Are there people more intelligent than you who hold opposing political views in an honest way?

[multivita-man]

WTF kind of question is that?

You appear to be asking that members admit that they are not only "less intelligent" than people who have opposing views, but that they also express their views dishonestly.

Small wonder I opt to avoid your recent polls.

You seem a tad, er, defensive. Is your ego threatened?

 

[Hello My Son]

Are there people more intelligent than you who hold opposing political views in an honest way?

Definitely. There aren’t many political views/opinions that are universally true for everyone in the world. People have different lives, different needs, and different priorities.

 

[Captain Adverse]

You seem a tad, er, defensive. Is your ego threatened?

There you go, making it "personal." Small wonder I seldom if ever acknowledge your posts.

That post above simply justifies my policy.

 

[Josie]

If you think you're smarter than everyone on the opposing side of the political aisle to you, that is wild.

 

[multivita-man]

There you go, making it "personal." Small wonder I seldom if ever acknowledge your posts.

That post above simply justifies my policy.

As I thought, your ego is threatened. Thanks for proving it.

 

[Real blank]

There you go, making it "personal." Small wonder I seldom if ever acknowledge your posts.

That post above simply justifies my policy.

Sounds like you are quicker than Usain bolt
And more handsome than Brad Pitt.

 

[NWRatCon]

Are there people more intelligent than you who hold opposing political views in an honest way?

No.

 

[NWRatCon]

As to my response to the OP:



Absolutely. A whole bunch of them, many of them friends of mine.

I can't think of anyone on this board, though.

I thought we were talking about this board.

 

[NWRatCon]

I could only reply based upon my personal experience. I couldn't vote, though, because the question is too amorphous: "opposing political views"; on what topic? I have a variety of views, some contradictory; "in an honest way?" How does one determine this? Some (many) arguments are specious, but are they informed? Does the writer actually believe the shit they post? Hard to know.

 

[reinaert]

Of course.

 

[The Mark]

Are there people more intelligent than you who hold opposing political views in an honest way?

I'm not clear on what, exactly, you meant by "hold opposing political vies in an honest way."

I am assuming you meant that they honestly believe the political views they claim are the best route to take.


If so, I would say that I suspect the answer is no.
But mainly because I think most or even all of the people who are more intelligent than me who claim to hold those opposing views do NOT hold them honestly.

Edit:
Then again, I suppose it depends what specific opposing views you mean.
There are almost surely people more intelligent than I who hold views I am opposed to, it's just that those views are rarely or never stated publicly by them.

 

[roguenuke]

Being highly intelligent, more intelligent than most even, and being wrong about something or many things, even a major part of your life or ideology or wrong most of the time are not mutually exclusive.

For anyone that watched the Big Bang Theory, those guys were presented as highly intelligent yet wrong about many things a lot of the time. And not just social interactions but plenty of other things too.

 

[cpwill]

 

[ajn678]

Absolutely not.

 

[cpwill]

Definitely. There aren’t many political views/opinions that are universally true for everyone in the world. People have different lives, different needs, and different priorities.

When presented with people inside the Christian church who want to draw partisan boundaries for the faith around some silly little political parties in one particular country on the north american continent in the 20th/21st centuries alone.....

I like to remind them that, for most of the Church's history, Christians have been monarchists.

 

[ajn678]

There's IQ, education and common sense. These things do not always go hand in hand.

They all go in hand in hand with MAGAs though. To be a MAGA you have to be low in all of them.

 

[Jason Warfield]

Simply by reading your post. Don't be coy, you know it was worded in a snide dig aimed to get support from those of like mind.

You’ve read too much into the question.

You have gotten so toxic that you looked for something to be angry about. The rest of us understood the question for what it was…which is not what you claim.

To that point…if you ever want to post how the left is being divisive…stop and think about this post of yours first…no one is going to come together if you are actively looking for reasons to not to do so.

 

[Jason Warfield]

The people who I consider smarter than me and hold opposing viewpoints usually…not always, but usually…are articulate and are able to conduct themselves in a civil manner when discussing such subjects.

They may have more education than I do, perhaps have amazing critical thinking skills, etc. it’s just that for whatever reasons, we are opposites on certain things.

 

[tharock220]

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama both graduated from Harvard Law School. They're smarter than everyone on this board.

So anybody who said no is lying to themselves.

 

[Luce]

With views that oppose mine?

I can think of half a dozen really smart conservatives that fit the bill.

No MAGAs, though. They are dumbass populists and not smarter than anyone at all. They are the bottom of the barrel, brains-wise.

 

[MaryP]

WTF kind of question is that?

You appear to be asking that members admit that they are not only "less intelligent" than people who have opposing views, but that they also express their views dishonestly.

Small wonder I opt to avoid your recent polls.

Just save yourself some breath and say NO. It's what you mean.

 

[ataraxia]

I'm sure there are. I'll give an example. When it comes to Finance, I'm sure Scott Bessent is much more intelligent than I am, but he is still a Trump boot-licker. Many Billionaires are also smarter than I am because they found a way to buy a Presidency.

Yes.

I think if you take away the plutocrats and racists (which form the major coalition groups of the GOP today), there would not be much polarization or political difference. They know their positions hurt people. It's just that they believe that if they have a government that doesn't help anyone (er, "freedom"), then people in positions of vulnerability in society such as the poor or racial/religious minorities will get hurt more than everyone else. And that makes it worth it for them.

Just ask their political strategists (interview with Lee Atwater, chief campaign advisor to Ronald Reagan and senior Republican Party strategist, in 1981):

"As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 [...] and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster…

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

Southern strategy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Gordy327]

Are there people more intelligent than you who hold opposing political views in an honest way?

More intelligent...than me? [HAHAHAHAHA...deep breath... HAHAHAHAHA]

 

[Ganondagan]

Are there people more intelligent than you who hold opposing political views in an honest way?

Yes, almost certainly. I have a slightly above average IQ but not nearly as high as the bightest people in the country. Thank God we have those people.