The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Part 1
“This might be seen as a sign that the American right has finally crossed the border into looney-land.” Perhaps observations from the field of cognitive science, the Dunning-Kruger effect, can help explain why.
“This might be seen as a sign that the American right has finally crossed the border into looney-land.” Perhaps observations from the field of cognitive science, the Dunning-Kruger effect, can help explain why.
It’s been a pretty straight line from the Powell Manifesto, to Citizens United, to the rise of anonymous billionaire financed Superpacs. As the crowded GOP presidential race has shown, there are no shortage of opportunists willing to prostitute themselves for a place at the table.
In an historical arc that began almost forty years earlier, Citizens United was the culmination of actions promulgated in The Powell Memo, aka The Powell Manifesto.
41% of Donald Trump supporters support the bombing of the city of “Agrabah.” Unfortunately for them, the strategic value of same would be nil, since Agrabah was the capital of Princess Jasmine’s homeland in the animated Disney cartoon, “Alladin.” Ted Cruz voters prefer it be carpet bombing, to see if they could “make the sand glow in the dark.”
During Tuesday’s GOP presidential debate, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie called President Obama a “feckless weakling, ” and promised to initiate a novel form of seance detente to destroy ISIS/ISIL/Daesh
In John Carpenter’s classic 1988 sci-fi movie They Live, a race of evil aliens has secretly taken over the planet. They maintain control by broadcasting stealth radio frequencies that not only makes them look like human members of the ruling class, but encodes subliminal messages into various advertising media to manipulate the populace, commanding them to obey, consume, and reproduce. . .
It actually gives me hope that, eventually, US policy makers will finally get a clue about the futility of trying to maintain worn out strategery tropes like: Might makes right, Manifest Destiny, and American Exceptionalism.