Well the issue with our times are things become obfuscated to such an extent through various forms of rhetoric and public relations that you can not think about

Well the issue with our times are things become obfuscated to such an extent through various forms of rhetoric and public relations that you can not think about them in any way without it being easy for the power structure to dismiss them as conspiracy theories. In fact it's impossible to even identify the power structure in any liberal democracy because it's manifold and partially fluid, but that does not mean it does not exist. In human societies and in liberal democracies there are always power structures, those structures are not necessarily power structures of a certain ideology or a group because as you said ideologies are abstractions... and individual belief is always synthetic and syncretic ... however that does not mean that power structures don't exist. Where IQ is often used as a tool to identify "gifted" students, it's rhetorically written off as a tool to help those in need. > You've alluded to the fact that everything can be distilled down to some power hierarchy. That's a tell-tale sign you've come down the ideological rabbit hole. No I have not, you are guilty of the exact same sort of thinking you are accusing me of instead you are preferring the status quo narrative which is that it's all milk and honey which it is not. In the end we have systems that people use to govern and perhaps they have some tolerance and fluidity but that does not mean that as an abstraction they do not exist as a certain set of ideas that are carried by a set of individuals who seek to protect those ideas and the power structures that go with those ideas... because their power depends on the preservation of those ideas and those systems. IQ is a part of that equation in that you only let intelligent people in your country and then you school them to determine who useful they are you to your system and you only allow those who are intelligent enough and predictable enough to have power in your system. Thereby you protect your power and your ensure the integrity of your system.