How does the fact that Trump wouldn't be able to sit and focus long enough to complete one page, let alone the entire test, factor into your analysis of Trump's intelligence?

In other words, what score is a person expected to get if they Christmas-tree the whole test?

Coats on white innocence

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/537909/

Watching kids troll right wing idiots is pretty great.

Can you imagine the Lestat's of the world emerging from under their bridge to tut tut the world's 9 year old girls for making InfoWars racist idiots even ANGRIER? When will Democrats get their young children under control, for the sake of white male sensitives? Do you want Trump REELECTED?! I miss the Democratic Party that, when met with an InfoWars reporter, just politely answers their questions and treats them with the utmost respect due to a white male. Clearly white guys have no party now that the nation's prepubescents have been unleashed into the culture wars, and must become reactionary right wing Trump voters, as was fated once Democrats decided to have spawn that know swear words.

I think the debate is a little uninteresting so I don't want to wade into it too deeply, since I think we have plenty to judge Trump on regardless of our views of his natural intelligence.

But isn't this the intersection between fascism and intellectual pursuits? Part of the essence of fascism isn't that all fascists are half-wits and all anti-fascists enjoy rumination and deep thinking. What the fascist does is cordon off a very small niche for intellectual pursuits -- it has to be practical, used for self-advantage, it has to be active. All other forms of intellectual behaviors are decadent and impractical. Consider how much he loves talking about himself and all the brilliant deals he makes, and how he spots all the best underlings to do all his work for him, he doesn't need to know. He strolls in the room, makes a few decisions, delegates to nerds, and goes back to golf and being adored by the crowds and his model wife or whatever he wants you to think.

Like all things with Trump -- and I would argue we saw the same thing with George W. Bush -- why not consider it performance art? I made a bunch of posts over my 13 years here (sigh) that George W. Bush was, just like Trump, FAR more coherent and talked way less like a poor man's John Wayne earlier in his life. Even earlier in his political career. Even as governor. Then he gets with Karen Hughes and Karl Rove toting around lessons learned from 1992 that his dad lost for being a nerd, and by 2000, he sounds like a slow talkin cowboy. I argued it was performative even if only subconscious -- anti-intellectualism as art.

Back to Trump: This isn't 4d chess stuff. Just his natural inclination and tendencies. People with natural fascist impulses are REALLY good at this sort of thing. I think the "why would Trump continuously walk onto a baseball field and swing half heartedly at a few pitches" isn't that because he's truly a moron. Although sure, he might be really dumb (as I said, I find this a tedious debate). It isn't that he's lazy. Or that he doesn't care about baseball. It's that inside the fascist mind is the idea that power is in not knowing but deciding, there is power in walking into a room full of nerds and beating them without studying, there's power in disabusing the thoughtful person with your gut instincts. I think it's a very fine line between "doesn't care." That kind of art and style takes time to perfect. I think Trump has honestly tried to master it. Not because he's dumb, or lazy, or doesn't care, but because he's got that authoritarian impulse in him that he's wielding a form of power by embracing that schtick.

It's like those jeans with the pre-cut holes that look worn and dirty when you buy them in the store. That's Trump's brain and I think part of him wants to be seen like that a hipster with dirty jeans he just bought. It's a stylistic choice he does for effect.

There is something pure and honest in the unmitigated contempt of a young girl.

Business/frat boy school is anti-intellectual.

Sure. But you are just describing "being dumb". We don't have to all be DS. Calling someone dumb doesn't have to mean some unverifiable claim about how they perform on college standardized tests. Being the president and being too ****ing intellectually lazy to attempt to comprehend details of anything you talk about is perfectly fine to call "being dumb".

“It’s fine,” McConnell said of his relationship with Trump. “Everything’s fine.”

I guess every cloud does have a silver lining...

Why does some guy who doesn't even live in America venerate federal law anyways? There were a lot of people who nobly and heroically violated or resisted federal law to thwart the Fugitive Slave Act in the antebellum period. That law was evil. A law that deports long-term residents of the U.S. who came here as children is evil. People who violate that law are heroes and should be proud.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...88459301908480

Narrator : It wasn't fine.

In before ICE removes first person with DACA papers.

Makes you think. It's almost like their stated veneration of the law is not principled and in fact is being used to mask a perhaps darker, less savory motive for cheering on the deportation of brown skinned children.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...=.8457f9edbb73

they already tried once

Time-traveling Trump strikes again

Just caught up on last 1.5 days. AIDS

The First White President

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/537909/

Cuserounder, Chris V, and Dvaut1 all make good points about Trump. But unless senility has hit him pretty hard they don't add up to him being in the bottom 50% of Americans. At least not in things like IQ tests or chess puzzles. However the largest part of their underestimation is not fully getting what it means to be in the bottom 50%. I once was involved with a bet that showed that casino workers in about 1990 were 25% to know each of the following:

Who is the vice president?

Who is the leader of Cuba?

Who was president during the Civil War?

What is 9x6?

Who was the most recent president to be assassinated?

What state is Philadelphia in?

I swear. And I think these people were only barely below average.

Put another way, I don't think you guys realize that 95% of the people posting here are in the top 5% of Americans at the very least.

And I think Trump is, by our definition, both not smart and lazy. Some of you may remember that I persuaded Stupak to spend tens of thousands on ads challenging him to a million dollar heads up match at Trump The Game EVEN THOUGH TRUMP COULD HAVE INSTANTLY GOTTEN OUT OF THE TRAP IF HE KNEW HIS OWN GAME REQUIRED THREE PLAYERS. We took that small risk that he knew and, as expected, he didn't.

But remember that this all started when I wrote that his "we love our dreamers" proved his ultimate goal was for them to not be deported. And people tried to say that the statement meant nothing either because he was uttering a platitude without realizing the implications or, worse yet, didn't realize that "dreamers" were the same people as those affected by DACA. I said, cmon he is not that dumb, an an unsenile Trump clearly is not.

That Coates article is so good I can almost forgive him for taking a 2 year sabbatical from writing.

What is Coates 2+2 username?

Also, this.

Yeah read the Coates article on the way to work this morning and agree with everyone that it was awesome.

I thought he was only off for like 9 months or something? Wasn't the Obama interview/retrospective article he wrote end of last year?

David, has senility hit him pretty hard? This is a question with an answer.

Sklansky you enormously overrate how smart your peer group is.

I don't believe you.


lol no

Like, Chris hinted towards this, but more specifically... being President is an enormous boost to your displayed intelligence. Normal people have no writers, no messaging people, no advisors. He has an entire apparatus of state designed to make him sound smart and he absolutely does not understand the very basic elements of, e.g., health care policy.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...-ideology.html

This very astute Chait article both explains Trump and also explains why a certain demo of older white dudes want to stick up for Trump's intelligence(even if they disagree with him)