"The Stupid Person's Smart Person": A Few Thoughts

It is not uncommon these days to hear this or that "public intellectual" dismissed as a "stupid person's smart person"--someone who, perhaps not really a "smart person," conforms to certain conventional expectations of how a "smart person" appears and sounds and may therefore be taken more seriously than they ought by the credulous.

But what goes into that really?

Let us start with the oft overlooked reality that high intelligence tends not to be a very "showy" trait, apt to manifest itself only in relatively small and subtle ways, at least in casual social contacts and other comparable, everyday, situations--a certain alertness or nuance or quickness with words or numbers, for example. Such things are unlikely to register with and make much impression on a "stupid person"--their "smart person" having to display evidences of intelligence in a much more conspicuous, even bombastic, way. I can think of at least two types of such evidence:

1. The Appearance of Authority.
The society we live in is vehement about treating intelligence as the defining trait of, foundation of the authority of, indeed even monopoly of, society's elite. (As Immanuel Wallerstein put it in his handy essay, the presumption is that the bourgeoisie is in charge because "they are the smartest.") This is underlined by how any suggestion that those who are not of the elite have any intelligence is dismissed--most famously in the vulgarian sneer "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" (utterance of which phrase is as good a piece of evidence of the speaker being a "stupid person" as I know of). The result is that the "stupid person" will expect the "smart person" to display the trappings of elite status and the Authority that goes with it in spite of the fact that these may testify to privileged social background rather than actual intelligence--such as evidences of wealth, position, and an education at far-flung and exotic-sounding institutions of learning (which education is not likely to be had without one's having come from money, regardless of their intelligence, such that it is a surer testament to the former than the latter). Consistent with this is the arrogant and even rude demeanor that those who have had privilege and position so often display regardless of intelligence (perhaps, as evidence of its lack)--the respectful, indeed, apt to speak of them that foolish phrase "He did not suffer fools gladly."

The actual "smart person" will see right through the trappings, the demeanor, and judge whether the person in question really has anything to say worth hearing (and are thus not a "stupid person's smart person," just a "smart person" lucky enough to have what it to takes to impress the stupid that they are such). However, as (in lieu of Naming Names, however easy it may be to come up with many a name deserving of mention here) the list of the more prominent public intellectuals of our times indicates, there don't seem to be many of these around, least of all in the mainstream media, given its profoundly uncritical, indeed often exceedingly deferential, treatment of figures who acquire such status--in spite of the fact that they so rarely do have anything to offer.

2. A Tendency to Unnecessary Obscurity.
People react very differently to what they do not understand depending on the circumstances. Much of the time, confronted with the unintelligible, they will assume that it is also unintelligent. However, when the unintelligible is backed up by Authority the more credulous--those of whom we speak as "stupid persons"--will very readily believe that it is all simply above their heads, whereas a "smart person" may reserve judgment, and indeed be skeptical, for the truth is that the greatest feats of intelligence are apt to involve making what may seem overwhelming comprehensible. (To take an easy example, thus do scientists derive laws of nature from the phenomena of the universe.) Indeed, unintelligibility is apt to bespeak confusion, whether the speaker's being confused, or their deliberately trying to confuse their audience to intimidate them--with their effort to do the latter apt to take such forms as a flinging about of empty buzzwords, a propensity for mathematical statements that mean nothing at all, a penchant for arcane diction and obscure quotations for their own sake, perhaps even a proneness to just speak very fast, so as to conceal the banality of their ideas, and even their not having any ideas at all, behind seemingly ostentatious intellectuality.

Faced with such the actual smart person will, if given a proper chance, be able to tell the difference between someone whose explanation is difficult because the material is genuinely difficult (and they, again, not a "stupid person's smart person" but a "smart person" period), and someone who is pulling a con--but again, there don't seem to be many of these around, least of all in the mainstream media.

Taken together what we get from this is that the prototypical "stupid person's smart person" is a personage displaying the trappings of Authority who wraps up vacuity in a show-offy pseudo-erudition, or possibly both. In doing so such a stupid person's smart person also makes themselves "the smart person's stupid person," one who is the more deserving of being labeled a stupid person because they worked so hard to earn the opprobrium, and because when they have become public figures their claptrap is so often so pernicious in its effect--not that the criticisms of such persons by the truly intelligent and learned amount to much anyway, just about never slowing down a racket of this kind once they have got it properly going.