A Low-IQ Individual
It turns out that according to Donald Trump, Joe Biden is “a low-IQ individual”. He and Kim Jung Un are in agreement on this. Of course, Kim Jung Un called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” last year. The word dotard, according to Merriam-Webster means a person in “a state or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise and alertness.” Using the thirty-five-year-old North Korean dictator as a benchmark for political intelligence is probably a questionable tactic in whatever direction for many reasons.
To begin with, Kim Jung Un is not a politician. That would require him to have been duly elected. But he was elected unopposed with a yes/no vote and got 100% yes votes. To vote no would have meant being fed to starving dogs kept by North Korea, their favorite punishment for voting the wrong way on anything. That makes him a dictator. Since he is perhaps the world’s most notorious dictator of our age (Maduro and Assad being weak competitors for that spot), it’s pretty widely held that using him in your campaign ads either pro yourself or anti your opponent may not be a winning play. I’m not sure it would hurt with his base, but surely other Republican Congressmen would look to the sky and whistle. Could it cause John Bolton to throw his hands up and resign? Hard to say when his alternative to his current position is total and forever ignominy and irrelevance.
The funny thing to most of us about this is the sourcing of the “Low-IQ Individual” moniker. I certainly mean by that, both Kim Jung Un and Donald Trump as sources of highly questionable IQ. But it is the definitional aspect of Intelligence Quotient that deserves more attention. IQ is a concept developed in the days of the Weimar Republic in Germany by William Stern at the University of Breslau. While it is fair to suggest that this line of academic inquiry was spurred by the rising interest in Eugenics, it was probably this concept of measuring relative intelligence in humans that led, in many ways, to the Eugenics of Adolf Hitler and his search for the superior Aryan Race. Strangely enough, William Stern was Jewish and was, of course, exiled in the anti-Semitic trend in the shift from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich. But the quotient aspect of the IQ measurement refers to the formula: IQ = Mental age ÷ Physical age × 100. Physical age is easy enough (Trump – 72, Biden – 76, Kim Jung Un – 35). That gives Trump a handicap advantage over Biden of 4 years and gives Kim Jung Un an incredible relative edge over either U.S. candidate. Mental Age is intended to be a relative measure of intelligence for a similar age group and was thus intended for measuring the intelligence of developing children.
What this all says to me is that IQ is simply not a valid or easily measured metric for judging the intelligence of adults, and certainly not older adults in a political position where intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence are critically important components for measuring the capacity of the person to perform his/her duties appropriately. One hopes that intelligence is somewhat cumulative. In fact, even if there are waning aspects of mental capacity in one’s later years, one can even hope that added experience and maturation exceed the deterioration based on grey matter pliability deterioration.
Like most thinking/feeling people, I find Trump’s admonitions against his rivals, opponents and detractors to be crass and baseless. Commentators on the liberal-democratic side (pretty much all I watch) will usually mention the psychological concept of projection. This intuitively makes sense based on my experience with people of his ilk. When they accuse you of stealing it is because they are thieves. When they accuse you of corruption it is because they are corrupt. And when they accuse you of being a low-IQ individual, it is a clear sign that they are probably a person of both low-IQ, but more importantly, a person of very-low-EIQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient). In fact, given that most people learn how to comport themselves in kindergarten, and that happens at age five, my simple math tells me that if that quotient is calculated like IQ is calculated, EIQ = 5 ÷ 72 × 100 = 6.94 for Mr. Trump. That feels more or less right by my measure. If we do his IQ math it’s harder at his age. But I think he is mimicking Jim Jung Un so here goes, IQ = 35 ÷ 72 × 100 = 48.61. That too feels more or less right. What is the going rate on stable geniuses?
Of course, this simple methodology makes Kim Jung Un at an EIQ = 5 ÷ 35 × 100 = 14.29 and an IQ = 72 ÷ 35 × 100 = 205.71. But would anyone consider Trump to be average or normal? One thing for sure, the only world leader (besides Xi and Putin, who have to sell him stuff) willing to stand next to him is Trump and we all know that the best way to make yourself look smart is to stand next to someone plumb dumb. By that standard, I think I’m inclined to declare Kim Jung Un to be brilliant.
I’m not satisfied yet in declaring our President to be an idiot. I want more evidence to disprove that possibility. Let’s look at his school records. Oh, wait a minute, that’s right, he won’t let us do that and has threatened the administrations at all schools he has attended that releasing his school records would result in a lawsuit. It’s possible that he really prizes his humility, I suppose. Maybe we can look at his earnings and tax records to show how well he has done financially. That’s not perfect, but it is an indicator. Wait, wait, wait, that’s not possible either. He has that whole audit thing going on and simply doesn’t want to share his financial records and make life more difficult for the IRS. That’s so thoughtful. He has also stood up for his accountants and bankers who want to protect him and who he has conveniently sued to make it easier for them to say that they simply can’t provide Congress his records.
Trump has just watched a Sumo Wrestling match with President Abe of Japan. I’m told by an unnamed source that he was very curious about the oranges of the sport. President Abe told him that was an astute observation and how about a good friendly trade deal. President Trump said he would do that if Abe would stop devaluing the Yuan and say that Joe Biden was a poop-head. Abe is said to have agreed wholeheartedly and then took him to the golf course for a round of pro-Trump golf.