In the leftist Twitter crowd’s haste to show what a dummyhead Trump is, they demonstrate their own combination of abysmal ignorance and arrogance
In the debate last night when Trump referred to “coyotes” – the slang word for smugglers of would-be illegal immigrants from Latin America – a lot of people mocked him for thinking that the actual animal known as the coyote could do such a thing.
They did not seem to be joking. See this.
Here’s how such a phenomenon works. If a person has utter contempt for the intellect and knowledge base of another person, everything the supposedly inferior person says will be looked on and interpreted in the worst possible light. Confirmation bias. If everything Trump says is stupid, saying this must be especially stupid, particularly if it’s actually the listener who is too stupid to know what Trump is referring to: “These children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they used to use them to get into our country.”
It literally does not occur to those mocking Trump that he might actually know what he’s talking about, and that it’s they who are the ignorant ones about to make fools of themselves.
Nor will this make a dent in their sense of their own superiority, or their opinion of Trump’s brainpower.
They’ve beclowned themselves wonderfully. This definition has been common knowledge for decades.
Really smart and well-educated people can behave the way neo describes. What makes this worse is the arrogant dismissal is often coming from people of, at best, thoroughly average intelligence and accomplishment.
Mike
Neo;
Think your are overestimating the intelligence of many of Trump’s critics.
IMHO, the Trump critics actually believed that 4 legged canines where used to sneak children into the USA from Mexico.
The incredible ignorance and stupidity of many is truly astounding and frightening; after all they vote.
Unfortunately, many of these ignorant folks are in the public sector.
I didn’t see the clip in question, but I’m going to assume for the moment that the President didn’t pronounce ‘coyote’ as someone from Mexico [lo siento, México] would have, i.e. as an English not Spanish word. If he had (I’m the type of nitpicking perfectionist who would, which is why I’m thinking of it), might it have clued some of these types of people in that he might actually have known something they did not? Sometimes a stuffy sort of sophistication has its uses. 🙂
This is very like that ‘covfefe’ thing.
I had heard about the Georgia state representative, but did not realize how much further it went. “Be-clowning” is most apt.
The term “coyote” is neither obscure nor outdated. It’s commonly used in commentary about illegal immigration, drug smuggling, etc. And it is used by people across the political/ideological spectrum.
Nonetheless, the term isn’t quite common knowledge, so one can be excused for not being familiar with it. The be-clowning comes from their not taking thirty seconds to Google the term before smugly snarking on Trump. They are pathological in their urge to attack him.
If Trump says something that doesn’t seem to make sense to them, it must be stupid or wrong. It never occurs to them that maybe, just maybe, he knows something they don’t.
Dar’shun…
She of the bill to require sex partners to agree to a Viagra prescription for their significant other, ban vasectomies in GA & make all unprotected sex able to be labelled “assault.”
Because if y’all can legislate wymyn’s bodies…we gonna legislate y’all’s’.
Or something.
Bloody genius she is.
Oglethorpe University’s finest?
P.S. Boss…the + keeps showing up in my name.
I’ve removed it & it’s back like a bad rash.
I’ll do it again & we’ll see.
Neo:
Since at least the days of Adlai Stevenson, part of the Democrat narrative has been the bright/knowledgeable Demos versus the dumb/ignorant Pubs. Back in the day, the “intellectuals” were for Adlai.
“Every thinking person will vote for you.”/”But I need a majority!”
More of the same: when I was voting Third Party in the 1980s, a Demo bumper sticker caught my attention. “Vote Republican. It’s Easier than Thinking!”
While I never voted for Reagan, his policies towards Central America caught my attention and support. The Progs/Demos/Sandalistas were shouting at the top of their lungs that Regan was an ignorant fool who didn’t know a thing about Central America. My support for Reagan’s Central American policies was based on working in Latin America for 4 years. I had worked in a war zone in Guatemala and knew people in both Guatemala and in Argentina who had contact with guerrillas. In addition, I had read library sources extensively in both English and Spanish on Central America- and most of the juicy stuff never got translated into English. Most of these Progs/Demos/Sandalistas didn’t know Spanish, so IF they had been to Nicaragua or to Central America, it had been by a guided tour with translator. (see Paul Hollander’s Political Pilgrims.) Nor did they have much book learning about the issue. As such, I found it rather comical that they called Reagan “ignorant.”
But but but…
How do we avoid confirmation bias when the opfor is utterly incompetent?
Live action Dunning Kruger.
This is not an issue that I have paid a lot of attention to, but even I know what a coyote is, and would know it even if it was pronounced in English rather than in Spanish. And besides that, do these people truly believe that every child who comes across the border comes with his or her family? Have they been paying no attention at all?
Neo, absolutely, it’s a textbook illustration of confirmation bias. And what’s more, it’s kinda fun for schadenfreude.
It is amazing that they seem able to believe that Trump is an evil genius and a bumbling fool… simultaneously!
I actually questioned a leftist acquaintance about this. He blithely told me that he is both… without seeing any internal contradiction.
Personally, I like real 4 legged coyotes, as long as they stay out of the goat pen. I frequently step out onto the back porch to make my presence known when their singing seems to close to the goats. But I do like their songs, creepy as they be at times.
Binders full of coyotes.
If you think that was bad, wait ’till we tell them about the drug mules getting through airport security.
@Gringo Yes, my dad – an FDR liberal and Keynesian economist – really saw himself as a ‘thinking person’ but viewed Adlai Stevenson as probably too intellectual to get elected in 1952. In other words, he wasn’t blind to the then difference between a highly educated minority, like himself or Stevenson, and a less well educated majority. And he wasn’t arrogant about it in the same way as today’s rather more indoctrinated majority. Still, I know very well educated and perceptive people on the left who adopt a completely condescending tone toward Trump that implicitly asks the question: ‘How could he be so stupid?’ Obviously the media constantly promotes that attitude, but there is something else I notice going on. That something is simply being unable to think outside the box of an over optimised culture of expertise. Being unable to see that chaos has broken out in their walled garden just as they drive the last snakes of racism, sexism, and all deplorableness out of paradise – unable to see the beam of corruption in Hillary or Joe. They are like a symphony orchestra trying to make music on instruments ruined by termites and Trump is like a jazz musician breaking out of the fixed chord structure and creating new possibilities. Possibilities we have no way of knowing how they will work out, but are certainly ‘frightening the horses’. A prime example, promoting Israel Arab accords that contradict the sage advice of generations of State Department Yalies.
Ben Rhodes was wrong on many (well, all) policies, and something of an ethically challenged person, but he was spot on correct about many journalists when he derided them as young and ignorant enough to imbibe whatever Snake Oil Obama chose to sell them.
https://thefederalist.com/2016/05/10/why-a-liberal-journalist-brought-the-house-down-on-obama-fabulist-ben-rhodes/
As for the old and experienced, well, they are just being duplicitous.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/10/22/trump-turns-the-tables-on-60-minutes/
MollyG and Aggie win the thread IMHO.
While deserving praise for poking fun with pungent political prose, they also remind me of the children’s books about misunderstanding simple words or idioms, the Amelia Bedelia series and “The King Who Rained.”
Several conservative media posts have pointed out the problem with the claim about the “missing parents” of the unaccompanied children brought across the border, and the Federalist is a good example.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/23/if-you-dont-know-that-coyotes-are-human-smugglers-shut-up-about-the-border/
Lots of detail in the story.
Many cogent explanations can be made in defense of the shorthand speech patterns the President uses, but the truth is, he really could do a better job of explaining himself. It pains me sometimes to hear him talk: he doesn’t complete sentences and he frequently says things that I think are partial answers based on briefings he has had from national security experts. He knows the stuff, but he speaks in factoids that really need to be developed a little.
Having your time limited to two-minutes at a crack doesn’t help, but he speaks the same way during his rallies, where there is not time limit. I think it is symptomatic of the way he processes information.
And in point of fact, his use of the term “coyotes” was not essential to this answer anyway: he could have simply said “lots of children are sent into the USA in the hope that at some future point other family members can follow them under immigration laws that permit such reunification. In other words, their families want to be reunited only in the USA, not in their country of origin.”
He could have gone on to say the heartlessness is not on the part of the Immigration Service, it is on the part of the parents who are using their children as pawns in a larger effort.” But his mind doesn’t work that way.
Coyotes….
https://twitter.com/KaylaMc14993830/status/1319544843052314624
H/T Shipwreckedcrew twitter feed
It would be natural to think that if one is at all concerned about immigrants then he/she/whatever would have heard the term “coyote” in the last 4 plus years. It’s hypocritical to go on and on about poor fence jumpers and be so abysmally ignorant of the reality of illegal border crossing. It is no longer worth a wince or laugh to be afforded a genuine look at their vapid hysterics.
Barry – that was a good one.
PowerLine’s The Week in Pictures got the whole crew together for the benefit of Democrats who need training.
https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/10/IMG_0030.jpg?w=720&ssl=1