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Comment by HenryBemis | Hacker News Reader

That is the BEST trick politicians ever play on voters. They prefer to be called "stupid" while the end up their political careers millionaires, and getting hire in large-ehvil-corps doing FA for 6-7 digits per year.

I believe one of the filthiest snakes out there is Boris Johnson; yes the lunatic with the silly hair, who can recite HOMER in ANCIENT GREEK. And people still think he is 'stupid'? And all he does is 'mistakes'???? He is the filthiest of all snakes - except from his true masters (who is not the people).

So.. yeah. If they end up broke and in jail, they are stupid. If they end up working for 7 digits, and you cannot afford a home.. well..

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This is also known as obfuscating stupidity.

If you remember the television show, Columbo, starring Peter Falk, he's the Ur example I go to.

This conclusion reframed my views of certain politicians, popularly assumed to be blithering idiots.

You don’t get there by being incompetent, you get there by being amazing at manipulation, cunning and whatever the positive coded synonyms of those words are.

Butchering common phrases on live TV, or spouting verifiable falsehoods are all part of the game. I feel stupid myself for not playing it as well.

> amazing at manipulation, cunning and [etc]

I think someone can be very good at those and also very stupid when it comes to, say, encryption and societal side effects thereof. In fact I think it's quite common. Intelligence is multi-dimensional.

An intelligent person can understand what is encryption if they really want to. A member of a parliament that is trying to revoke all encryption, everywhere, does it because his/her masters demand so, not because they care.

Also, a good politician hates 'encryption' because they can't read your messages, read your mind, so you are dangerous because you can have independent thought which they cannot identify in order to manipulate.

Facebook/Cambridge Analytica is an amazing example for this.

"Boris Johnson, people always ask me the same question, they say, 'Is Boris a very very clever man pretending to be an idiot?' And I always say, 'No.'"

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