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Today's Top News
Supremacy of the Stupid
In the wake of the recent study finding that right-wing ideologues are not the sharpest tool in the barn - aka that "conservative ideology is the 'critical pathway' from low intelligence to racism" - a fine rant from George Monbiot in The Guardian on a too-timid, self-doubting left that enables "crackpot outliers" and "social vivisectionists of the right" with an "ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology" based on an alternative knowledge system, one that proves "there is no pool so shallow that several million people won't drown in it." Great stuff.
The Right's Stupidity Spreads, Enabled by a Too-Polite Left
Conservativism may be the refuge of the dim. But the room for rightwing ideas is made by those too timid to properly object
by George Monbiot
Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today's progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.
A billboard put up by a ‘birther' campaigner convinced that President Obama was not born in the United States. (Photo: Bob Daemmrich/Alamy)
Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalization but empirical fact.
It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly "different" others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.
But, drawing on a sample size of several thousand, correcting for both education and socioeconomic status, the new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the "critical pathway" from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to "rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order" and "emphasize the maintenance of the status quo". Even for someone not yet renowned for liberal reticence, this feels hard to write.
This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.
But what we now see among their parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretense of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won't drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that man-made climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy, or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.
Don't take my word for it. Listen to what two former Republican ideologues, David Frum and Mike Lofgren, have been saying. Frum warns that "conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics". The result is a "shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology" which has "ominous real-world consequences for American society".
Lofgren complains that "the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today". The Republican party, with its "prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science" is appealing to what he calls the "low-information voter", or the "misinformation voter". While most office holders probably don't believe the "reactionary and paranoid claptrap" they peddle, "they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base".
The madness hasn't gone as far in the UK, but the effects of the Conservative appeal to stupidity are making themselves felt. This week the Guardian reported that recipients of disability benefits, scapegoated by the government as scroungers, blamed for the deficit, now find themselves subject to a new level of hostility and threats from other people.
These are the perfect conditions for a billionaires' feeding frenzy. Any party elected by misinformed, suggestible voters becomes a vehicle for undisclosed interests. A tax break for the 1% is dressed up as freedom for the 99%. The regulation that prevents big banks and corporations exploiting us becomes an assault on the working man and woman. Those of us who discuss man-made climate change are cast as elitists by people who happily embrace the claims of Lord Monckton, Lord Lawson or thinktanks funded by ExxonMobil or the Koch brothers: now the authentic voices of the working class.
But when I survey this wreckage I wonder who the real idiots are. Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls "terminal niceness". They fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or to make an uncluttered case for social justice, redistribution and regulation. The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism.
Yes, conservatism thrives on low intelligence and poor information. But the liberals in politics on both sides of the Atlantic continue to back off, yielding to the supremacy of the stupid. It's turkeys all the way down.
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43 Comments so far
Show AllAbby,
This Monbiot article has aready appeared in the "Views" section.
I guess she's not a very sharp tool either.
Amen, Karlof!
There were like 168 comments on the original Views post -- some of them really elegant. Gone now forever I guess.
You can find it in the archives.
Hey, I never knew that.
Thanks.
Turns out when Monbiot says liberals or progressives, he's talking about the major political parties, not groups like Common Dreams, Firedoglake and others.
"But when I survey this wreckage I wonder who the real idiots are. Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls "terminal niceness". They fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or to make an uncluttered case for social justice, redistribution and regulation. The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism."
If he thinks the Democratic Party is a bastion of liberalism, he is guilty of both conceptual and strategic stupidity. His whole meme of the too nice liberals is worthless drivel.
I got a sense of the real George Monbiot last year when I heard him debating the tireless anti-nuclear activist, Helen Caldicott. He certainly wasn't nice at all, but really let her have it with a skein of spurious claims and faulty reasoning.
Why listen to this rant by a sellout to the nuclear power industry? Talk about triangulating and accommodating.
I agree, Cathy. Well stated.
And, like pjd412, I also wonder in the first place why Monbiot's dubious piece has been recycled. Once was plenty.
You bring up the very point that occurred to me: Who are these "progressives" that toady to the crazies on the right? Nobody I know. The progressives I know have given up on the Democratic Party, understanding that, deep underneath, it isn't progressive at all. Once and for all, drop the idea that Democrats represent progressive thinking. Democrats are on board with corporate rule all the way, from the shattering of constitutional freedoms, though the bestowal of corporate welfare, right down to the trashing of the environment. Monbiot should know better.
They don't "toady", they just cluck-cluck in self righteous self satisfaction, tell jokes among themselves about how dumb the right is, and never raise their voice about anything - even to the co-worker with Limbaugh blaring from his cubicle every lunch hour.
Monbiot is British. People in other lands, even Canada commonly have the mistaken belief that the US Democratic Party is somewhat further to the left than it is.
Also, he us using "liberal" in the classic, European sense. "Liberal" does not mean "social democrat" like it tends to mean in the US.
Monbiot, believes, based on established facts, that nuclear power is very safe compared to most other other industrial processes, and is vitally important to addressing climate catastrophe. You are far, far more likely to be killed by dozens of other industrial processes or devices (starting with the automobile - even just as a pedestrian or bicylist) than a nuclear plant. I would trade off the awful fracking in my state (largely driven by a rush to gas electric generation) for the equivalent generating capacity in Generation III nuclear power any day.
Please try to excercise good faith in a debate, acknowledge that there are different views and not accuse people of being "sellouts" to an "industry".
"You are far, far more likely to be killed by dozens of other industrial processes or devices (starting with the automobile - even just as a pedestrian or bicylist) than a nuclear plant."
You're more likely to be killed by high blood pressure than a grizzly bear, which is not a good argument for spending hundreds of millions of dollars to introduce grizzly bears into your neighborhood.
Of course if certain things go wrong with a nuke plant and you're in the wrong place the odds of it killing you are 1 in 1. I'm not aware of auto accidents that kill hundreds of thousands of people and cause generations of birth defects, so maybe auto accidents are not what to compare this to.
There's the "little" matter of toxic waste which will remain so for tens of thousands of years - waste we have no idea whatever what to do with. Of course if you aren't concerned about the future I can't make you.
Good point, but, dude - lay off the grizzlies. They're wonderful creatures. I don't care how many stupid people get hurt by them.
As for the toxic waste that results from nuclear power plants.... Well, where do you think that depleted uranium comes from? And, it's not entirely "depleted," either. No, there are things that can be made with that toxic waste. Not good things, but still, things. Which is another reason why nuclear power can be profitable - it yields by-products that can be used in weapons manufacturing.
Monbiot remains on the cutting edge of nuclear tech, reporting things that never make it into our discussions-- or protest pickets. I found his Feb 2 piece highly challenging. However, it still begs the question: why has it taken the nuclear engineers, researchers, and managers so long to realize this?
>p
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/02/02/nuclear-vs-nuclear-vs-nuclear/
Thanks, for the link. Good article.
The US left too often takes an unrealistic, absolutist categorical opposition to technical things, from fracking (unsuitable as it is currently done, but probably not intrinsically so) to nuclear, to geoengineering, to eating meat. But strangely, to digress, they give all the intrinsic social, health and environmental impacts of the automobile a free pass. There is nothing "leftist" about this anti-technology attitude. even the original Luddites weren't against improved looms - just being pressed into wage-labor at those looms.
They would get better traction if they took a broader, practical view pushed for increased safety and reduced environmental impact instead.
Oh, and as far as new nuclear technology, much of it was developed long ago. The reactor discussed by Monbiot is derived from the fast breeder reactor designs developed in the 1960's and 1970's. A demonstration liquid metal breeder ractor was proposed, then cancelled by Carter in the 1970's. There were safety and proliferation concerns with this particular design, but the categorical anti nuclear political pressures (in many other countries too, except France), perversely prevents much investment in safer and more efficient designs. It is as if after the Dehavilland Comet accidents, all jet airplanes were categorically declared dangerous, and the development of jet airliners and even aviation safety research halted.
Things went very, very wrong at Fukushima, yet there not a single death has been reported (except for due to the tsunami itself). A couple dozen died at Chernobyl. Otherwise, the small and disputed statistical increases in cancer rates - the worst human impacts seen from nuclear accidents so far, simply don't compare to Bhopal, Deepwater Horizon, Upper Big Branch, Aberfan, Buffalo Creek, refinery explosions, the US Steel coking plant near where, I live and other industrial emissions and accidents that kill lots of both employees and non employees near the plant.
The volume if nuclear waste waste is tiny - and can be stored in appropriate geologic features for sufficient time not to harm anyone - and future generations will likely want to mine the waste for the waste for reprocessing and additional energy production. All commercial spent fuel produced so far would fill a single football field 15 feet deep, and would be far tinier (with far shorter half lifes) if the full fuel cycle were utilized through reprocessing or breeder reactors. The hazards of nuclear does not compare to mant other industrial emissions into the environment.
The categorical opposition to nuclear energy (and now, even geoengineering) on the left is exactly as irrational, and will lead to the same catastrophic results as, the loony global warming denialism on the right. Niether are based on science.
"there not a single death has been reported"
Really?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/third-worker-dies-at-fukushima-nuclear-plant-2284049.html
... and of course you're abundantly sure that despite the reactors still being out of control - temperatures just spiked this week - that no one in Japan is ever gong to die from Fukushima? No birth defects? No fatalities from birth defects? Or you're finding "only" birth defects acceptable..?
Nuke people are still in denial that Chernobyl even killed many people. You read Monbiot's oily garbage on the issue and it's evident he's not to be trused. As far as him being Mr. Scientific:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/20/chernobyl-radiation-risk-dose-density
The official line is that Three Mile Island is that no one died there either.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/24/people-died-at-three-mile-island/
"The volume if nuclear waste waste is tiny ..."
You have a funny view of 'tiny.'
"Another central GNEP objective is to deal with the nation's growing nuclear-waste problem: The country's 103 nuclear reactors produce 2,200 tons of radioactive waste annually, and there's no good place to put it. Even if no new reactors are built, at current rates, the U.S. will have produced more than 94,600 tons of spent nuclear fuel by 2050, and the repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, America's lone long-term solution to radioactive-waste storage, will stow just 77,000 tons when it's slated to open in 2020."
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-04/nuking-nuclear-waste
The Fukushima deaths, based on the acute symptoms, had nothing to do with radiation exposure. They were heart attacks or other acute conditions, and I bet, statistically comparable to any other very large mixed age work force.
The supposed TMI cancer rate studies are highly disputed, to be polite. A simple visit to the Pennsylvania Dept of Health reports shows all cancer rates near or downwind of the plant (Dauphin, Lebanon, York, and Lancaster counties) to have always been the same or better than any county far form the TMI, and better in most categories than my industrial rust-belt county of Allegheny. As far as cancer, it seems living near a nuclear plant is safer than living near an old closed steel mill.
A bit of warming from 40C to 70C can hardly be called "out of control".
94,600 tons, over nearly a century, IS a tiny amount. A single large coal-burning power plant produces that much bottom-ash and fly ash in a couple months, and that much CO2 in a couple days. Some Wyoming strip-mines produce 2 1/2 times that much coal per day. And this amount could be greatly reduced (and measured in becquerels of radioactivity, nearly eliminated) through reprocessing and fast breeder reactors, but your are opposed to those too.
Facts are very stubborn things to a fanatic with an agenda - be it the Kochs and Exxon or Harvey Wasserman and the like.
"The Fukushima deaths, based on the acute symptoms, had nothing to do with radiation exposure."
They seem to have had a lot to do with heat, which was generated by the radioactive material. The Economist was reporting about how many workers were passing out at the site. The workers themselves in many cases have recognized that their work in trying to avert a wider disaster could well cost them their lives.
That you are discounting all future deaths from this accident while the reactors are still uncontrolled is a great example of the stunning denial of the nuke fans.
One might find this useful:
"Journey to Chernobyl: Encounters in a Radioactive Zone (1995 book)
“Skripka has data on increases in health problems. Among official adult victims, the death rate has increased 400 percent since 1987. Death by cancer is up 300 percent. Breast cancer is up 26 percent. General disease, up 500 percent. Problems in thyroids and other glands, up 400 percent. Respiratory disease, excluding cancer and tuberculosis, up 2,000 percent. Pneumonia, up 220 percent in adults, 260 percent in children. Allergy problems, up 41 percent in adults, 80 percent in children. Incidence of brain cancer, up 350 percent from 1988 to 1991. Genetic aberration, 10-13 times higher in contaminated areas.”
http://home.comcast.net/~glenncheney/Journey.htm"
"A simple visit to the Pennsylvania Dept of Health ..."
That would be a VERY "simple" visit indeed. The people "disputing" TMI health effects are employed by the nuke industry. Aside from the study in the link I posted which you've ignored, see:
"In December of 1979, Sternglass carried his conclusions much further. In a paper delivered to the Fifth World Congress of Engineers and Architects at Tel Aviv, he said that data from the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics showed that there were "242 [infant] deaths above the normally expected number in Pennsylvania and a total of 430 in the entire northeastern area of the United States," a rise of clear statistical significance. The linkage with TMI was clear because "large amounts of radioactive Iodine-131 were released from the plant" and the peak of infant mortality came within a matter of months thereafter. The greatest rises took place near the plant, with effects decreasing as a function of distance away from Harrisburg.
He backed up his case by analyzing the amount of radiation to which pregnant women downwind might have been subjected. Accepting minimum official estimates, Sternglass calculated that the doses of radioactive I-131 alone could have been on the order of one hundred millirems to individual pregnant women in the path of the plume. Such doses, he said, were clearly capable of causing rises in infant mortality.[16]
Using federal statistics, Sternglass then demonstrated that Pennsylvania's infant death rate in July was the highest of any state east of the Mississippi that month (except for Washington, D.C.), although Pennsylvania usually has one of the lowest rates in the nation. He went on to say that a similar rise was evident in infant-mortality rates in northern New England--where wind had carried fallout from the plant--as opposed to southern New England, where it had not.[17]
The hypothesis was confirmed by the fact that infant-death rates began to fall again after the accident. This, he said, was predictable because embryos in utero who were too small to have developed a thyroid, or who were conceived after the accident, would not have been affected by their mothers' ingestion of radioactive iodine.
But I-131 was not the only radioactive element released from TMI--nor were infants the only humans likely to be harmed. Strontium 90, cesium 137, noble gases, and other disease-causing isotopes may also have escaped. Overall, said Sternglass, increases in cancers, leukemia, and a wide range of other diseases were "likely to occur." The Three Mile Island accident, he predicted, "will turn out to have produced the largest death toll ever resulting from an industrial accident, with total deaths from all causes likely to reach many thousands over the next 10 to 20 years."[18]"
http://ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO14.html
"94,600 tons, over nearly a century, IS a tiny amount"
Of Tootsie Rolls yes, of radioactive waste not so much. Did you miss this bit where this is more than Yucca Mountain - which isn't even scheduled to open until 2020 - can hold?
The industry isn't even planning storage capacity to keep up with their production.
"it seems living near a nuclear plant is safer than living near an old closed steel mill"
And living near an old closed steel mill is safer than jumping into a volcano. So what? The question is, do people pay hundreds of millions of dollars to erect a "new" carcinogen-leaking mill in their communities?
"A bit of warming from 40C to 70C can hardly be called "out of control""
Oh?
"On Monday, the temperature in Reactor Number 2 reached 158 degrees Fahrenheit, well up from where it was only a few days ago. The temperature should have been stable in the reactor, and the utility says it doesn't know why there's been a spike.
[How very comforting that they don't know why! But you know it's harmless, eh?]
The plant also increased the rate of cooling water being injected to try and lower the temperature. Bringing that temperature down is crucial to prevent a state known by physicists as "re-criticality." This is one of the things nuclear workers fear the most.
Here's TIME.com blogger Eben Harrell description of criticality: "[T]he fissile material in a reactor core -- be it enriched uranium or plutonium -- undergoes a spontaneous chain reaction, releasing a flash of aurora-blue light and a surge of neutron radiation." Criticality happens within fractions of a second and is so unpredictable that it can kill workers without warning, he added.
But as the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University told Inajima, there are also enormous risks to the higher water injection rate. Inevitably more radioactive water will accumulate in the basements at the plant."
http://news.discovery.com/earth/fukushima-nuclear-reactor-temperature-spikes-120208.html
Nothin' to see here folks, move along, everything is doin' just fine...
Here's a question - if nuke power is so safe, why will no private insurer take the risk? Why is the taxpayer forced to insure privately owned nuke plants?
Stupid is what stupid does.
'You're more likely to be killed by high blood pressure..., etc.' It's a bad analogy. Monbiot was comparing coal power with nuclear power; both of these are sources of energy, which is something we need in order to live. No sane person would suggest introducing grizzlies into the neighborhood because people are more likely to be killed by high blood pressure, whereas it's perfectly rational to debate the merits of different sources of energy. Monbiot's argument was simply that at present, due to excessive corporate influence and political paralysis, we are restricted to a limited number of dirty, dangerous and inadequate forms of procuring energy and hence that, until we get our act together, we are forced to choose between a multiplicity of evils. For Monbiot, based on certain data, nuclear power constituted a lesser evil than, say, coal. The substance of his debate with Caldicott had largely to do with competing claims of empirical verification.
---"Turns out when Monbiot says liberals or progressives, he's talking about the major political parties, not groups like Common Dreams, Firedoglake and others."---
His remarks sure seem an accurate characterization of CD, Firedoglake, or other parts of the blogosphere-isolated US left to me.
"There are some very clever people in government..."
scroungers!
all of them.
living off the State.
RP4-PRZ
Ron Paul reminds me of Henry Gibson's character on the "Blues Brothers".
All the "progressives (that) by and watch..." Does this included the Occupy movement who seem to be getting their fair share of pepper spray?
Are there still people who call him a Muslim? Really??
He is about as Muslim as I am a Chimpanzee. Yes we are related. But I couldn't wouldn't do that as a Chimp. I love Chimpanzee's but I don't think that they have learned English like I have. I have a vocabulary of 400K words at least!
Drop the BS and Be honest!
Genetically you're about 99% chimp...
Of course Obama isn't a Muslim. The idiots who irritate me (and this is largely liberals) are the people who insist that he's "black."
The man is biracial and was raised in white family. Bob Marley was biracial and raised in a black family - I suppose that makes him "white"?
I am wondering when someone is going to put a billboard that says:
George Chithead Jr. where is the 12 Billion Taxpayers Dollars that you sent to Iraq and lost?????????
Very convincing evidence that Obama's official birth certificate is a fraud:
http://bit.ly/wYpOMg
What is probably Barack Obama's actual birth certificate (pdf):
http://bit.ly/wnGWqG
Monbiot feels we should no longer be polite to you.
Bugger off.
Why in hell does it matter? You impeach Obama and you get Joe. Mr. 1% stooge, banker and Mastercard himself.
Monbiot is really lumping two groups together.
The leadership of groups like the Democratic Party have no interest in progress, they only have interest in milking liberals for money and votes. They aren't dummies. They have no use for and no interest in strategies which do anything other than enrich themselves.
The people who keep giving the party money and votes are dummies. They refuse even to stand up for themselves, are we surprised they don't stand up for anyone else?
I don't know that politeness is the problem here. I see it as more of a problem of stupidity and corruption. There are very few people in the U.S. who are still capable of actual politeness.
WonderWoman: Could not agree more with your last sentence.
quotes from Huxley's 'brave new world'
- - - - - - - - - -
"Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able…" (2.75-7)
- - - - - - - - - -
"Bernard's physique was hardly better than that of the average Gamma. He stood eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height and was slender in proportion. Contact with members of the lower castes always reminded him painfully of this physical inadequacy. "I am I, and wish I wasn't"; his self-consciousness was acute and stressing. Each time he found himself looking on the level, instead of downward, into a Delta's face, he felt humiliated. Would the creature treat him with the respect due to his caste? The question haunted him. Not without reason. For Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons had been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority. Indeed, a faint hypnopædic prejudice in favour of size was universal." (4.2.3)
- - - - - - - - - -
...peace...
In the general understood use of words of the "political spectrum", If Conservatives or the Right represent stupid people better than the Liberal or the Left, maybe this explains a lot about a central conflict in human life.
But I wonder if the Right fights each other more than most of us or the general Left fight each other as we seem to wonder why the world's not going our way or my way.
We could stop a minute and think about this:
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
"But I wonder if the Right fights each other more than most of us or the general Left fight each other as we seem to wonder why the world's not going our way or my way."
Good question. Honestly I think the left is generally better informed and this leads to more options to debate. The right is pretty stupid and there's not much disagreement to be had on "I hate brown people", "taxes is bad" and "support the troops."
"Megadittoes, Rush, megadittoes..."
It is better to be polite than to be hateful, rude, stupid ,fearful and ignorant-or like the vast majority...
Liberals aren't all that interested in wasting their time debating and arguing with morons. Both parties might be corrupt, however the dumb asses still dominate the reactionary right. It's not a genralization that low intelligence and poor information thrives on the right. Just sit and watch a twenty four hour cycle of Fox news. That should clear it up for any doubters.