America's elitist class: millions of average Americans are irredeemably, hopelessly and unrelentingly stupid

Average Americans Are Stupid?

It began with MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber in 2014. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodesamplified it a couple of weeks ago. And now, in an equal opportunity bashing from the other side of the political dividing line, The Federalist senior editor David Harsanyi has offered yet another look at one idea that apparently unites America’s elitist class: millions of average Americans are irredeemably, hopelessly and unrelentingly stupid.

Gruber led the elitist charge, revealing the Obama administration’s behind-the-scenes efforts to get the Affordable Healthcare Act passed. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” he stated. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass… “

Note the inherent contradiction. Gruber is calling voters stupid—even as he admits a lack of transparency was required to get ObamaCare passed. That’s because ObamaCare “was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies,” Gruber explained. In other words, if the “stupid” American public knew what was really going on, the healthcare bill would have gone down in flames.

ObamaCare has been the law of the land since 2010 and ever since, a substantial majority of “intellectually-challenged” Americans remain opposed to it. Why? Maybe it’s because those identifying themselves as “smart” Americans put together a disastrous healthcare.gov website, whose costhad exceeded $2.1 billion by 2014. Or maybe it’s because ObamaCare premiums will rise 20.3 percent on average this year, or the fact that more than half of the ObamaCare healthcare co-ops had gone out of business by November 2015, and eight of the remaining 11 face the same fate. Or maybe it’s because millions of “stupid” Americans were assured by our president they could keep their doctors, their existing policies, and save an average of $2500 per family under ObamaCare—every bit of which turned out to be bold-faced lies.

One might be inclined to believed such “knowledgable” Obama administration officials would be chastened by such a debacle. Not a chance. In fact they doubled-down, choosing not only to deceive the American public, but orchestrate that deception with the help of gullible members of the media and Congress with regard to the Iran deal.

Again, note the inherent contradiction. It’s the American public who is stupid, but it was Ben Rhodes who bragged to the New York Times how successful he was in “shaping” the Iranian narrative. “In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this,” he said. “We had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the tactics that worked.”

Not tactics. Outright lies. Lies so blatant a portion of a 2013 State Department tape—in which administration spokeswoman Jen Psaki essentially admitted direct talks with Iran had begun long before the so-called “moderate” government currently ruling that nation came into power—was initially deleted. The State Department blamed it on a “glitch,” much like the excuse the White House used when French President Francois Hollande’s statement about “Islamist terrorism” suffered the same fate.

Rhodes also derisively dismissed the nation’s entire foreign policy apparatus as “the Blob,” and was just as condescending with regard to the media. “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns… They literally know nothing,” he insisted.

What about a deliberately know-nothing Congress that decided a treaty wasn’t a treaty, so they could eliminate the Constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority vote necessary for one’s approval? That bit of legerdemain allowed Obama to get his deal when Senate Democrats successfully filibustered opposition to it, essentially abdicating anything resembling responsibility for a disaster that even Obama himself admitted will allow Iran to eventually acquire nukes. The very same Iran that continues to develop missiles now capable of destroying Israel in “less then eight minutes,”according to Iranian senior military adviser Ahmad Karimpour.

And the very same Iranian deal a “dim” American public opposes by a whopping 57 percent to 30 percent margin, according to Gallup.

Unfortunately, such contempt for the average American is not wholly owned by progressives. “Never have so many people with so little knowledge made so many consequential decisions for the rest of us,” pontificated Harsanyi in acolumn for the Washington Post.

He was just getting warmed up. “A person need only survey the inanity of the ongoing presidential race to comprehend that the most pressing problem facing the nation isn’t Big Business, Big Labor, Big Media or even Big Money in politics,” he continued. “It’s you, the American voter. And by weeding out millions of irresponsible voters who can’t be bothered to learn the rudimentary workings of the Constitution, or their preferred candidate’s proposals or even their history, we may be able to mitigate the recklessness of the electorate.”

Harsanyi understands that weeding out voters he doesn’t like resembles the “ugly history of poll taxes and other prejudicial methods that Americans used to deny black citizens their equal right to vote.” But he nonetheless insists some unnamed entity tasked with improving the voting quality of the public “should ensure that all races, creeds, genders and sexual orientations and people of every socioeconomic background are similarly inhibited from voting when ignorant.”

In a subsequent column for his own website, Harsayni reveals a bit of his own ignorance while still advocating for some kind of voter test. “I’m unsure why the test would ever need to be changed,” he writes. “The Constitution does not change.”

Twenty-seven amendments suggest otherwise, Mr. Harsayani.

Though it might never occur to this trio of intellectual snobs or their like-minded soul-mates, the ostensible stupidity of the average American might not be the nation’s biggest problem. Perhaps our biggest problem is the unbridled arrogance of those with a wholly unwarranted belief in their own superiority. People who self-identify as America’s “best and brightest,” while ignoring the inconvenient reality these very same best and brightest have given us the housing crash and financial crisis of 2008, $19 trillion of federal debt, a Middle East completely in ruins, and the ongoing decimation of the middle class—just to name a few of their “enlightened” accomplishments.

It might also be useful to remind them that when their grand schemes blew up in their collective faces, millions of average Americans were called upon to pick up the tab. The same average Americans invariably called upon whenever our nation’s freedom is threatened, the people who really put the “exceptional” in our nation’s exceptionalist mindset. And perhaps more to the point in the current election season, average Americans who have had it up to their collective eyeballs with being force-fed a “superior wisdom” that is neither superior nor wise.

The late William F. Buckley Jr., one of a handful of genuine intellectuals responsible for elevating the American conversation, put it best. “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University,” he said.

Amen to that.