Science and Stupidity:When Opinon replaces facts

Every time he mounts a podium, Trump declares of Kamala Harris 'She is a low IQ person' or 'She has a low IQ'.

What does this mean? Has she taken a test? Or could it be -Kamala Harris is Black = Kamala Harris has a Low IQ.

This article looks at the background to IQ and its connection to theories of 'Race' and 'Intelligence' which in reality have only one mission: to prove that White Guys are the Best.

The video with Quinn Slobodian is also interesting and last just under a half hour.

"From the very beginning then, as IQ scores – then known as Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales – became more popular, racism was embedded and explicit. American psychologist Lewis Terman wrote that Mexicans, African-Americans and Native Americans had a mental “dullness” that he claimed was inherited from their “family stock”. Those with low IQ were branded “morons”, and low scores were frequently used as justification for forced sterilisation. At one stage, IQ tests were being deployed at Ellis Island to argue for limitations on immigration, particularly from southern and eastern Europe.".
Why is the American right obsessed with IQ? | The Independent

The dark truth behind the right’s IQ obsession | The New Statesman - YouTube

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Originally Posted by broncofan

I wonder if it's really a lack of trust in the government's ability or that they don't want anyone to have to make a sacrifice for anyone else (I realize that's why you're pointing out the inconsistency in their positions).

I think these are just people whose utopia is one where people who start with advantages can accumulate lots of wealth and never have to think about problems that require collective action. It's easier to say a disease is just like the flu if you know that if it isn't you might have to close businesses for months and rely on government subsidies to keep people above water. Easier to say that environmentalists are hysterics for wanting us to pay a tax proportional to our emissions of certain greenhouse gases than to slightly inconvenience a large corporation by having them pay that tax.

They say government is weak or impotent and then they fill positions in our regulatory agencies with weak and unqualified people who don't believe in the missions of those agencies. As you point out the only government private sector cooperation they like is a hand off to someone super wealthy for what sounds like an implausible vanity project dreamed up by an idiot with too much money like Musk. They know federal funding can accomplish its objectives whenever they want something, like a war that makes lots of loud noises and leaves hundreds of thousands dead.

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If one doesn't trust one's federal government.....then why would one vote in a way to give federal government more power?

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Originally Posted by MrFanti

If one doesn't trust one's federal government.....then why would one vote in a way to give federal government more power?

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May I suggest that the bigger problem is not the Federal Govt, the branch of US Govt that various bodies allied to the Republican Party and Christian Nationalist groups like Turning Point USA and Elon Musk seek to reduce to barely ceremonial functions -but that it is now State Government that should be the focus of your concern. Trump's Supreme Court Justices have on more than one occasion sent important political decisions 'back' to the State -Abortion being the most prominent right now.

This has given States, like Texas, enormous power of life and death that neither the Supreme Court nor the Presidency nor Congress can change -powers that mean health care professionals are terrified of giving professional advice and/or treatment to pregnant women in emotional and physical distress, in case they end up in Prison.

The science of health care has become a weapon in the hands of Christian Nationalist who have ero interest in the health of citizens in Texas, all decisions must be made in accordance with the Ten Commandments (but not, it seems, The Lord's Prayer). If it was the Quran there would be no end of protest.

As a young Texan, what are you doing to change the politics of the State in which you live, so that all citizens are treated equally, and with the elementary decency that they deserve?

And yet more from the Republican Party's village idiot, as if there was no evidence of the benefits of Fluoride in water. Hard to believe that a country that has produced some of history's most outstanding scientists has sunk to this level of barbarism.

Try this instead

Explained: what is fluoride and why is it in drinking water? | US elections 2024 | The Guardian#