House of Eratosthenes

I could very well be imagining it, but it seems like lately there is an uptick in interest in the magnitude of our 44th President’s intellectual horsepower. Those asking the question are taking great pains to put up an appearance of being non-partisan…which I find to be snort-worthy.

On the question they’re asking, I cannot bring myself to be quite so opinionated one way or the other. I find I’m lacking in three key pieces of information:

Obama Giving a Speech One. Evidence establishing a limit. He certainly did look like a dope when He said “We can’t drill our way to lower gas prices” and we ended up more-or-less doing exactly that. But like any other ensuing events that run against His stated expectations, the question arises about whether Obama really is a fool or whether He was merely speaking to fools. It is quite a conundrum, and I believe you’re going to see it arise to confront in any situation in which PrezBO made a losing call. The one obvious exception that comes to mind is Hillary’s election loss last November; we can believe with some measure of confidence Obama truly wanted her to win, and truly thought she would. But, that fooled just about everyone. Myself included. So my verdict on the known-cap against His intelligence, until more information comes along, is that there isn’t one. Obama could very well be smarter than Einstein was on his best day; godlike. We have nothing that definitively establishes otherwise, no rock-solid proof of some judgment call, or logical problem, that He gave an honest effort to solve before coming up short on it.

Two. Evidence establishing a baseline. Do we have proof that He is at least a certain level of smart? His fans, still struggling to keep up their patina of non-partisanship, point to the fact that He was a college professor and His obviously superior speaking ability. Mmmm…I just don’t know. The “professor” title remains controversial, and as for the speaking ability, it actually makes a negative impression on me and not just because of the differences in our politics. From dealing with sales-n-marketing types as a software developer, I’m leery of this. A strong personal favoritism toward the activity of giving speeches, which let’s face it, that’s what Obama’s “speaking ability” is — doesn’t strongly correlate with an ability to recognize reality. And without that, how does one learn? Also, would these fans extend the hero-worship to a pale-white, male, member of Donald Trump’s inner circle who spoke exactly the same way as Obama? All the mispronunciations, “corpsman,” “Pakistan,” “ISIL,” the fifty-seven-states, all the “uhs.” And if we could indulge me in cutting through yet another layer of fossilized fecal material — the last item on that list, is a gimmick. Isn’t it just obvious? Listen to Barack Obama say “uh,” pay attention to what comes afterwards, and seriously ask yourself if, in His shoes, you really need some extra thought to come up with that. Again we have to wonder if Obama’s a fool, or is merely speaking to fools. It’s sure not a sign of intelligence, in any case. Making an “uh” sound? I can do that if you ask if I’m fully awake in the morning, before I get coffee.

Three. Evidence for relevance. Out of the three, this one perplexes me the most. Really. I struggle to come up with a scenario, any one whatsoever within the realm of the possible from this moment forward, under which we should care about whether Barack Obama is a lightworker genius, a drooling idiot, or anything in between. Why ask in 2017? In 2008 I could see it. But now?

My point of reference would be his ability to speak extemporaneously: he can”t. Whenever he went off teleprompter he descended into confusion. I don’t think his intelligence is much above the white average.
- Bob Sykes | 09/25/2017 @ 04:35
I’ve often thought if we got really specific about it, there would follow an embarrassing exposure of The Left’s soft bigotry of low expectations against children & adults in America with dark skin. It’s almost as if, to the metropolitan GuiltyWhiteLiberal, the absolute pinnacle of African American achievement in pre-Obama days was rhyming rap music, or the average monologue in some overpriced cable teevee miniseries written, directed and produced to recruit newer generations to thug life.

He’s one of them!! And yet He used correct grammar!! You could type what He said into Microsoft Word and not get any underlines!! This is incredible!!

I know, I could be wrong…no doubt they’d insist that I am. What else could they do. But they never offer a solid example of Obama’s speaking ability, along with a rigid definition of how this manifests intelligence, that would actually prove me wrong. So the perception endures that Obama impressed, because not much was expected.
- mkfreeberg | 09/25/2017 @ 06:11
The Left is trying to figure out where everything went wrong in 2016. Utopia was supposed to be here already; if it didn’t manifest in 2008, it was surely supposed to by 2012. That’s the thing about Our Betters, the Liberals — they really believe their own bullshit. So when the seas failed to stop rising and the planet didn’t begin to heal because Obama gave a few speeches, they were befuddled. When He made all of Bush’s mistakes, but bigger and faster, they were bewildered. And when Herself wasn’t simply appointed His successor, they were bewildered and befuddled, then furious. And now they’re starting to suspect they were sold a lemon all along….

One of the epigraphs in Dune said something to the effect of, “once a man is convinced he is one thing, he will die rather than become the opposite.” Well, Liberals are convinced they are very, very, VERY smart. And yet, they keep falling for ploys that wouldn’t fool a retard. Which, to normal people, would suggest they’re not as smart as they think they are…. but that can’t be it, because they’ve arranged their entire lives around being scintillating superintelligences. Questioning Obama’s intelligence, then, is the first step towards a rationalization: Obama was a brilliant con man. As Cooder said when he got outwitted by Homer Simpson: “We was beaten by the best, son.” “But he didn’t seem that…” “We was beaten by the BEST.“
- Severian | 09/25/2017 @ 16:55
It is said that the one thing liberals cannot stand to have happen, even as an intellectual exercise, is to line up everybody in existence (or at least, everyone falling under the purview of their sweeping edicts) in a line sequenced by intelligence.

For the liberal himself, within this line, would be way off toward the far end; dazzlingly intelligent. Closer to that far end than he, would be all those who agree with him about things, and in addition have managed to get themselves elected or appointed to positions where they can do something about it. This is all in the top 1% or 2%, maybe 5%, of the population…it’s up to the liberal to say with any precision, but it’s something like that.

And yet — the gap just shy of that, must be enormous, without a single soul in it anywhere…for the next dumber guy is a nose-picking red-state troglodyte who shouldn’t have been able to get out of bed & get dressed…
- mkfreeberg | 09/25/2017 @ 17:18
Nicely put. And it’s the weirdest thing about Liberals. It’s so bizarre that I’m amazed this isn’t the #1 thing people talk about re: Our Betters — the gap between the Smart and the Dumb is so vast, the criteria for Smartness so vague, and the jump so easy to make (just vote Democrat!) that it’s insane. Which is maybe why it succeeds — like most Liberal “ideas,” it’s so breathtakingly stupid that you can’t take it seriously enough to refute it, so nobody does…. (see also the Fundamental Paradox of Internet Liberalism: “You’re too dumb to understand my argument, because if you could understand it, you’d be a Liberal. And yet here I am, arguing with you anyway”).

This is why they always have to find a shadowy figure to blame their losses on. George W. Bush constantly outwitted them, but that can’t be right, so it must be Dick Cheney…. about whom, conveniently, not much is known since he spends all his time in the Undisclosed Location. Had W. keeled over and Cheney assumed the presidency, then he’d be the stupid one, and they would have needed someone else to fill the “shadowy evil genius” role (how such a person can be both a genius and a conservative is unexplained, because of course all conservatives are Dumb, but hey, if they were capable of spotting obvious contradictions they wouldn’t be Liberals).

They’ve already gone all-in on Obama as sort-of-god, so saying he’s smarter than them won’t be a problem (as you say, for Liberals, the very Smartest ones manage to get themselves elected to something, which proves how Smart they are). Noticing that Obama often talks out of both sides of his mouth, and often sounds like a doofus doing it, is the first step in admitting they been had. But not really, because of course His heart was in the right place. He was a tragic hero brought down by his feet of clay, kinda like Bill Clinton — ultimately He was too good for this poor soiled world, that got mud on his wings and dragged him down…

(Along those lines, $100 says they remake All the King’s Men yet again sometime soon, with the Huey Long character played by whoever the acceptably non-scary young black actor is now. Will Smith is getting a bit long in the tooth, so any rapper who wants to change his image should start taking Morgan Freeman lessons).
- Severian | 09/26/2017 @ 04:25

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Barack Obama’s IntelligenceSunday, September 24th, 2017

Barack Obama’s Intelligence
Sunday, September 24th, 2017