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Morons like Ben Shapiro have no problem being confident, as hang ups and trepidation tend to be traits that come with intellect. Hard to second guess yourself if there's nothing going on upstairs.
Smart people tend to get in their own way, and are prone to depression and suicide. This really isn't a time you want to be living in as someone with above average intelligence, unless you're a high functioning sociopath, then you can run the table, as intellect + no regard/empathy for how your actions may harm others is a potent combo in this dystopia.
Most people don't even need intellect to "succeed" in western culture, just a severe empathy deficit, which is easier to cultivate the less cerebral you are. "Just don't think about it" is an idiot's comfort zone.
Ben Shapiro and the like may have awful backwards views but I don't believe for a second that they're stupid. They know a lot of what they're saying is bullshit but it doesn't matter because the checks keep rolling in.
Are they geniuses? Absolutely not. But they're not morons like the slackjaws they preach to.
I think that if you repeat something enough though, you will start to believe it even if were "reasonable" before. I mean it's impossible to know what these people are really like but I honestly don't believe they are "reasonable" anymore. They might have been reasonable before at some point in their lives, but I think fame can really fuck people up.
I unfortunately know a lot about Ben Shapiro and have heard HOURS of his show due to a coworker a few years ago. He's a failed screenwriter who saw a niche he could fill in right wing media targeting the youth.
He's genuinely conservative and does believe a lot of what he says but when you've been doing it for as long as he has, hyperbole catches up to you. You have to raise the stakes. That last thing was bad but this thing is VERY bad!
You also can't keep complaining about the same thing if you want people to keep tuning in...so you find smaller and smaller things to rage about. That's where we've been with Shapiro for the past several years.
But what I'm really trying to get at is that it's a cop out in his favor to call him stupid. Stupid people can claim ignoranc and get an eye roll. Call him evil, a provocateur, a greedy bastard profiting off misinformation, whatever...because it's the actions he willfully takes that are the issue, not his level of intelligence.
I've said for years that offhandly claiming someone is stupid trivializes the damage certain people can do.
It is easy to call someone stupid and write them off, because they're stupid. It comes with the unspoken rule that you think they're stupid and not worth thinking about.
Which is exactly what someone like Shapiro wants. The less you think it's important to counter his claims, the more damage he does. You can apply this to most conservatives.
Absolutely. It's like giving them an excuse.
Basically what happened to Andrew "Dice" Clay. He was just a comedian and the "Diceman" was just a character hey played on stage on occasion. But people kept demanding he play the "Diceman" so that became his act all the time. And since he got positive reactions to that act eventually he just became that person all the time.
'The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.'
-Bertrand Russell
It's Russell's corollary to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.