Smart Stupid America

"He is the archetypal businessman – a deal maker without peer."

America is now comprised of mostly stupid and smart-stupid people. Gone are the days of the well-rounded citizen. We are an overworked, under-educated people. The trend doesn't look good.

We should expect the dumb to succumb to Trump-baiting. But how do you explain the "college-educated" Trump supporters? Aren't they supposed to know better?

Apparently not, though it's not always their fault. To succeed in our highly technical and competitive world, it is becoming increasingly necessary to push ourselves harder and harder in our careers, often to the detriment of our families, but especially to our role as citizen. In this environment, reading history, philosophy and keeping up with the latest legislative proposals, community events, etc., becomes nearly impossible. 

But we should also remember that being "college-educated" doesn't mean one has a clue about public policy. Just ask your Trump-supporting friends what degree they earned. If they're making a good living, it's likely they don't have a degree in political science!

In addition, ask your "college-educated" friends what they do with their time when they're not working. An engineer, for example, who spends his non-work hours with family & friends, in Church services, watching TV or playing fantasy football, is likely to be as ignorant about public policy as the ignoramus. 

And they'll often even be forgiving to their ignorant politician. When I asked one of my ex-Trump supporter friends who has since turned his allegiance to Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson about how he felt when Johnson didn't know anything about the besieged city of Aleppo, he replied, "Who cares? I don't know where Aleppo is either." And, of course he doesn't. Who has time? 

So Trump support can be explained by the fact that many people are just plain stupid, that many people are desperately trying to succeed in our challenging economy and have no time to study up, or by the fact that many people who should know better remain willfully ignorant, being otherwise occupied with the plethora of time-wasting activities our wonderful capitalist system has spawned. 

So how do we escape a cycle that most of us don't realize is happening because we are either the stupid ones or the smart-stupid ones who can be so easily fooled by a shrewd populist? 

I heard one gem: "Maybe if we elect Trump, he'll be such a disaster, we'll learn our lesson and the next candidate we elect will be a mainstream moderate...." Haven't we been there already?

Smart-Stupid Ben Carson

Presidential candidate Ben Carson epitomizes the "smart-stupid" person, a term I first heard used by Bill Maher to describe people who are extremely knowledgeable about something or very skilled at a specific task, but who are otherwise morons. And no one should be surprised that brilliant neurosurgeon Ben Carson is ignorant about public policy and is ill-equipped to speak on most political topics. In an extensive interview given in 2010, Ben Carson said that he was "always interested in medicine" and it was the "only thing" that interested him in his youth. He became the youngest ever chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins at 33. At one point, Ben Carson was performing over 500 surgeries a year. This was, according to him, "too much" and he had no time for "outside activities." At the time of the interview in 2010, he had slowed down to a mere "300 to 315" a year. He just officially retired in 2013, exactly 36 years after he began at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Carson's career alone explains his ignorance about all things he would be expected to know as President. He had no time by his own admission to do anything other than operate on brains.

The belief among Carson supporters must be that, being a super smart brain surgeon, he will just study hard and quickly catch up. But the evidence indicates otherwise. He's sounding as uncertain and uninformed now as he was in 2010. Maybe Ben Carson's brain is only programmed for being a brain surgeon. Maybe his brain is just not wired to be an expressive politician or a policy wonk. Maybe we should ask Ben... Oh that's right, he's a surgeon and this question belongs to an entirely different subfield of neuroscience. It would be malpractice for him to answer questions on topics outside his field of expertise.... 

Just as it would be malpractice on behalf of the American voter to support such a glaringly unqualified candidate for such an awesome job as the U.S. Presidency. The American President must be well-versed in military, diplomatic, economic and legal affairs, at a minimum. According to Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution:

The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states...

He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States,...

Yes, he has help from the Senate, presumably. But otherwise the U.S. Presidency is a pretty awesome job. The U.S. President must command the military and oversee state militias, make treaties and appoint ambassadors AND judges. 

A U.S. President decides with whom we fight and with whom we make peace.  A Presidential candidate's resume is not burnished by successful separation of conjoined twins. The Presidential job descriptions specifically calls for someone Ben Carson is not. Ben Carson barely understands rudimentary conservative philosophy. We should expect more from a candidate for President, regardless of party affiliation.