The S Factor?

Neal Starkman, writing in to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, has proclaimed that Bush is poplar because people are stupid! In an article titled The S factor explains Bush’s popularity, Starkman lets a large, liberal cat out of its bag. For a long time now the left has held firm to a belief that they’re “above” the average man. They’re smarter, more worldly, more insightful, and more intelligent. They come to the complex conclusions that normal people can’t, and they’ve held a quiet disdain for such ordinary folk who can’t see outside their little sphere.

The problem, however, is that instead of being thinking people and differentiating themselves from the less intelligent by the quality of their ideas, they take the ideas of “stupid” people and assume that they must be incorrect. Never, though, has a liberal been quite as brash at proclaiming his or her distaste for the “unwashed masses” as we see with Mr. Starkman.

Even at this date in his presidency, after all that has happened, the president’s popularity hovers at around 50 percent — an astonishingly high figure, I believe, given the state of people’s lives now as opposed to four years ago.

First look at the fact that the approval rating is actually 60%… but also consider this: 8.2% economic growth, < 6% unemployment, DJIA over 10k. The recession is over and you betta recognize!

It’s not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren’t the people I’m referring to. The people I’m referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They’re perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don’t have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all — far above all — they don’t think.

You know these people; they’re all around you (they’re not you, else you would not be reading this article this far). They’re the ones who keep the puerile shows on TV, who appear as regular recipients of the Darwin Awards, who raise our insurance rates by doing dumb things, who generally make life much more miserable for all of us than it ought to be. Sad to say, they comprise a substantial minority — perhaps even a majority — of the populace.

We must presume that Mr. Starkman assumes that he is in the group of people who are NOT stupid. He’s wrong, of course, but that’s beside the point. The nuances of foreign policy are not lost on President Bush or the rest of the American Populace. Afghanistan and Iraq are in much better places than we found them. Saddam is in jail. Libya is all but begging to give away it’s WMDs. Iran and North Korea are slowly on their way. Bush realizes that with each American threat mitigated, the strength of the “Axis of Evil” is lessened by more than just the strength of the mitigated threat. In fact, Iran and North Korea must be increasingly aware that with Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya less and less a factor, there are fewer fronts on which America must fight this diplomatic war.

As for the “puerile” shows on TV, Mr. Starkman seems to feel as though “intelligent” people should do nothing but think about history, philosophy and liberal politics. Those of us with our heads not quite so far up our asses know better, though, and watch things that are entertaining on a number of levels… just because something doesn’t speak to some sort of current issue or intelligent debate doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of our attention. If we all spent every waking moment of our lives analyzing politics and philosophy we’d all die very young. Probably from drug and alcohol overdoses.

This next selection, however, is the most entertaining.

I don’t have a solution to this problem. To claim I did would belie my previous arguments. But I do have some modest suggestions that might provide a start for discussion: an intelligence test to earn the right to vote; a three-significantly-stupid-behaviors-and-you’re-out law; fines for politicians who pander to the lowest common denominator and deportation of media representatives who perpetuate such actions.

You’re thinking “By god, Pete, it sounds like YOU!” But, you see folks, I don’t think people should be disenfranchised for being stupid. Killed, maybe, but not disenfranchised. Allow me, for a moment, to point out two groups of people who almost invariably support the left: celebrities and african americans. Most celebrities, I think we all can agree, would fail to meet any useful IQ standard. African Americans, on average, score lower than their white counterparts. So we’d have a disproportionate number of blacks and celebrities staying at home on election day. That certainly can’t be good for the left. It’s also not good for America in general. The rest of the argument against this paragraph is fairly obvious, and I’m going to ignore it and assume he must have been betraying his leftist politics in an attempt at humor — wait… was he catering to stupid people? Shouldn’t he be deported for that? For shame!

As the left gets more and more desperate to find a grip on reality and some political clout you’re going to see more and more of this kind of thing. Mark my words.