it's not stupid if it works (taps head)
this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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The ruling class are the ones with insatiable ambition and no morals. Intelligence doesn't matter as much as willingness to abuse others.
The willingness to abuse others is low intelligence
nah these have nothing to do with another. they're orthogonal properties.
Checks notes: "All men are created equal..." Maintains slavery and women can't vote.
Nope, they've always been morons.
They had a very narrow definition of what counted as "men" and used that to justify removing rights from people.
Was there a time when they weren't?
Based on everything I learned about history from watching Blackadder, probably not.
I mean....
You know....
Like for a bit....
Remember during the French Revolution where, when told that her people were starving because they didn't have any bread, Marie Antoinette wondered why they don't just eat cake? Rich people have always been idiots who believe they're smart. They live simple lives due to the luxury they enjoy, and wonder why poor people without such luxuries think life is so complicated.
not to defend french royalty, but she didnt say that, im certain she wouldnt have thought it either.
to think the rich are unknowingly oppressing their people is a stupid idea, they know where their cake comes from, and they want it because you can't have it.
They were NEVER smarter. At most at one time they had more leisure time and access to books and tutors when reading and books were rare. That made them more educated, and they want to go back to that desperately.
I dont think much of our ruling class wants to go back to reading, looking at the way they... are.
they don't want to be more educated than they already are, they want to be more educated than us. they're doing it by destroying the public school system, keeping tertiary education prohibitively expensive, eroding trust in experts through anti-intellectualism, and promoting the spread of misinformation
Exactly. They want to be perceived as smarter (basically look down on the unwashed masses.) They don't want to do the work to be more educated. Hence the hurdles they can put in front of the poors while they get to pay for fastpass to skip the line directly into the ivy leagues.
They read, a lot more than you probably realize, and probably a lot more than the average person.
They also have access to teams of analysts.
Have you read the "analysis" on the 2024 election?
I think that "analyst" is just fancy talk for their relatives who dont have another job when its not an actual scientific field cause I have worked with real analysts.
Sure they are more literate but also the way they balk at expanding their knowledge makes me think they aren't reading much worth it.
They have access to money and trial and error with more room to make more errors than the average person.
They've always been morons about something. Just seems now that they are morons about damn near everything.
Yeah, at least like their grandparents had interesting and clever schemes about money that made you feel like they thought it through even if they were largely incapable of anything else.
Currently it feels difficult to assume they think about anything.
You've bought the image they're selling. If you think they're idiots, it just gives them another mechanism to manipulate you.
I'm no fan of Bush Jr, but go watch some of his speeches.
Sometimes he says "nuclear", sometimes he says "nuke-u-lar".
That's someone putting on an act. No one says it both ways.
Go watch any politician's speeches, look for the subtle variations in their behaviours.
They're not morons, they're Machiavellian. Appearing to be a moron is just another tool in the box.
(That said, some genuinely are morons, but I'm not dismissing any one of them so lightly - even morons can be Machiavellian).
And in the end, all politics is about manipulation (or said more positively, inducing groups of people toward a shared goal). And politics exists in every single group of humans, no matter how small.
We occasionally get lucid leadership. As a whole group though, our leadership class has always had some glaring idiocy going on.
Hard times create strong men
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
Weak men create hard times
The cycle continues
While this sounds very cute, it's wrong. Times are always hard for most people. Point to a good time in history and I'll point to the people whose backs it was resting on.
You need to read Machiavelli
Sophistry has always been king. We've at least been moving away from divinely chosen, but when most people can't be bothered to understand sophistry exists...
Sophists "why think when you have the money to afford a thinking man for you"
The ruling class uses the morons. It's the perfect crime.
People need to understand we are cattle, from the bottom of the streets to the president.
R you saying this from an american perspective?
This idea is referred to as "Circulation of Elites" and suggests that every ruling-class has to be a minority group (E.G WASPs in USA, Normans in medieval england, "the rich" in general in most places), but they will always end up being displaced by another minority group. Because the key to securing power over, for instance, a country, is to be highly organised (only possible for a small, organised minority - never a/the majority group) and when in power, this group becomes complacent, so their grip over power slips and in comes the new elite minority ruling class
historically this is often identified/misidentified as Elites mixing, sexually/culturally, with majority groups or other groups. This is more usually a symptom but it could in some cases be the cause. The opposite - Inbreeding - is of course also bad, as is a refusal to learn new ideas (i.e refusal to mix culturally).
So... it's like a law of nature. Whatever elites do they slip out of power sooner or later. American elite have probably been in power for a "healthy" amount of time tbh.
just in case it's not clear, minority does not mean racial minority here. It's literally any group that is small and organised - christians or atheists, rich middle class or gangsters.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It only takes one