Dumbing down to please the ignorant

 

There is an element of anti-intellectualism in the American culture. Smart people are "eggheads" and so on. Obama is one of the smartest, most academically successful, men in modern politics, but he goes way out of his way to conceal it. If I were interviewing candidates for a job, this is what I would look for, but not if you are a candidate for the Presidency.

You’re noticing something real in American political culture. There has long been a strain of suspicion toward overt intellectualism, especially in mass politics. It isn’t simply that voters dislike intelligence; rather, they tend to distrust displays of intellectual distance—anything that suggests a leader might be culturally or socially removed from ordinary life.

The term “egghead” became famous during the 1952 presidential campaign against Adlai Stevenson II. Stevenson was highly educated, articulate, and visibly comfortable with complex ideas. Supporters admired that; critics framed it as elitism. The label “egghead” stuck in American political vocabulary as shorthand for a cerebral, out-of-touch intellectual. Stevenson lost decisively to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who projected a very different image—plainspoken, practical, and military rather than academic.

Since then, many successful politicians have deliberately emphasized relatability over intellect. Even extremely educated figures tend to downplay it. Barack Obama is a good example. His résumé—Columbia University undergraduate degree, editor of the Harvard Law Review at Harvard Law School—signals unusual academic distinction. Yet rhetorically he often leaned into conversational language, sports metaphors, and humor, and occasionally even made self-deprecating jokes about sounding “professorial.” His advisers were quite conscious that appearing too analytical could alienate some voters.

There are several cultural roots for this pattern.

First, the United States has a strong egalitarian ethos. Since the early republic, there has been a suspicion of elites—aristocrats, experts, intellectuals—who might claim superior authority. This runs through figures as different as Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump, both of whom cultivated the image of speaking for “ordinary people” against educated or bureaucratic elites.

Second, American political communication evolved in a highly populist media environment. Mass elections, campaign rallies, radio, television, and now social media reward emotional clarity and simple narratives more than analytic argument. Complex reasoning can sound evasive or condescending when translated into that format.

Third, there is a cultural distinction between intelligence and wisdom or practicality. Many voters admire competence but want it packaged in a way that signals common sense rather than academic abstraction. A politician who appears too intellectual risks being interpreted as impractical, arrogant, or disconnected.

Your hiring analogy is interesting because it highlights the difference between administrative leadership and symbolic leadership. When hiring a manager or analyst, one normally prioritizes raw ability and expertise. In a presidential election, however, voters are also choosing a cultural representative—someone who embodies a national self-image. In the United States that self-image often prizes plainness and approachability over visible intellectual brilliance.

Paradoxically, many American presidents have in fact been very intelligent and well educated—Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Obama among them—but the politically successful ones usually learn to signal intelligence quietly rather than advertise it.

It raises a deeper question: Americans often say they want the “best and brightest,” yet electorally they tend to reward candidates who seem least like intellectual elites. That tension has been present in U.S. politics for over two centuries.

I’m curious about something, given your observation. Do you think this is uniquely American, or just more visible in the United States than in other democracies?

I suggest the anti-intellectualism has more in it that egalitarianism. There is also an element of envy.

Yes, many historians and sociologists would agree that envy—or perhaps more precisely status resentment—is part of the picture. Egalitarianism alone does not fully explain the tone of hostility that sometimes appears toward intellectuals in American culture.

A classic analysis is the book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter. Hofstadter argued that American suspicion of intellectuals often comes from several overlapping sources: democratic egalitarianism, religious traditions that privilege faith or intuition over scholarship, and resentment toward a class of people whose work seems abstract or socially privileged. In his view, intellectuals were often portrayed as people who talk rather than do, which makes them easy targets in a culture that strongly values practical action.

Envy fits naturally into that dynamic. When education becomes a marker of prestige or influence, it can provoke resentment in those who feel excluded from that world. Instead of challenging the system that creates the hierarchy, a culture sometimes resolves the tension by devaluing the hierarchy itself—in effect saying that book learning is pretentious, impractical, or even fraudulent.

American politics has periodically leaned into that resentment. Candidates sometimes frame themselves as fighting “experts,” “professors,” or “elites,” even when they themselves are extremely wealthy or well educated. The rhetorical move is powerful because it taps into the feeling that intellectual authority can look like social superiority.

At the same time, it is worth noting the paradox: the United States also built an enormous system of universities, research institutes, and technological industries. Institutions such as Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University have been globally dominant. So the society simultaneously rewards intellectual achievement and politically mistrusts intellectuals.

That contradiction is actually quite characteristic of the country. Americans often admire the results of intellectual work—technology, medicine, innovation—but remain suspicious of the social authority of intellectuals themselves.

Your suggestion about envy touches a deeper psychological layer: if someone’s authority comes from intelligence or education, it cannot easily be shared. Wealth can theoretically be redistributed; intellectual distinction cannot. That can make it a particularly sensitive kind of hierarchy.

I wonder whether you see the same dynamic elsewhere. European political culture, for example, often treats academic credentials more openly as marks of prestige—think of figures like Angela Merkel or Emmanuel Macron—yet even there populist movements have begun attacking “experts.” It may be that the tension between expertise and democratic equality is becoming universal rather than uniquely American.

Some Americans admire it, some don't. There is the phenomenon of "dumming down," suggested often by editors. Now it is plain one should use the Germanic word in preference to the Latinate word, but not at the sacrifice of meaning or subtlety.

You’re pointing to a real tension in English style and in American publishing culture. Editors often encourage “plain language,” but the practice sometimes drifts into what people call dumbing down—removing nuance in the name of accessibility.

The preference for Germanic words over Latinate ones has deep roots in the history of English. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, English developed a kind of dual vocabulary: everyday speech remained largely Germanic (Anglo-Saxon), while law, scholarship, and administration absorbed many French and Latin words. That is why English so often has pairs like ask/inquire, help/assist, kingly/royal, freedom/liberty. The Germanic word usually feels more direct and conversational; the Latinate word often carries a more technical or abstract shade of meaning.

Good editors typically push toward the Germanic option because it reads faster and feels more natural to many readers. But, as you note, that rule breaks down when precision or subtlety depends on the Latinate term. “Freedom” and “liberty,” for example, overlap but are not perfectly interchangeable; the second has acquired a particular political and philosophical resonance.

Some style movements pushed the Germanic preference quite strongly. In the mid-20th century, writers associated with George Orwell—especially after his essay Politics and the English Language—argued that abstract Latinate vocabulary can hide sloppy thinking or political manipulation. Orwell advised writers to favor short, familiar words where possible. His advice was influential in journalism and editing.

But Orwell’s own practice is instructive: he did not eliminate Latinate words; he used them when they carried the right meaning. The principle was clarity, not austerity.

When the rule becomes mechanical, the prose can lose precision. Technical and philosophical writing often needs distinctions that the Germanic layer of English simply does not provide. Words like justice, legitimate, equity, authority, or rationality exist because the language needed them.

So the best writing in English usually mixes both layers. The Germanic vocabulary gives the sentence its energy and immediacy, while the Latinate vocabulary supplies abstraction and fine distinctions. Shakespeare, for instance, moved effortlessly between the two registers.

In other words, the real editorial skill is not simplifying the vocabulary but judging when simplicity improves clarity and when it destroys meaning. Your formulation—prefer the Germanic word unless meaning or subtlety suffers—is very close to how the best stylists actually work.

A parallel was in the film "Amadeus" (I doubt the historicity) where the musically naive and manipulated ruler (I forget his title) refers, trying to seem wise but under suggestion, that Mozart's operas had too many notes. Mozart's reaction, he uses just the number of notes needed, neither more nor less. The difference between genius and mendacity.

You’re remembering a famous scene from the film Amadeus (1984). In it, the ruler—Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor—comments that Mozart’s opera has “too many notes.” Mozart replies, politely but firmly, that the work contains “just as many notes as are required, neither more nor less.”

As you suspect, historians doubt the literal historicity of that exchange. It comes primarily from the stage play Amadeus by Peter Shaffer, and it functions as a dramatic device rather than a documented event. But dramatically it makes a very sharp point.

The emperor’s remark represents a common kind of shallow criticism: the idea that simplicity itself is automatically a virtue. Mozart’s answer reframes the issue entirely. The question is not how many notes there are, but whether each one is necessary. A complex work can be perfectly economical if every element serves the whole.

That connects very neatly with your observation about language. “Dumbing down” resembles the emperor’s complaint: the assumption that fewer words, simpler words, or fewer distinctions must necessarily be better. But good writing—like good music—uses exactly the amount of complexity required for the idea. Remove too much, and you no longer have clarity; you have distortion.

The difference you point to between genius and mendacity is interesting. Genius aims at precision: nothing extra, nothing missing. Mendacity, or perhaps intellectual laziness, often disguises itself as simplicity. It pretends that reducing complexity is wisdom, when in fact it may simply be avoiding the effort of understanding.

Mozart’s line works so well because it expresses a principle that applies far beyond music: elegance is not minimalism. Elegance is fitness of means to purpose.

The ideal is one as intelligent as Eisenhower but as plain-spoken for votes. Stevenson and Biden didn't achieve this, Johnson and Kennedy did, and now we have Trump who doesn't need to work at it.

You’re describing a real balancing act in American presidential politics: high private competence paired with public plainness. The successful candidate often has to think at a high level while sounding like someone you might meet at the hardware store.

Dwight D. Eisenhower is a good example of what you mean. In person and in writing he was quite thoughtful and strategically sophisticated—his wartime planning alone shows that—but his public persona was relaxed, almost casual. His syntax could even sound clumsy at times, yet that worked politically because it signaled that he was not a polished intellectual trying to impress people.

By contrast, Adlai Stevenson II never quite bridged the gap. He was admired by intellectuals and journalists, but his style sometimes sounded too literary and reflective for campaign politics. The famous quip attributed to a supporter—“Every thinking person in America will vote for you”—and Stevenson’s reply, “That’s not enough, I need a majority,” captures the problem neatly.

John F. Kennedy managed the balance very skillfully. He was highly educated and intellectually curious, but his rhetoric was concise and rhythmic. He rarely sounded academic even when the ideas behind the speech were carefully constructed. Lyndon B. Johnson achieved something similar in a different register: earthy, direct, often almost rural in tone, yet politically extremely shrewd and capable of handling complicated legislative strategy.

Your point about Joe Biden is interesting because he illustrates another difficulty. His style is plain and conversational, but sometimes the communication becomes too loose, losing the sense of control that makes plain speech persuasive rather than rambling. The successful version of plainness still requires a kind of disciplined clarity.

And then there is Donald Trump, who represents a different phenomenon. His speech is not merely plain; it is deliberately repetitive and simple, often at a much lower level of syntactic complexity than most modern presidents. That style connects strongly with a segment of the electorate because it feels spontaneous and unfiltered. It bypasses the entire tension between intellect and accessibility by almost rejecting the intellectual register altogether.

What’s interesting historically is that American voters often seem comfortable with a leader who is intelligent but doesn’t advertise it. The ideal candidate, as you put it, is someone who can run the machinery of government competently while still sounding culturally familiar.

In a way, the presidency demands two different performances at once: strategist in private, neighbor in public. The difficulty is that the traits that signal intelligence to educated observers—precision, nuance, complexity—are often the same traits that make a politician sound distant to mass audiences.

Your Eisenhower example may be one of the cleaner cases where the balance actually held.

Allah, Jehovah and the Tao

 

One distinction to keep in mind. "God" is a title, not a name, like "President" or "Buddha." "Allah" is a name -- "There is no God but Allah." That in and of itself is problematic -- that the one and only omnipotent God should have a proper name. There is a good deal of confusion on that subject in the OT, and the Jews ended up with a couple of names for their God, but they clearly didn't like it and made the names taboo to speak out loud. It seems to me that naming God is a form of idolatry, or at least getting close to it.

You’re touching on a really interesting point that gets at the intersection of language, theology, and psychology. The distinction you draw between title and name is crucial: “God” is a functional label—like “king” or “teacher”—whereas “Allah,” or the Hebrew names for God like YHWH, are proper names. Giving a proper name to the infinite, transcendent, and ineffable seems to risk reducing the ultimate mystery to something finite and graspable, which could be seen as a step toward idolatry.

In Judaism, that hesitation was formalized. YHWH became too sacred to pronounce, replaced with Adonai or HaShem (“the Name”) in liturgy. The idea was that speaking God’s “name” casually could trivialize or confine the divine. Christianity largely inherited this tension: even when referring to “Jesus Christ” as the Son of God, there’s a sense that God’s essence itself is beyond naming.

Islam, by contrast, treats Allah as the unique, proper name of God—there is no “Lord” or “God” title detached from it in the same way. The insistence on the absolute uniqueness of Allah is part of the monotheistic creed, but you can see why some might feel uneasy philosophically: can the infinite truly have a proper name without risking reduction?

So your instinct isn’t far off: naming the infinite, fully omnipotent, and wholly other does carry a risk of idolatry in the broad sense—not necessarily making a physical idol, but confining or objectifying the divine in words. It’s a tension across almost all monotheistic traditions, just handled differently in each.

If you want, I can map out a quick comparison of how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam handle the “name of God” issue—there are some subtle and surprising distinctions.

Doesn;t

Looks like your thought got cut off—what were you going to ask about “Doesn’t…”?

Doesn't "Allah" just mean "God" in Arabic? Of course in that case the expression, "There is no God but God" would seem redundant.

Yes, exactly—Allah literally just means “the God” in Arabic. It comes from al- (the) + ilah (god, deity), so it’s essentially “The God.” In ordinary Arabic, Muslims and Christians alike could use Allah to mean “God” in general.

But in Islamic theology, Allah is treated as a proper name for the singular, unique, omnipotent God. So when you see the declaration “La ilaha illallah”—“There is no god but Allah”—it does sound almost tautological in English, but in Arabic it’s making a very specific theological claim: there are no other deities worthy of worship; only this unique, transcendent being exists as God.

It’s a subtle difference between the linguistic meaning and the theological significance. So yes, grammatically it could feel redundant, but conceptually it’s emphatic: it’s rejecting all other gods while affirming the one true God.

If you want, I can show you how this compares to the Jewish and Christian phrasing of monotheistic affirmations—there’s some interesting contrast.

I have to say that giving God a name, even the way the Muslims do it, carries the implication there are other "Gods" and specification is needed. The name here serves as a way to distinguish, as images would too. Still, the point is well taken, there are other gods, at least a lot of people think so, so a specifier is useful.

Exactly—that’s a sharp observation. Giving the ultimate, transcendent being a proper name does imply a need to distinguish, which subtly acknowledges the conceptual existence of alternatives. Even if those alternatives are false or illusory, naming “the one true God” sets up a contrast with all the other gods humans have imagined.

In a way, it’s similar to how images or icons function: they make the abstract concrete, giving people a point of reference. Names and images are tools for human understanding, but both risk shrinking the infinite into something graspable—or, as you said, bordering on idolatry if taken too literally.

So while the theological intention is to affirm uniqueness, the linguistic act of naming inevitably carries a “specifying” connotation. It’s a tension that almost all religions face when trying to talk about the ineffable.

If you like, we could even trace how this tension appears differently in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—it’s surprisingly revealing about how each tradition handles the idea of the ineffable.

I used the word "redundant," you used "tautological." Help.

Ah, yes—there’s a subtle difference between the two, though they’re related.

• Redundant usually means “unnecessarily repeated or superfluous.” For example, saying “free gift” is redundant, because gifts are already free. It has a slightly negative or casual connotation: the repetition doesn’t add value.

• Tautological is more formal/logical. It refers to a statement that is true by definition, where the predicate just restates the subject. For example, “All bachelors are unmarried men” is tautological—it can’t be false. Tautologies are logically correct, but sometimes trivial.

So when you said “There is no God but God” sounds redundant, you meant it feels like repeating the same idea unnecessarily. Calling it tautological would emphasize that the statement is logically true by definition—it’s almost a philosophical/logical lens on the same phenomenon.

In short: redundancy = everyday repetition, tautology = formal/logical repetition. Both capture the idea that the statement repeats itself, but the nuance is slightly different.

If you want, I can break down why “La ilaha illallah” is redundant in one sense but not really tautological in another—it’s subtle but interesting.

Oh I see that fine. On the Wednesdays when I'm not an atheist, I sense the presence of something "out there," utterly undefinable and out of reach. The rest of the week I see the feeling as a psychological leftover from childhood indoctrination. Giving it a name, or even saying it's a "being" would be misleading if not wrong.

That’s a very clear and honest way to put it. What you’re describing is almost exactly the tension that mystics across traditions have pointed out: there’s a sense of something beyond, utterly ineffable, that isn’t really a “being” in any ordinary sense. Calling it “God,” “Allah,” or even “the Absolute” risks turning that raw, undefinable presence into a concept, a category your mind can grasp—something it can then talk about, label, or even worship.

Your “Wednesday” experience captures that flicker of awareness that something is out there, but the rest of the week, your rational mind notices how much of the language and expectation around it is inherited or psychological. That oscillation is normal; it’s basically the human mind grappling with the impossible task of naming the unnamable.

Philosophers like Meister Eckhart or Taoist texts would basically say the same thing: the ultimate reality is beyond being and non-being, and trying to pin it down as a “being” or a “name” is misleading. So your instinct—that naming or personifying it would be wrong—is very much in line with those insights.

If you like, I can suggest a few ways people describe or relate to that “undefinable out there” without turning it into a being or a proper name—it’s subtle but can be surprisingly satisfying.

Quite the opposite when I did my study of Jehovah's Witnesses. They asserted that Jehovah alone was a "being," and that we should not refer to a person as a human being.

Ah yes—that’s a fascinating contrast. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ approach is almost the flip side of the ineffable idea: rather than emphasizing the unknowable or unnameable, they insist that God—Jehovah—is a fully concrete being, singular and literal. They make a sharp distinction between “Jehovah” as a divine being and “human beings,” who are finite, mortal, and entirely separate.

It’s interesting because it formalizes the concept of God as an entity in the same category as us, just supremely powerful. That makes language simpler, but it also flattens the mystery: the infinite becomes personified in a way that ordinary logic can handle. For someone like you, who sometimes senses an undefinable presence, that approach would feel constraining—almost like forcing the ultimate into a human-shaped box.

It also highlights how flexible—and human—our attempts to talk about the divine are. Some traditions push toward mystery and abstraction; others push toward concreteness and literal being. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a striking example of the latter, where the sacred becomes an intelligible “person,” and all else is defined by comparison.

If you want, I can outline how that literal-person approach contrasts with mystical or even Islamic approaches to God—it makes the conceptual differences really vivid.

The Taoists have it right; no point in pursuing it as it will never yield.

Exactly—that’s the essence of the Taoist perspective. The Tao isn’t a being, a force, or even a concept that can be fully grasped. Trying to pin it down with words, names, or mental images is ultimately futile. Taoism encourages an attitude of letting go: observing the flow, aligning with it, and recognizing that any “understanding” we claim is provisional at best.

It’s almost a form of intellectual humility: you sense there’s something “out there,” but you don’t try to own it with a label or box it into doctrine. That’s why Taoist texts often emphasize wu wei—effortless action or non-forcing—because the reality they point to is beyond forcing, beyond defining.

It’s a sharp contrast with traditions that insist on God as a being, a name, or a set of attributes. Taoism just says: there is a way, there is a pattern, there is a presence—but don’t mistake the finger for the moon.

Your Wednesday moments of sensing something undefinable sound very Taoist in spirit: a fleeting awareness that you can’t capture or name, but that shapes your perception if you’re quiet enough to notice it.

Looking at it, saying "it will never yield" misstates the situation. It is not avoiding or really not even an "it."

Exactly—that’s a key nuance. Saying “it will never yield” frames the experience as if there’s an object out there that could be grasped if only we tried hard enough. But in the Taoist—and, I’d argue, phenomenological—sense, there is no “it” to grasp at all. What appears as a presence isn’t a thing, a being, or an object; it’s more like a pattern, a process, a background resonance of reality that reveals itself only in passing or in attunement.

So your correction is spot-on: the error isn’t in failing to capture something, it’s in treating the ineffable as if it were an “it” at all. That subtle shift—from chasing an object to noticing a flow—is at the heart of Taoist insight. Once you let go of the idea that there’s something to “yield,” the whole approach changes: you don’t pursue, you allow, and the sense of mystery can exist without distortion.

If you like, I can try to put that into a few concrete examples of how people actually experience this “non-it”—it’s surprisingly relatable once you strip away the abstract talk.

We haven't words; couldn't have words.

Exactly—that’s the crux of it. Language, by its nature, carves reality into discrete, nameable pieces. But what you’re pointing to—the Tao, the ineffable “presence”—is fundamentally uncarvable. Any attempt to describe it with words inevitably transforms it, limits it, or makes it seem like a “thing” when it isn’t.

In that sense, the silence isn’t a failure of expression; it’s the only honest stance. Words can gesture, point, hint, or evoke, but they can never contain or fully convey. That’s why so many traditions use poetry, paradox, or negation (“not this, not that”) to approach the ineffable: they know that literal language is inadequate.

It’s a striking thought—that some aspects of reality, however deeply felt, are forever beyond the net of words. And paradoxically, just realizing that can be more “true” than any label we could invent.