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IQ needed to be a hyperglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 129 of 164 25 October 2007 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Americans seem to like their presidents intellectually unthreatening. I think he is authentically stupid, but it doesn't matter because his advisers are stupid in a more intellectual way. The peoples of the Middle East have been finding out just how intelligent these people are, and the mess in Iraq is more eloquent than any IQ test or SAT score. Maybe Bush speaks good Spanish. Well, so what. In a bilingual state like Texas, you will get bilingual morons. An American general named Walker was told in late 1950, as US troops were invading North Korea, that some of the prisoners they had taken were Chinese, not North Koreans. So what, Walker thought. "A lot of Mexicans live in Texas." A couple of weeks later, hundreds of thousands of Chinese attacked. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| ChrisWebb Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6262 days ago 181 posts - 190 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean | Message 130 of 164 26 October 2007 at 5:04am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Whether Bush has good Spanish or not seems largely an irrelevence, as though a second language demonstrates any more than an interest in learning it! I'm pretty confident that being monolingual does not in fact correlate with lower intelligence levels and you seem to agree on that point. You note that Americans seem to like their presidents intellectually unthreatening, has it occurred that maybe Bush is smart enough to recognise and then play to that preference to some degree? Frankly the obviously intellectual Gore ought to have been able to capitalise on his links to Clinton yet with every advantage he still lost to a man people are still calling a moron. That should raise a question in the minds of those concerned. As for the middle east the British Govt is quite enmeshed in that same mess as well, again i may not agree with Blair's every action but he very clearly isn't actually stupid. Certainly I'd consider the invasion of Iraq a mistake at best and there has been a lack of planning that probably manages to qualify as outright negligence, nevertheless, it's unwise and unproductive to underestimate people by writing them off as morons. Better to recognise the talents of those you disagree with because this allows you more possibilities. It can be a significant mistake to continually underestimate people, if you demonstrate this unfortunate trait repeatedly you will likely get burnt. Of course I guess you could call an opponent a moron as a polemic tool, given the ineffectiveness of that tool in the case of Bush though I'd suggest those who have persisted with such an obviously ineffective tool might be in danger of slipping into the ironic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 131 of 164 26 October 2007 at 9:15am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Off topic, but if you consider power hunger to be the prime motivation of certain politicians, they appear to be less stupid. Not better, but less stupid. Maybe there should be a rule that every countries political leader should be fluent in at least 3 languages. That'll suck some of the hunger out of 'em.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 132 of 164 26 October 2007 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I would say Bush's stupidity is more obvious now than in 2000, though there is still the matter of all the hanging chads and disenfranchised blacks in Florida helping him to power. As to the following election, there was a mass mobilisation by millions of US Christians who knew Bush was the man to fulfil all the prophecies in the Book of Revelations. I think that kind of thing goes beyond the moronic. Such people would have voted for a patch of creosote if it unleashed the Four Horsemen.
As to Blair, he probably thought trailing in the US wake was the smart option. Britain has in any case done this since Suez, though it did manage to avoid getting bogged down in Vietnam. Peter Ustinov in his autobiography said he considered Adlai Stevenson to be too clever a man to be elected President, and he wasn't. But yes, we agree that knowing a foreign language or two does not preclude stupidity. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| lloydkirk Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6412 days ago 429 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 133 of 164 26 October 2007 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't see how your political rhetoric has anything to do with the topic at hand and I don't see how American politics has anything to do with you. Your last two posts are at best subjective, but personally I find them very offensive. You generalized Americans as unintelligent, utter nonsense when you consider that a greater percentage of Americans have college degrees than the U.K. Gore is a far cry from an intellectual and if you compare his academic performance with Bush you will see that Bush actually did better. Most Americans don't consider him stupid, but perhaps somewhat unrefined. As to your reference to the 2000 election in Florida, it is amusing that you think that democrat voters were disenfranchised as it is almost certainly the opposite. The northern part of the state is a conservative stronghold and also happens to be in a different time zone(an hour behind). The local media had declared that the election was over there and that Gore had won. There was still an hour left in the northern part of the state, but because of the 'confusion' in the media many people up there didn't bother to vote. Despite this, the Republicans still won the state. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Lemus Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6380 days ago 232 posts - 266 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese, Russian, German | Message 134 of 164 26 October 2007 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It's important to remember who Bush was facing in the 2004 election, John Kerry, whose main campaign slogan seemed to be "I'm not Bush." That managed to get him plenty of votes, but the Democrats really failed to take advantage of what should been a very winnable election by fielding a canidate who actually held the public's interest. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6358 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 135 of 164 26 October 2007 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
He played it safe - too safe - and things didn't pan out. It's been a shame for a number of reasons - the least of which being that Tereza Heinz Kerry would have been our first polyglot first lady :^) I believe she speaks English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian, and worked as a UN Translator for a number of years. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 136 of 164 26 October 2007 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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"Many times, it comes across like a five-year-old trying to speak Spanish." Edited by luke on 26 October 2007 at 7:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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