For years, it has been annoying me that politicians and pundits keep saying, "The American people are smart." That is so much hooey. You know who they are saying that to? The couch potatoes who, after hearing that pap, say to themselves, "Uh, yup! I shore am a smart 'un! He's my kinda guy!" In other words, the pols and pundits are pandering to the populace. "Rubbing them down" so to speak, in order to get these "smart people" to buy into what they're are selling..
So let's be real here. All my life I've been aware that the average IQ in the U.S. is 100. One then applies the Bell curve (see figure to the right of the linked article), and one sees that half the population is below average intelligence. So don't give me this "The people are smart" tripe. Some are smart and some are not. The smart ones get what these people are saying (which is BS) and the not so smart are hopefully not falling for it (though ego probably dictates that they do buy into it).
So the next time you here some politician/pundit say, "The people are smart," remember, it's just cynical pandering in which the speaker is trying to win over the uninformed. At best, the people are average intelligence. which is a lot more generous than Bill Maher's thinking.
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