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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Isn't this because most of the rhetoric you hear from politicians is targeted at the general public? They're specifically playing for an audience without the expertise to see through the obnoxious, bad-faith games. I hope first, that they don't do the same when behind closed doors and second, that if the public got better at whatever the LSAT tests, their strategies for communicating with the public would also change.

Well, rhetoric goes a lot of different directions for a lot of different reasons, but no, a lot of it is aimed at the most dedicated and smartest people out there, because that's where your activist hours and donor dollars come from. Moreover, there is evidence to show that smarter people aren't necessarily better at seeing through bullshit, but instead are just better at constructing and adapting bullshit to defend their own aesthetic and personal preferences and pre-existing intuitions.