How the GOP weaponized ignorance -- and how "smart people acting like dopes" stay in power
Satirist Andy Borowitz on deliberate dumbness in America, and how it became central to the Republican brand
By DEAN OBEIDALLAH
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 30, 2022 6:00AM
SNIP————
You describe three stages of the "profiles in ignorance." The first one is ridicule. Tell us a little bit about ridicule.
SNIP—-
The three stages of ignorance are ridicule, acceptance and celebration. Ridicule came first. That was when dumb politicians had to pretend to be smart. It was still important, we thought, for our politicians to be knowledgeable. Then after that, we moved into the acceptance phase, where dumb politicians felt it was OK and even cool to appear dumb. That's George W. Bush, the guy you want to have a beer with. And now we're in a phase, which is really the most horrifying phase, where smart politicians pretend to be dumb because they think that wins votes. You have very well-educated guys, like Josh Hawley, the world class sprinter, and Ron DeSantis, who talk nonsense because that's what they think their voters want to hear.
But ridicule — let's start with ridicule. There was an era a long time ago, say 50 years ago, where we still expected politicians to know stuff. The Republicans discovered in the 1960s, after the Kennedy-Nixon debates, that it was important to have somebody who was good on TV. Because Kennedy cleaned Nixon's clock on TV. Not on the radio, because on the radio they both sounded knowledgeable. So the Republicans reverse-engineered this and thought, well, instead of finding a politician who's knowledgeable and making him good on TV, let's just find somebody who's really good on TV and then make it appear as though he knows stuff.
And that was the beginning of Ronald Reagan. They recruited Ronald Reagan, who was at that point a has-been TV host. I mean, he'd hosted the "General Electric Theater." They hired this guy, Stu Spencer, who was a really shrewd campaign manager. And he hired — this is not made up! — some UCLA psychologists to basically, "Clockwork Orange"-style, load Reagan with information.
https://www.salon.com/2022/09/30/how-the-weaponized-ignorance--and-how-smart-people-acting-like-dopes-stay-in-power/
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