Oh, yes. I am fine with the idea that every human – regardless of their occupation or their results on an IQ test – can engage in something that could be called “stupidity.”

Absolutely everyone makes stupid mistakes. Absolutely everyone holds at least a few stupid beliefs.

But I also think when we encounter those aspects of a person, we can use better words to describe the concept. Words that don’t have a social darwinist connotation. Words that no one mistakes for “permanent, unchanging” attributes.

Like: I don’t like Trump supporters, but “Trump supporters have an impressive resistance to information that might challenge their worldview” is so much better than “facts don’t work on them: Trump supporters can’t read.”

The former describes a choice these people repeatedly make. The latter is immature name-calling.

And to be honest, my main gripe with conservatism in general isn’t even how its proponents handle information. (Everyone has to use heuristics to quickly estimate the reliability of a news article before believing the headline. They take as much issue with our heuristics as we take with theirs.)

My main gripe is that conservatism is a social darwinist philosophy at its core.

“Black people get lower grades. Clearly they have worse access to an environment that facilitates learning. We need to expand access to libraries and safe spaces so we can better foster these children’s growth” A progressive might say.

And the conservative will respond: “you had me at ‘black people get lower grades.’ That says everything there is to say. They just can’t compete. Strongest chimp gets the most bananas, you know?” /Shrug/

Giving up on people is practically the bedrock of modern conservatism. I would accuse them of being cruel before I would accuse them of being unable to read. I would accuse them of ignoring information that does not justify their cruelty before I would accuse them of being too stupid to process that information.