Are You Too Dumb to Live 3

It's funny to me how liberal America in the 1990s and early 2000s loved gentrification... they thought they were saving inner cities (and, obnoxious moral smugness aside, they were). But now it has become a bad word among the same group of people, because it prices out the pimps and crack dealers who used to live in those areas, and, in some cities, in some neighborhoods, those people are disproportionately not "white." Ergo, it's racist to improve urban areas and increase property values. ::eyeroll::

though I don't see why there can't be an easy compromise with this (and in many places there is)... at the same time you're developing an urban area you can also build affordable and sustainable housing in that area. Of course, if poor people move into that housing and it becomes rundown and overrun with crime like the Projects then there will just be more conspiracy theories alleging that this was the plan all along. Hard to win against people committed to finding fault.

That "all lives can't matter until black lives matter" line, though inexplicably very popular and thus parroted constantly as if it is somehow a brilliant takedown of anyone saying "all live matter," is just so offensively stupid to me... the logic of it is intrinsically self-negating.

"so saying all lives matter is wrong because black lives are included in all lives and black lives don't matter?"

"that's right."

"but saying black lives matter is not only okay, but actually necessary to show that you are not a racist?"

"absolutely."

"okay so why isn't it wrong to say black lives matter when you assert that in this country they do not?"

"but the point is that they DO matter. Or should. But many times they're treated like they do not."

"okay. So... *should* all lives matter?"

"definitely."

"Cool. So I'll say all lives matter to express this idea."

"NOOO!!

Agree. Though I think we are able to respond to multiple problems at the same time. And, personally, perhaps somewhat selfishly as someone who has multiple times been on the receiving end of poor police training, been pulled over and ticketed for no good reason, had a loaded gun pointed square at my chest for no good reason, been arrested for no good reason (but if I bring any of this up I'm probably being racist because I'm not the correct color of person that's allowed to complain about this stuff)... I do think that police reform is something that is long, long overdue. However, making it a racial issue is both #1 completely unnecessary and misses the whole point of what's wrong, as the only data available shows that racial bias is NOT a factor when it comes to improper police shootings etc., and #2 sooooo depressingly counter-productive. If you really want to affect change and get everyone behind an issue, saying that it ONLY affects one small subset of the population is dumb.

Ignorant how?

That's kind of part of the plan, honestly... provocation toward thought... making people uncomfortable and forcing them to reconsider their own ideas. I know that people will call me an idiot if I disagree with their poorly-supported ideas. That happens all the time.

Politely and cautiously introducing people to contrary facts or opinions is another way to try and change people's minds... but... I don't think that it's necessarily more effective or less ignorant to do it that way. (I could be wrong) And that's not the spirit of this quiz series. But I think I understand what you are saying now.

It's mostly ignorant racists who would call someone an ignorant racist for acknowledging the scientific and historical fact that race in homo sapiens is socially constructed. But, yes, you're right. It's sad. Free speech, also, used to be considered a liberal issue, to defend against censorship by conservatives who were pro-censorship on moral or culturally chauvinistic grounds. Now it has become more of a conservative issue, and I see so-called "liberals" actually straight up saying that free speech is bad.

Sadly there are racists, enemies of freedom, fascists and authoritarians on all sides of politics. Extremes at any end ought to be avoided. Issues migrate from one camp to another based on political climate and current events and who is in power. It's so disappointing to me to see, sometimes, both left and right now united on certain issues such as sex negativity (by a coalition of Bible thumping prude and man-hating feminists). Keep your feet planted and remember what's right.

1. I'm sorry that you failed to understand the implication. You could have stated this in a less obnoxious and overlong way and avoided appearing so asinine. I'll consider perhaps refining the exact wording of the question in the future. I'm also sorry that you don't understand how multiple choice quizzes work. I thought we all learned about that in elementary school. My bad. And finally, I'm sorry that you don't seem to understand how to average all of these different polls together. I tried to explain above. This could be my fault if the explanation was not clear.

2. Many of your comments here are irrelevant and stupid. Or just deliberately confrontational. Either way, tiresome. Persist and I will block you from commenting on this quiz. If you don't understand how bringing up ironclad evidence of Trump's extreme badness is not relevant to an explanation of why this question and its answer fits on this quiz, a quiz about common misconceptions held by unintelligent people...

... that do not conform to reality, then I suspect that this quiz might not be for you.

3. They will trend down. For one thing, both of the polls cited by Wikiepedia took place before his refusal to acknowledge his election loss, the January 6th insurrection, his record-setting 2nd impeachment, and the start of his ignominious reign as GOP-leader-and-fake-president-in-exile from Mar a Lago, where he continues to do damage to the country. The first of the two polls was very early, before the Mueller report, before the first impeachment, and quite a few other things. New revelations about Trump's badness, corruption, and criminality are, in fact, continuing to come to light every day since he left office. Most recently we had testimony from Trump's former acting defense secretary on Jan 6 that shed more light on just how derelict and reprehensible Trump's actions on that day were. Like yesterday. Given that Trump's administration was the least transparent and most corrupt...

... in US history, there is no reason to believe that such revelations will even slow down in the future. Particularly as Giuliani moves closer to indictment and SDNY and other offices continue pressing forward in their investigation into Trump and his associates' finances. New information has been coming out rapidly and regularly for anyone paying attention. And, even if that weren't the case, there's still the fact that historians continually revise their opinions of presidents as the years go by. I anticipate that as the decades tick on the general public will somewhat lose sight of just how completely awful Trump was, especially since the GOP has demonstrated that, after toying with the idea of trying to divorce their dear leader in January, they are all in at this point and their wagons are hitched to his banner for good or for ill. So this means in the coming years and decades there will be a persistent effort to whitewash and reform the image of the failed president. ...

... however, I have more faith in the experts and historians, many of whom were reluctant to rank a sitting president as the worst of all time but won't have the same qualms now that he's out of office, and who will actually read and study the wealth of information and data coming out about the administration in the future as they attempt to get a stronger handle of just how bad it was in the greater context of history. As they do this, it's difficult to imagine Trump's reputation going anywhere but down.

I admit, on this one point, which is not relevant to the quiz anyway except insofar as increasing the likelihood that question 6 will remain accurate in perpetuity, I am basing this not entirely on objective and empirical fact but simply my own, justifiably confident, extremely well-informed opinion. Which brings us to...

4. This quiz and the questions on it, same as every quiz in the series, is not based on my opinion, belief, or feelings. ....

... I bother citing historians because the question is about expert opinion. This shouldn't be hard to understand. The common misconception people have is that Trump is a good or mediocre president or that the "fake news media" is being hysterical and suffering from TDS, and somehow overreacting by daily reporting on the man's many failings. This opinion is unfounded and absurd. THAT is the misconception that question 6 is aimed at. There is no misconception about MY belief or opinion... I am a nobody. My opinion doesn't matter and aside from a handful of JetPunk users nobody knows what it is. There are no misconceptions about it. Asking about it would make for a really dumb and out of place question. And the Siena poll was not biased or misleading..... do you really not understand the difference between the numbers 42 and 22? I said that any information source that told you Trump was something other than terrible, and at or near the bottom, was biased or misleading.

The Siena poll, which ranked Donald Trump in the bottom 3 presidents of all time, certainly doesn't fit that description. Dead last or bottom 3 ... still at or near the bottom.

Reread what I wrote, maybe, and think harder before you respond again if you respond again. I don't feel like explaining this a 3rd time.

One final point: yes, of course the rankings from the 80s are relevant. We're looking at how all presidents are ranked by historians. Think of it like Formula 1. If there are 4 races. And Ferrari finishes 3rd in one, 1st in one, 7th in one, and 2nd in another.... and then McLaren comes into the last two, finishing 1st in one and 3rd in another but they skipped the first two races... okay Ferrari would still win because of the points system maybe this is a bad analogy. But put that aside and consider which team had the better average finish? You wouldn't ONLY consider the last two races because the first two didn't include McLaren... those races contain valuable data points that will make your conclusions more relevant and accurate. And you wouldn't simply average the numbers together to get a mean and say McLaren is 2nd and Ferrari is 4th. Maybe no other make had more than 1 finish in the top 3. You would conclude on average McLaren performed best and Ferrari 2nd best.

... I'd still say that the Siena poll points toward Trump being one of the worst presidents in US history. Not THE WORST, yes. But... like I tried to say a few times... the misconception about Trump isn't that he's the worst or 2nd to worst or 3rd to worst... it's that he's actually not that bad at all. He's closer to being ranked dead last by all these polls than he is to being ranked middle of the pack, by a long shot.

as for historians being liberals and elites... more nonsense. Most historians are pretty conservative. And one thing I liked about the APSA poll is that they had each historian identify as Republican, Democrat, or independent, and even amongst Republican presidential historians, I think Trump finished in the bottom 4 presidents of all time.

to your 2nd-to-last comment: yes, exactly. I actually think QuizMaster falls into that category. Undoubtedly a very smart guy... but... his disdain for politics I assume has led to him being pretty disengaged with what's happening in the political sphere, and so he's taken to repeating the false meme that the "mainstream media" is just liberal and biased and their focus on the failings of the last president is partisan overreaction. It's not. Many of Trump's most ardent critics in the media are diehard conservatives and lifelong Republicans...

okay sorry I can't shut up.

Another thought about historians vs general public view of Trump and where it might go: ... I feel like you are probably wrong to assume that historians' view will track with the general public's view. For two reasons. One, the largest factor contributing to what I think will be a rosier view of Trump in the future by the layman, which I didn't actually mention above but sort of implied, is just that through the passage of time people tend to forget. The average person in 20 years is not going to remember the daily absolutely insane tweets, nor the repeated willful cruelty, nor the constant revolving door of cabinet members and government officials, nor quite a few other things that to most people are either not that interesting or just incidental. A few key moments will stick out in their minds and the rest will be forgotten and they will lose sight of ALL the many reasons why the man was terrible. Good historians won't.

The second thing is that, even though Republicans are going to try hard to make the public believe that Trump wasn't so bad in the coming decade, because they have decided that they can't win without Trump's base and so they're going to keep on kissing his ring and going along with his lies.... I really don't think that most of the Republicans in power actually believe this crap. I mean I know most of them don't. Just compare statements that Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, McCarthy or McConnell made about Trump before the 2016 election and after, and then shortly after the Jan 6th insurrection and a few days/weeks beyond..... they are all so *obviously* lying when they praise Trump. Minus a few insane outliers like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And I'm sure that conservative historians fall into the same camp. They see through Trump.

Compare this to a figure like Reagan, where conservatives became more reverent as time went on, but that reverence was genuine not forced for political gain.

Thanks for the kind words. And I respect your willingness to sort out a misunderstanding or Internet kerfuffle without contributing to its degeneration as most reflexively do. Including myself sometimes.

One last statement, though: I stick to what is true. Not what I believe. And what I believe is that truth is very important. Honesty is important. I want to believe and know as many true things as possible, and I want to believe as few untrue things as possible. If the truth conflicts with some ideology or value or political goal or personal preference of mine.... I very much want to know about it. I want to be proven wrong. I don't respect people who stick to their beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they shouldn't. I think that's the principle problem with a lot of political ideas, such as the one most BLM supporters embrace that black people are terribly oppressed. If they would just look at the data objectively they could see that it's not so bad.

I changed the wording a second time and I'm happier with it now. Reads clean again, and is less potentially confusing. Thanks for helping me clean up the language, Chief.

Same goes for his level of incompetence, stupidity, ignorance... he is clearly so much worse than any president that came before in so many ways. Yes, sometimes people in the present are ignorant when they say the last sitting president was the worst of all time. This isn't a case of that. It's a case of the opposite: many ignorant people claiming that Trump just wasn't that bad when they seem to have no idea the full extent of what was going on (my posts don't scratch the surface).

As for the hundreds of experts and historians of all political persuasions who spent a lifetime gaining the knowledge necessary to make such a determination and who side with me on the subject of this twice impeached ex-president - they aren't "self-professed" knowledgeable types... they are just knowledgeable types. Others profess them to be so. That's why they're polled for their professional opinions. They're not just randos with anonymous handles commenting on the Internet.

and the efforts are ongoing...

(also bear in mind that the only way that you can say there is a higher number of "black" shooting victims is if you adjust the numbers based on the proportion of the total population they make up. Without this adjustment, in absolute terms, many more "white" people get shot each year by police than "black" people.)