Derivative Images - base photo Gerd Atlman from http://Pixabay.com

“Calling politicians idiots or "Four Horsemen (of the Apocalypse)” isn’t inciting violence or encouraging gun violence.  It is urging people to dislike the politicians—a basic right of every American. That's so when people criticize the Republican Congressional leadership or the left wing of the Democratic Party or anyone else. It's so regardless of what groups those politicians belong to. And that's so even for much harsher speech, such as calling people traitors or fascists or other such labels that some might see as morally justifying attacks. That's true, I think, not just a matter of law but also of political ethics: There's no basis for morally condemning such speech as supposedly "inciting violence." People have a right to criticize them disrespectfully and not just respectfully. They have a right to criticize them with slogans and not just substantively, again just as they do with the Republican Congressional leaders or anyone else. And of course they have a right to call them "idiots." – Eugene Volokh, _{https://reason.com/volokh/2019/08/03/everyone-has-a-right-to-call-politicians-idiots/}

In the grip -

A toxic mix of social media, postmodern relativism and populism means that all politicians are now rewarded by voters for their stupidity, willful or otherwise. At least, that’s how we like to think of it.

It’s always tempting to call people on the other side of the political divide stupid. Denigrating our political adversaries as stupid comes with some big payoffs: it makes us feel smarter, boosts our sense of self-worth, makes us more certain of our own opinions, and often bonds us closer with others on our side.

But constantly dismissing the other side as stupid can be dangerous. It’s unlikely to foster dialogue, and will instead drive political factions ever further apart. Politics will become a grudge match between factions who consider their opponents idiots and therefore refuse to listen to them. Whenever this sort of vicious partisanship kicks in, voters become more likely to follow their own politics when making a decision –no matter what the evidence says.

Dull knives

We all like to think we are smart – but when it comes to politics, most of us are pretty stupid in our own way. Issues which are at stake are complex and confusing. Most of us do not have all the information to make perfectly rational decisions, and when surveyed about issues such as healthcare, voters on both sides of the political divide are remarkably ignorant.

Even the basic structures of government remain a mystery to many citizens. One survey found that only 42% of those asked could name the three branches of the US government. In contrast three quarters of Americans could name the three stooges: Larry, Curly and Moe.

Most of us assume that ignorance and stupidity is concentrated in one side of the political divide. In reality, it’s actually fairly evenly distributed across the political spectrum.

Take conspiracy theories – polls have shown these to be alive and well on both sides of the spectrum. One survey found that 36% of republican voters sampled still believe that Barack Obama was not born in the US, while another in 2007 found 35% of Democratic voters believed that George W. Bush knew about the September 11 attacks before they happened.

Perhaps even more worryingly given the US’s divided political culture, swing voters are often the most ignorant. One study found that on average, “independent independents” could correctly answer 9.1 of 31 basic political questions – compared to 15.4 correct answers from “strong Democats” and 18.7 from “strong Republicans”.

What all this suggests is that as soon as the average citizen really starts thinking about politics, they come face to face with their own stupidity.

Idiot wind

Decades’ worth of research on cognitive biases has taught us that when this happens, we fall back on some fairly fast and dirty mental rules of thumb. We make snap political judgements about what is right or wrong based on completely irrelevant things like what someone looks like. Once we have made a snap judgement, we put our effort intocollecting information that supports our own positions. We also conveniently overlook information that does not support our position. This saves us time and mental energy and can help us come to a decision quickly. But it also means that we often ignore crucial issues.

But it is not just the uninformed voters who are stupid. Often stupidity lurks at the very heart of our great political institutions. After spending over a decade studying so-called “knowledge-intensive organizations” - often these smart firms wer driven by stupidity.

One of the greatest concentrations of intellect and talent in any developed economy is often found in its political institutions. Many of the best and the brightest graduates head for the halls of power – and yet institutions filled with smart people can consistently do deeply stupid things.

Some of the most infamous political blunders – such as Margaret Thatcher’s “poll tax”, which led to widespread rioting – were actually conceived and pursued by some of the smartest people in the government at the time. A recent study of British politics showed that political blunders seem to have been the rule rather than the exception  and that they were caused not by stupid individuals, but by a system which encouraged groupthink, amateurism, overconfidence, and created a “cultural disconnect” from the electorate.

I would hazard a guess that a study of blunders in US politics would come to a remarkably similar conclusion. Allegations of stupidity will fly thick and fast.

It’s tempting to join in and decry the other side as a phalanx of idiots. But instead of castigating our political adversaries for their lack of understanding, we should take a moment to pause and reflect on our own capacity for political stupidity. If we don’t, the debates we urgently need to have about our collective future might never happen.*

*Passages from this article are republished from TheConversation.com under a Creative Commons License. Read the original article https://theconversation.com/calling-your-political-opponents-stupid-is-a-stupid-thing-to-do-62926