Excellent article best to read it here.
Two excerpts:
Smart is elitist, and elitism is, you know, bad. So we can’t elect smart people, and instead elect stupid people, because they connect with us, and they’re more fun to have a beer with, even when (they say) they’ve stopped drinking. Then we wonder why the government doesn’t work. Stupid? Do tell.
I mean, where else in the world is someone accused of academic excellence and high-minded pursuits? ...
Stupid is easy. Stupid lets you give clear and unambiguous answers to murky and complicated questions. Smart, on the other hand, requires dealing with reality.
Columnist William Kristol, a high priest of the religion of stupid, wrote of Saturday night’s whatever it was:
"Obama made no big mistakes. But his tendency to somewhat windy generalities meant he wasn’t particularly compelling. McCain, who went second, was crisp by contrast, and his anecdotes colorful."
Smart is boring. Stupid is much more “compelling,” i.e., entertaining and comforting.
Also:
"Let’s talk about moral issues. I’ve written in the past about how “moral clarity” is not clear at all. “Moral clarity” is based on bullshitting yourself; a refusal to weigh and analyze all facets of an issue.
But, by gawd, “moral clarity” works great on television. The “morally clear” can look the camera in the eye and give decisive, sound-bite answers. People attempting to deal with reality have to explain things. They must fall back on nuance. Boooooooring."Essentially, “moral clarity” is about bullshitting yourself. It’s about not dealing honestly and compassionately with all aspects of a moral issue. Instead, the “morally clear” begin with the position they want to take and work backward to justify it, scamming themselves and others when necessary to achieve the desired outcome. This twisted way of achieving “clarity” is founded in the dualistic thinking Glenn Greenwald writes about. This dualism assumes one side of an issue must be “good” and the other must be “bad.” Thus, in much anti-choice literature embryos can talk and women who choose abortions are either ignored or assumed to have evil or selfish motivations. But real-world moral issues often involve multiple “good” sides. It is actually quite rare for people and facts to so neatly sort themselves into “good” and “bad” boxes as the morally clear want to sort them. And by achieving “clarity” based on lies and false assumptions, the “clarifiers” actually create more pain and complication.
LINK