Not about red vs. blue, it's about ignorance vs. intelligence

It is really hard to fight against violent and unreasonable people, but we have the power of our brains on our side. Many studies and polls show blue state folks have higher intelligence levels, so let's put that smart stuff to work for us.

HOW DO WE FIGHT STUPID AND SCARED PEOPLE WHO HAVE VIOLENT INTENTIONS AND RELIGIOUS FANATICISM? That is the question of the century, and when answered will win us back into power.

My husband, raised in the North East, has a Ph.D. and voted for Bush.

I was raised in Texas, only have a bachelors (working on the masters), and voted for Kerry.

I think it's more complex than 'ignorance vs. intelligence.'

Well, simply having a degree or advanced degrees doesn't essentially make someone intelligent.

I think lots of people are delusional and out of touch with reality. People are saying the job market is fine when it is not. People are saying Iraq is going well when it is not. People are saying that it does not matter if 350 tons of weapons are unaccounted for or that we are more protected by a man who let the country's biggest single terrorist attack happen.

Individuals might be intelligent but their are ignorant of the world around them. I think you will find that most people cannot think outside of the box. They cannot put themselves in another person's shoes. Republicans will say "people on welfare are lazy and don't want to do any better" or "dumb whores should know how to put a condom on." Many of these things that people take as common knowledge are not. These people think just because they know something everyone else should. I've had a white person tell me, "I don't believe racism is still in our society because no one has discriminated against me." But this same person's friends would say racist things but since he never endured what minorities have, he didn't register it.

I think there is a difference between book smart intelligence and intelligence.

a dichotomy between willful ignorance and intellectual curiosity. It's not only education that makes people smart -- I know several people with master's degrees or above who voted for the Naked Emperor, either because of their religious ideology, because they were 'scared of the terrists' or because they can't seem to internalize the fact that Bush* isn't a real, old-style paleoconservative, he's some kind of bizarre ideologue with an 'R' in front of his name.

But you're right that we need to figure out a way to turn around the country's long landslide into anti-intellectualism (we've been inching down the slope for twenty-five years) before they're burning many of us at the stake for owning books other than the bible, or for majoring in anything in college other than business. I don't know what the answer is, but I'm willing to take a stab at anything anybody else thinks of that might work.

You've verbalized the complexity I was feeling about the topic.

Willful ignorance is good.

Also inability to empathize with those who have had to struggle, also good.

Informed vs. Misinformed conjures the frame of a voter's responsibility to seek truth.

NGU.

though Mr. Nownow had no luck whatever getting through to the MIL that because she got all her news from Faux and the Cincinnati Enquirer, that she wasn't getting all the information. I think his insinuation that she was somehow getting the wrong information was met with defensiveness, too. As you noted farther down the thread, she's one of those people who's bright enough, though not particularly well-educated, but who only hears what she wants to hear.

Maybe incurious and curious? I think some people even dig in their heels at a word like 'misinformed.' But we're getting somewhere with the language, no doubt. There has to be a way, you're right, to counter people's stubbornness about remaining untutored on these things.

in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x83137

That's what one would call sour grapes perhaps? :)

Congratulations... you've just played right into the Radical RW's longtime script that "liberals are elitist intellectual snobs."

They're not stupid, STUPID. They're misinformed. Some of the smartest, most clueless people I know voted for Bush*. Explain that one!

NGU.

http://attenuation.net/files/iq.htm