House of Eratosthenes

Over a month’s worth of dust on it, from SodaHead. But it really oughta stir the puddin’ because the control for the experiment is our current and 44th President.

Bush or Obama? Who’s smarter? SodaHead points to the village-idiot-from-Crawford, and they have ten decent arguments to back it up.

2. Bush identified and confronted evil

There was something very refreshing in George W. Bush’s Reaganesque interpretation of the world in terms of good and evil. In contrast, Barack Obama has viewed the globe largely in shades of grey, with a reluctance to describe who exactly America’s enemies are, from North Korea and Iran to Islamist terrorists.
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6. Bush cultivated key allies

Granted, Bush was hardly the most popular leader the US has ever had in Europe. But he did invest a great deal of time and effort in cultivating a strong personal relationship with several key European leaders, including Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi. President Obama has largely ignored building alliances with European heads of state, and seems indifferent towards the transatlantic alliance. His administration has placed far greater emphasis upon backing the rise of a European superstate, than it has on strengthening ties wit close allies.
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10. Bush did not send mixed messages in the face of the enemy

A constant theme of Barack Obama’s speeches has been to describe the war in Iraq as a “war of choice”, underscoring his own intense opposition to the war, hardly a message of support for the more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers still stationed in the country. He also spent months dithering over whether to send additional US forces to the war in Afghanistan, and when he finally did make an announcement of an extra 30,000 troops it was tempered by the simultaneous declaration of an exit strategy, and a warning that America could not wage war against the Taliban indefinitely. This was hardly a display of Churchillian grit by the Commander-in-Chief. In contrast, President Bush never failed to give his soldiers the full, unequivocal backing they deserved, and always spoke in terms of achieving victory, instead of artificial timetables that hand the initiative to the enemy.

This is one of the primary Architects-versus-Medicators questions: Do we even want our leaders to be vastly smarter than we are? Can’t remember where I saw it, but some very passionate Obama-backer was saying Hell Yes! I don’t want my leaders to be like me, I want them to be better than me!

Out here in the real world, we see a lot of problems with that.

If the leader is smarter than I am, and this is to present us with some kind of advantage, that would necessarily mean sooner or later there is a decision coming up on which the leader would make the right choice and I would make the wrong one. Now, perhaps what follows next doesn’t apply to those who lust after these “smart leaders,” but — my fate, every single day, depends on my ability to make wise decisions. If I can be counted on to make dumbass decisions that actually destroy things, then dammit I want to know more about that.

Not so with this other batch of human. They want Obama because He’s smarter than they are, He can be counted on to make the right choice where they’d just bollux it up, and that pleases them just fine. Put him in charge, and they’ll go back to living their humble little lives. One cannot help but wonder what kind of life they’re going back to living.

Also: How come when it comes to voting for our next President, suddenly they’re able to decide things just fine? They don’t know what smartz would do, but goldang it they know it when they see it?

What we have here, I think, is a confusion between wisdom and irony. If you listen to these people prattle on for a good long time, you’ll notice something rather shocking: The “smart” decision, with regard to each and every question that comes up, is never, ever, ever ever ever the simple one.

Global warming is more dangerous than radical Islamic terrorism.

Queen Latifah is sexier than Beyonce Knowles.

To keep from going broke, we’ve got to spend more money.

A real man is in touch with his feelings and isn’t afraid to cry.

If there is a problem, the best thing to do is to make sure no one can ever make a profit producing a solution to it.

If innocent people could be harmed by a terrorist act, and it could be prevented by bringing physical pain to an evil man, decent people will make sure this doesn’t happen and let the innocent people go ahead and die.

If you’re a baby and you’ve crossed that Magical Vaginal Finish Line you’ve got rights to womb-to-tomb health care, a living wage whether you’re competent or not, a vote in all our elections whether you have common sense or not — but if you’re not there yet, then you don’t even exist as a person. It’s a matter of inches, and that’s just the way it is!

This is the part that scares the hell out of me. These people are not capable of recognizing or responding to the situation in which the simple, common sense answer is the right one. Right, as in — go ahead, put on a magical thinking cap and boost your IQ by a thousand points, you’ll still decide it the same way. This doesn’t work for them, because in their world you have to show off your smarts by deciding the opposite.

Therefore, when this happens they will consistently demand the choice that is made by these smart people, is the wrong one.

And that is not an occasional happenstance. The common-sense answer being the right one…common-sense, recognized by someone with an I.Q. of 100, not a single point greater…is a situation that arises roughly 99% of the time. Tall tippy glass on the edge of the table? Move it toward the center. House on fire? Put it out. Cops are out in force today? Slow the hell down. Importing too much oil? Drill baby drill.

Fact is, if you show me ten issues that arouse all this contention in our national discourse, eight or nine of them are going to be things that shouldn’t reveal any disagreement at all. They are made that way because Medicators continue to feel this need to inject new variables into relatively simple situations, variables that make it “pseudosmart” to go the other way. None of them make so much as a lick of sense. This is how & why Eric Holder decided to try that scumbag in civilian court in New York City. He wasn’t able to defend the decision when called upon to do so. It was just that extra-variable-thing; he was used to hanging out with a crowd that would sing hosannahs to his superior intellect, if he’d just make a decision opposed to common sense. He’s not a lone voice in the wilderness here. Roughly half our country’s population is exactly like this.

As your I.Q. increases, every time it passes somewhere between thirty or fifty points, your decisions should flip around to the opposite so you can demonstrate that it’s happening. Even with regard to simple things, things in which we all inwardly know the answer shouldn’t be changing, like third grade math.

[…] Freeberg, in The House of Eratosthenes, draws attention to yet another thread in the same hangman’s noose: What we have here, I […]
- Smart People « ricketyclick | 02/28/2010 @ 13:50

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Was Bush a Smarter World Leader?Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Was Bush a Smarter World Leader?
Sunday, February 28th, 2010