This was published at 911blogger.com on Nov. 7, 2008.
Cynthia McKinney’s .1% of the vote came from some places that, for me at least, were unexpected. I would not have expected proportionately more Louisianans to vote for her than people in any other state, for example, and though California doesn’t surprise me I would not have thought Maine, Arkansas and West Virginia would come out ahead of New York and Massachusetts.
This may be worth some cogitation. I voted for her mainly, but not only, because she was the only 9/11 truth candidate, i.e. the only person on the ballot (mine anyway, in Florida) who has had the guts to call for a real investigation of the major event that has been the excuse for the last 8 years of horror perpetrated by the Bush-Cheney gang. Was this also her attraction for the voters in Louisiana, Arkansas, and West Virginia? We can be pretty sure it was not the “black vote,” in this case, since Obama took that. What else was it, then, if not 9/11?
These states are generally considered “conservative,” are they not? Well, maybe we’ve got them all wrong. Just think about it. Percentage-wise, more than twice as many people in Louisiana voted for a woman who questions the official story of 9/11 than in New York or Massachusetts, those supposed hotbeds of dissent and intellectual acuity. There are (proportionately) more people in Arkansas and West Virginia who dare to think outside the box, on a par with California, than in almost every other state.
Now, I know I shouldn’t speculate. It’s not the “scholarly” thing to do. Someone who knows more about statistics (which could be almost anyone) or about the Greens’ campaign (could also be almost anyone) or about these states (again, almost anyone) will come along and rap my knuckles for their sassy tapping, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’m already an irredeemable bad boy, having back-talked two major icons that are on (I hope) my side of the barricades Chomsky and Peter Scott), but in this case my speculation is supported by some other statistics from a Zogby poll in 2006. This poll proved, in my opinion, that Chomsky may be dead wrong on the JFK assassination and 9/11, but he is dead right on many other things, in this case about the falsity of the assumption that education and media awareness (“keeping up with the news”) makes people more susceptible to the truth. It does not. In certain (crucial) cases, of which JFK and 9/11 are only two of many examples, these characteristics (accidents of birth and upbringing, usually) make them more susceptible to lies.
Which leads me to wonder if it is not precisely the relative lack of these qualities in the “backwoods” of Louisiana, Arkansas and West Virginia that makes them more susceptible to the truth, or more hungry for it (two inseparable propositions, I feel). I don’t mean to offend anyone. I happen to be an incurable romantic who believes that “intelligence” is a quality that has yet to be defined but most certainly does not equate with what we call “education,” “sophistication,” “media awareness,” “success,” or IQ. I know there are plenty of these types of people in Louisiana and Arkansas and West Virginia, too, but that’s not the point. The point is that maybe there are people out there whose minds are less burdened and confused (brainwashed) by what passes for “intelligent” commentary in the media that they are able to think for themselves. That, for example, would be what I would call intelligence.
I get in trouble on this subject, especially with fellow teachers, whose existence is based on judging what they all too easily call their students’ “intelligence.” Since these judgments are inevitably (though politically incorrectly) accompanied by generalizations about sex and ethnicity, my retort to this is that if there has to be any measure of intelligence at all, then let’s take the War Test. Given everything in your brain (part of which is in your chest), and all the information you can get, which box do you check when it comes to war? Yes or no? What more important question could there be to test intelligence? Everything that is you tells you either to go to war and send other people to war, or not to. That to me is the supreme test of intelligence, and you will notice that I am using no quotation marks around the word this time.
So where does this leave the so-called smart ones in the colleges and think tanks and corporate boardrooms and the Pentagon and the CIA and wherever else they hold sway, as opposed to, say, the dirt farmer with a hoe or the woman who cleans your house or the woman who picks up your garbage? And--this is my retort to the racists and chauvinists--where does that leave the white male, as opposed to the black male (and female), and to women in general? You don’t have to speculate on this one. There are polls. I remember one taken at the time of Gulf War 1, when the predominantly white male Congress voted with a slight majority (nevertheless an improvement over a similar vote in 1964 for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) to abandon the Constitution and let King George decide whether to wage war or not. A large majority of women, and an even larger majority of blacks, according to this poll, were against going to war. This is, I think, consistently the case.
Does this make black people more intelligent than whites, and women more intelligent than men? Oh no, I can’t say that, even as a white male, but damn it, isn’t it true? Isn’t it just as true, at least, as any other test result that presumes to judge intelligence, and categorize people along ethnic and sexual lines (and there are plenty that have done that). Ok, I say, you want race and gender, I’ll give you race and gender, and I’ll also give you an intelligence test that is much more scientific and accurate and revealing than anything you have. The results are in.
Ok, I’m being bad again, but I’m not sorry. Here is my tabulation (from C-Span) of McKinney votes, and I won’t call it a “state intelligence test,” but I do think the numbers are worth some thought: