but probably don't help much in governmental roles.
For better or worse, as I've spent my whole career in construction and development, I just recognise the qualities of President Trump as the sort of the people I worked with, sold stuff to, became awed by and mostly liked.
As Jordan says, President Trump has had commercial ups and downs, but he kicked his way forward every time, which is a far better quality than being a crooked politician with too much to hide and just the ability to squawk louder than the others, or in the case of people like Corbyn, just have beliefs and expect an electorate to think he's a good man to run a commercial country.
Sam, You have taken the words out of my mouth! And because of your excellent assessment of our political leaders, I tend to think that Trump may have a bit more to offer.
Sam - "My guess is that political leaders are far above average intelligence, but tend to be ideologically blinkered, seduced by power, bewildered by complexity, and fairly nasty people to begin with."
Spot on - although I'm also sure there are oddities in there too. The blinkers are common but here on the sidelines they seem strangely naive.
Scrobs - I agree, but how do we account for it? Maybe real life kicks away the silly mental shortcuts but the political classes are not exposed to real life until they achieve power and then it's too late.
Henry - I agree.
I’m going to have bit of a Friday night ramble here.
Why? Because I can and I’m in the mood for it. Because no living creatures are significantly harmed, or likely improved or even influenced, in their preconceptions thereby. And just because; like people post stuff on Twitter. Difference is I am actually nice and diffident enough to ask for the forbearance of the thirty or so readers hereabouts, before proceeding anyway with my spittle flecked rant.
I don’t bother these days to read papers, online or actual. No need or benefit. Or watch oh so predictable mainstream movies or TV. Or, just say, read Booker prize-winning novels. No hermit by any means. I just need, in terms of investment or newsfeed, the skinniest executive summary to confirm (most likely) or confound (happily) my hard-won prejudice. Like my dog, I’ll sniff the wind, get the gist soon enough, and I surely know the usual sources are pretty much uniformly dumb, dubious, self-serving and most of all relentlessly cynical and short sighted.
This tactic of mine, of not starting at every hare, only looking in every now and then to see just how badly the kids are doing, is not brilliant but is at least good-ish. It does mean that, whilst you’re not totally up to speed on the silly old Royals or the increasingly strangely lovable bonkers Donald, you do actually have half a chance of recalling seminal little moments. Little moments which are lost in the noisy and voluble continuum of bewildering and apparently accelerating ‘news’. I was just thinking of one such. Not at all especially notable, but telling, in its small way. Step changes both in perception and response.
About a year after 9/11, I think we had a mini-me attempt on our tube trains. Dates aren’t important, it’s the attitude. There was, probably still is, a program on R4 ‘The Moral Maze’. At the time the impressively feisty Jewess Melanie Phillips battled it out with a couple of dismally smug, intellectually bankrupt but conventionally popular ‘Everybody’s Nice, Give Them More Money, Yours Not Mine Though’ apologists. Not at all my major point, though. The interlocutor was the rather decent Michael Buerk. I know, flabby BBC, bought and sold, but still far from a total fool.
I still remember the shocked, betrayed (and actually rather touching) heartbreak in his dulcet voice when he so, ever so, tentatively countenanced the hitherto unthinkable (at the time, at least per official dogma and received wisdom) possibility that it was ‘our’ homegrown Muslims (British, frew 'n frew, was the officially unquestionable mantra) that wanted to kill, main and harm people that they had no knowledge of. And all just because the perpetrators were unaccountably a bit pissed off with life, easily led and thick. We could just about take it from your foreign fuzzy-wuzzies, no surprise there. But these people know about cricket. We sent them to school. They’re not bad lads, per their familial spokespeople. We’re creepily, embarrassingly nice to them. Even more, they know the benefits system inside out! This subtle puncturing of the balloon of daftness, of fond delusion, still resonates.
But the shifting management of The Narrative Needs To Change is the message at that moment. You are now sort of allowed (after the event and all the dead people) to think this or that…but still definitely not that, you hateful -ist, you. Until later, when it could just be too late, with too much lost.
My point is not at all anti-Muslim. I don’t actually hate what I or any yet more gilded beneficiary of fragile western thought, economic and political development might perceive as ‘my’ enemies. That’s what they do. I reserve my particular contempt for the trimmers, enablers and excusers. The evil rather than the stupid.
Clacket - "I don’t bother these days to read papers, online or actual..."
I'm much the same, skimming rather than reading because there is interesting stuff out there but it takes some finding amid the paid-for nonsense and lies.
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