Even The Wolf likely can't clean up Harvey Weinstein's pending troubles

The gulf between what you think you know and what you actually know would make oceans feel small.

 

This is the human condition, right?

 

Sure. But some of us are more aware of it than others. I believe in the truism that it takes a lot of knowledge to understand what you don't know. I am so tired of idiots who think they are geniuses.

There is a conspiracy theorist here in town who looks at people with the most smarmy face when they think Sandy Hook happened, or 9/11 wasn't an inside job. I don't mind justified arrogance. The lack of substance to his arrogance makes me want to hit him with the buckle on the end of a belt.

 

How Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves

• They know what they don’t know. This to me is the most consistent marker of real intelligence. The more acute someone’s ability to perceive and assess, the more likely that person is to recognize his or her limits. These include the unevenness of any one person’s talents; the specific areas of weakness—social awkwardness, musical tin ear, being stronger with numbers than with words, or vice versa; and the incomparable vastness of what any individual person can never know. To read books seriously is to be staggered by the knowledge of how many more books will remain beyond your ken. It’s like looking up at the star-filled sky.
  We can think of exceptions—the people who are eminent in one field and try unwisely to stretch that to another. (Celebrated scientists or artists who become ordinary pundits; Michael Jordan the basketball genius becoming Michael Jordan the minor-league baseball player.) But generally the cliche is true: The clearest mark of intelligence, even “genius,” is awareness of one’s limits and ignorance.

 

Would any non-idiot dispute this?

 

I think that there are a lot of people - and maybe they are all idiots - who are fairly well convinced of Trump's infallibility on any topic. There are a lot of people who believe that it's Trump's world and the rest of us are just living in it. That's how how branded himself for 30 years, and that's what a lot of people believe. A lot of them are idiots, I concede. Maybe idiots per se.

 

I'm not sure they're idiots.

But they're certainly suckers.

 

I would submit that's a pretty fine line.

 

Agreed.

That said - and I concede that many of Trump's supporters are racist assholes - it seems that there are some people who desperately want to believe the world is simpler than all of the smart people try to make it sound, and they then also want to believe that some alpha male (a fake alpha male in this case) like Trump has it all figured out.

 

That quote about genius you've posted sure doesn't sound like Trump.

 

I was typing this just as Dick said what I was going to say much better:

I think Trump is just a guy they can copy and paste into their MadLibs worldview, which has always held that smart people have created a world of unnecessary entanglements that a man (and I underscore man) who has "common sense" and bravado can bring into line. And they've always maintained that it will be hard and be opposed by the media and the entrenched government, so every hiccup or fuck-up can be explained away.

Reagan and Bush allowed them to believe this fantasy while operating in that actually complicated world.

 

That was the point of the piece, yes.