I am really tired of liberals and lefties posting and writing about how stupid Trump is, or how stupid the right wingers or conservatives are.

Or, more recently, and more intelligently, a high IQ Libertarian friend in responding to the latest intelligent conservative (George Will) severely criticizing Trump and the elected officials who support him, saying “The right has fractured cleanly along IQ lines.”

There are three things wrong with this analysis. First, neither Trump nor his supporters are uniformly low IQ. And, aside from pure IQ, they are clearly very intelligent with regard to how to get and maintain money and power. So, it’s not true that they are stupid.

Second, it is lousy strategy for folks who want to remove Trump and those like him from power to yack about their stupidity. Half the people in the country have below average IQs, by definition. Many, if not all, of those folks have been told they are stupid–as children in school and perhaps also as adults. It is a wound, a felt inadequacy. At the same time, those folks, despite those insults, really feel that they are smart and that they get things the pointy heads do not get. (Check out the first verse of Todd Snider’s “Statistician’s Blues” on this subject). So when a group that is roundly criticized for being stupid (Trump’s cadre) rises ‘above’ it all and gets power, that is a beacon for that large group of Americans to feel vindicated and to get behind someone who understands them and wants them and seems to be in some important way, like them.

Third, and most important, it is simply beside the point. The problem with Trump, and the danger of Trump, is not about IQ, or hand size, or skin tone, or silly hair. The problem is lack of integrity and principles. Immorality. Complete lack of appreciation for the principles of democracy (for example, that we need the press, not matter how obnoxious they seem to the powerful, to balance that power, to critique it, and to keep the rest of us informed; that there are three branches of government that were built by our founders as a system of checks and balances, etc.).

Trump and his people did not tear gas peaceful protesters in a church yard–including one of the ministers of that church–so that Trump could get a ‘religious’ photo op because they are stupid. They did it because they are immoral, because they have no principles as we generally understand that term (is it a ‘principle’ to stand for nothing but money and power?). Trump does not rail against the free press, calling it the ‘enemy of the people’, because he is stupid. He does it because his immoral calculus tells him that he can push his followers away from the press. If he keeps them away from the press, he keeps them away from valid criticism of his policies and thereby keep them enthralled. He does it with an evil intelligence; his tactics work. They are against everything this country stands for. But they work.

So let’s work, whether we are conservative, liberal, or leftie, to remove Trump and his sycophants from office and replace them with people who have integrity and intend to uphold the principles of democracy.

And stop worrying about, and talking about, who is “stupid”.