Recently, there's been a fair bit of noise about Rick Santorum saying "We will never have the elite smart people on our side". It got me thinking about what could possibly be the justification for saying something like that, given that it seems pretty risky to call your target audience relatively stupid right to their faces. The only thing I could come up with is kind of silly, and is not a serious suggestion at all, but if it were the goal then it would be completely brilliant; that idea is that it's a fantastic piece of misdirection, a kind of mental sleight of hand, designed to get people who think of themselves as smart to unthinkingly buy into the idea that there are two "sides", and thus perpetuate the reign of Kang and Kodos. (Against this argument must be raised the point that nearly everyone already bought that idea, hook, line and sinker, so there would be absolutely no need to sneakily subconsciously re-endorse it. So instead we can fall back on "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.")
[03:35]
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