Since James Madison's 1815 Address, the 'linguistic standard' of the State of the Union speech has plunged. As The Guardian notes, the lowest on record was George H.W. Bush's 1992 address - only just beating Obama's 2011 address for 'dumbest' speech ever. Whether this is representative of the American people as a whole or the lowest common denominator is unclear but one thing in this evening's speech comes to mind; if you were the President, would you invite, as your personal guest, a CEO who 1) has overseen massive wealth destruction in the last six months, 2) refuses to spend his massive cash hoard in the USA, and 3) outsources his manufacturing to china? Dumb and dumber indeed...
Using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test the Guardian has tracked the reading level of every state of the union
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The president always appeals to a certain intellectual level. I would estimate <70-90 IQ. Anyone above that level can tell the difference between fairy tales/blatant propaganda and reality.
ReplyDeleteThe level of understanding is around 40 to 50 IQ , his doesn't go beyond that.
ReplyDeleteHe appeals to the poverty level people which are growing to 60% population.
He smokes , he drinks and he lies , need I say more, no religion.
The average American would not understand him if he spoke at Madison's level.
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