5 ms·

It's the fault of the American people for voting these morons into office.

by lostcolony 7y ago

Ididntdothis 7y ago
It’s not like the system is giving them much choice.
- staplers 7y ago
  The system has choices, it's that people are herd animals and will outcast and ridicule anyone who doesn't fall into "a side".
kauffj 7y ago
Go one level deeper: it's an inevitable outcome of combining democracy and normally distributed human ability
- twomoretime 7y ago
  This, so much. The root of all of these issues is a drastic overestimation of the average persons cognitive ability. To use IQ as a proxy, the mean (100) is shockingly incompetent and to paraphrase a famous comedian, half of us are below that average. There was a time when merit tended to bubble up into positions of authority but that has been increasingly untrue for decades, for a host of reasons that all point to a rotting western culture.
  - majormajor 7y ago
    > There was a time when merit tended to bubble up into positions of authority but that has been increasingly untrue for decades, for a host of reasons that all point to a rotting western culture. When, exactly?
    - twomoretime 7y ago
      Before diversity and inclusion drives skewed hiring toward genitals and skin color as opposed to merit. Before we started throwing billions of dollars at our worst performers, and lowering standards across all school districts, in a failed attempt to bring our lowest up, at the measurable cost of bringing our top performers down. What proportion of the population do you think actually contributes to the progression of society? Scientists, engineers, competent politicians, doctors, policymakers...maybe the top 10% are capable of being and carrying out the orders of visionaries? In the West we've gradually reallocated our resources towards the needy, and now we reap the reward of decades of neglect for our top performers as we graduate 18 year old "adults" who are barely equipped to even live alone. Not to mention how pitifully we are outcompeted on the world stage - have you been to a college career fair lately? It says something about our society that the majority of students, at top tier schools, are foreigners. This is what happens when "nationalism" and "individualism" are turned into dirty words by decades of propaganda. Either this war on corona turns things around and brings us out desperately needed Pattons and Churchills, or this truly is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.
      - Daishiman 7y ago
        I'm sorry but the people who most complain about diversity and inclusion being the downfall of our civilization have not exactly been shown to be the brightest minds in this whole thing. I don't see top performers being actually concerned by this at all. On the contrary, top performers seem to be fairly concerned about how traditionally exclusionary measures have impeded a lot of talent from being developed.
        twomoretime 7y ago
        >I'm sorry but the people who most complain about diversity and inclusion being the downfall of our civilization have not exactly been shown to be the brightest minds in this whole thing. That's because one side is taboo and culturally suppressed. This thread may get me banned from HN, for example. But by definition the push for diversity, which started in academia, bled into government, and has most recently been taking over the corporate world, selects for characteristics (race and gender) which are not correlated with merit. Ignoring the fact that the entire idea rests on an unsupportable basis (a conflation of equality of opportunity with equality of representation/outcome), it's a theoretical mechanism by which we can explain the decline of performance across every corporate, political, and academic sector. We spend more per capital on school children than any other country in the world, by the way, so it isn't a question of funding. And the issues seem to exist in all states, regardless of government party, so it isn't likely a strictly political issue. Clearly there is some deep cultural problem at hand and the people making policy have been leaning left for years in all sectors. Including media outside of Fox news. It fits.
ardy42 7y ago
> It's the fault of the American people for voting these morons into office. Eh, not so much. Americans are forced to express their complex ideas and preferences through a system that consists of a handful of essentially binary choices. And most voters probably don't even strongly approve of any of the choices they're given.
- lostcolony 7y ago
  Speaking as an American, I'm aware. But the morons wrt this particular crisis...are universally from one of those two choices. You can certainly find fault with the other choice, but they don't nearly have the "ignore facts, ignore what anyone other than I tell you, ignore even the evidence of your own eyes" message.
  - ardy42 7y ago
    I totally hear you, but elections aren't just about selecting leaders with competence and honesty. They're also about expressing preferences on moral issues, too. A lot of voters are willing to set aside the former and vote on the latter, because in their minds, they aren't given the choice to do both. I also think that lack of choice has a really corrosive effect on voters who find themselves in that situation.
    - lostcolony 7y ago
      Then this will be an interesting moral lesson for them. If they choose to actually learn it.
      - ardy42 7y ago
        > Then this will be an interesting moral lesson for them. If they choose to actually learn it. For them, and us. Our agency contributes to this problem as well as theirs.
        lostcolony 7y ago
throwanem 7y ago
If it's the fault of anyone, it's the fault of decades of clever sociopaths realizing that humans will swallow simple lies more easily than complex truths, and exploiting the trait to gain power. That's a complex truth, and I don't like it either.
Jasper_ 7y ago
But the American people didn't vote these morons into office. Trump lost the popular vote, but got over 80 more electoral college votes. One party consistently uses a combination of sleight of hand and rounding errors to exploit the faults of the voting system in their favor.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Both parties use rounding errors and sleight of hand to their favor, it just tends to work out better for Republicans on a national scale.
- krapp 7y ago
  > Trump lost the popular vote, but got over 80 more electoral college votes. Yes, and I'm as vehemently anti-Trump as they come, especially lately, but let's be real - that's the system by which the people vote these morons into office, and always has been. The popular vote has never mattered, except rhetorically. Is this going to be the season when Americans actually care enough to change it? Probably not.
  - panzagl 7y ago
    And lets be real- the areas hardest hit have Democrat governors. No one was prepared for this.
- PenguinCoder 7y ago
  Every week I am surprised at seeing the support Trump STILL has. FFS, his approval rating is going up! Who in their right mind still approves of this moron and his handling of this crisis. Oh yeah, the old boomers STILL running around in MAGA hats. Some American people obviously voted for these morons in office and I still can't believe it. Lying , cheating, scamming, and quid pro quo wasn't enough to impeach a sitting president, and shows there is no justice left for the rich and powerful.
  - mnm1 7y ago
    Don't you know? The coronavirus is a "hoax." It's perpetrated by the libs. /s Of course the people who would believe something like that would still vote for this moron. They are not exactly intellectually gifted themselves. Nor do they have values or principles to speak of, choosing to elect someone who is likely a serial rapist, among other crimes, as president.
panzagl 7y ago
No, the morons will just blame the president.

It's the fault of the American people for voting these morons into office.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

It’s not like the system is giving them much choice.

staplers 7y ago
The system has choices, it's that people are herd animals and will outcast and ridicule anyone who doesn't fall into "a side".

kauffj 7y ago

Go one level deeper: it's an inevitable outcome of combining democracy and normally distributed human ability

twomoretime 7y ago
This, so much. The root of all of these issues is a drastic overestimation of the average persons cognitive ability. To use IQ as a proxy, the mean (100) is shockingly incompetent and to paraphrase a famous comedian, half of us are below that average. There was a time when merit tended to bubble up into positions of authority but that has been increasingly untrue for decades, for a host of reasons that all point to a rotting western culture.
- majormajor 7y ago
  > There was a time when merit tended to bubble up into positions of authority but that has been increasingly untrue for decades, for a host of reasons that all point to a rotting western culture. When, exactly?
  - twomoretime 7y ago
    Before diversity and inclusion drives skewed hiring toward genitals and skin color as opposed to merit. Before we started throwing billions of dollars at our worst performers, and lowering standards across all school districts, in a failed attempt to bring our lowest up, at the measurable cost of bringing our top performers down. What proportion of the population do you think actually contributes to the progression of society? Scientists, engineers, competent politicians, doctors, policymakers...maybe the top 10% are capable of being and carrying out the orders of visionaries? In the West we've gradually reallocated our resources towards the needy, and now we reap the reward of decades of neglect for our top performers as we graduate 18 year old "adults" who are barely equipped to even live alone. Not to mention how pitifully we are outcompeted on the world stage - have you been to a college career fair lately? It says something about our society that the majority of students, at top tier schools, are foreigners. This is what happens when "nationalism" and "individualism" are turned into dirty words by decades of propaganda. Either this war on corona turns things around and brings us out desperately needed Pattons and Churchills, or this truly is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.
    - Daishiman 7y ago
      I'm sorry but the people who most complain about diversity and inclusion being the downfall of our civilization have not exactly been shown to be the brightest minds in this whole thing. I don't see top performers being actually concerned by this at all. On the contrary, top performers seem to be fairly concerned about how traditionally exclusionary measures have impeded a lot of talent from being developed.
      - twomoretime 7y ago
        >I'm sorry but the people who most complain about diversity and inclusion being the downfall of our civilization have not exactly been shown to be the brightest minds in this whole thing. That's because one side is taboo and culturally suppressed. This thread may get me banned from HN, for example. But by definition the push for diversity, which started in academia, bled into government, and has most recently been taking over the corporate world, selects for characteristics (race and gender) which are not correlated with merit. Ignoring the fact that the entire idea rests on an unsupportable basis (a conflation of equality of opportunity with equality of representation/outcome), it's a theoretical mechanism by which we can explain the decline of performance across every corporate, political, and academic sector. We spend more per capital on school children than any other country in the world, by the way, so it isn't a question of funding. And the issues seem to exist in all states, regardless of government party, so it isn't likely a strictly political issue. Clearly there is some deep cultural problem at hand and the people making policy have been leaning left for years in all sectors. Including media outside of Fox news. It fits.

ardy42 7y ago

> It's the fault of the American people for voting these morons into office. Eh, not so much. Americans are forced to express their complex ideas and preferences through a system that consists of a handful of essentially binary choices. And most voters probably don't even strongly approve of any of the choices they're given.

lostcolony 7y ago
Speaking as an American, I'm aware. But the morons wrt this particular crisis...are universally from one of those two choices. You can certainly find fault with the other choice, but they don't nearly have the "ignore facts, ignore what anyone other than I tell you, ignore even the evidence of your own eyes" message.
- ardy42 7y ago
  I totally hear you, but elections aren't just about selecting leaders with competence and honesty. They're also about expressing preferences on moral issues, too. A lot of voters are willing to set aside the former and vote on the latter, because in their minds, they aren't given the choice to do both. I also think that lack of choice has a really corrosive effect on voters who find themselves in that situation.
  - lostcolony 7y ago
    Then this will be an interesting moral lesson for them. If they choose to actually learn it.
    - ardy42 7y ago
      > Then this will be an interesting moral lesson for them. If they choose to actually learn it. For them, and us. Our agency contributes to this problem as well as theirs.
      - lostcolony 7y ago

throwanem 7y ago

If it's the fault of anyone, it's the fault of decades of clever sociopaths realizing that humans will swallow simple lies more easily than complex truths, and exploiting the trait to gain power. That's a complex truth, and I don't like it either.

Jasper_ 7y ago

But the American people didn't vote these morons into office. Trump lost the popular vote, but got over 80 more electoral college votes. One party consistently uses a combination of sleight of hand and rounding errors to exploit the faults of the voting system in their favor.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Both parties use rounding errors and sleight of hand to their favor, it just tends to work out better for Republicans on a national scale.
krapp 7y ago
> Trump lost the popular vote, but got over 80 more electoral college votes. Yes, and I'm as vehemently anti-Trump as they come, especially lately, but let's be real - that's the system by which the people vote these morons into office, and always has been. The popular vote has never mattered, except rhetorically. Is this going to be the season when Americans actually care enough to change it? Probably not.
- panzagl 7y ago
  And lets be real- the areas hardest hit have Democrat governors. No one was prepared for this.
PenguinCoder 7y ago
Every week I am surprised at seeing the support Trump STILL has. FFS, his approval rating is going up! Who in their right mind still approves of this moron and his handling of this crisis. Oh yeah, the old boomers STILL running around in MAGA hats. Some American people obviously voted for these morons in office and I still can't believe it. Lying , cheating, scamming, and quid pro quo wasn't enough to impeach a sitting president, and shows there is no justice left for the rich and powerful.
- mnm1 7y ago
  Don't you know? The coronavirus is a "hoax." It's perpetrated by the libs. /s Of course the people who would believe something like that would still vote for this moron. They are not exactly intellectually gifted themselves. Nor do they have values or principles to speak of, choosing to elect someone who is likely a serial rapist, among other crimes, as president.

panzagl 7y ago

No, the morons will just blame the president.