I want to be clear: I don’t think that the people leading the GOP are dumb. I think many of them are very, very smart. Ted Cruz, for instance; yeah, I think that he’s an awful person, but he graduated from one of the most prestigious law schools in the country–Yale, I think–and that’s not mean feat. People in the GOP have cognitive biases, as do people in the Democratic party, and as do I. Many of these cognitive biases are completely invisible to the person that has them; they weight information that confirms their beliefs more heavily than information that would disconfirm, when it’s a belief that is central to their identity. And again, that’s not just the GOP; that’s everyone.
Point is, I don’t think that simply saying they’re dumb is accurate. Yeah, the GOP voters might be dumb, but shit, so are a lot of Democratic voters. And I’m dumb in some ways too.
I want to be clear: I don’t think that the people leading the GOP are dumb. I think many of them are very, very smart. Ted Cruz, for instance; yeah, I think that he’s an awful person, but he graduated from one of the most prestigious law schools in the country–Yale, I think–and that’s not mean feat. People in the GOP have cognitive biases, as do people in the Democratic party, and as do I. Many of these cognitive biases are completely invisible to the person that has them; they weight information that confirms their beliefs more heavily than information that would disconfirm, when it’s a belief that is central to their identity. And again, that’s not just the GOP; that’s everyone.
Point is, I don’t think that simply saying they’re dumb is accurate. Yeah, the GOP voters might be dumb, but shit, so are a lot of Democratic voters. And I’m dumb in some ways too.