May 30, 2025

No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great mass of the plain people.

H. L. Mencken (1880–1956), American journalist, literary critic, Chicago Tribune, 19 September 1926, Jay p.256

How much of your success as a politician hinges on the lack of intelligence of the people who elected you? If you could wave a magic wand, and double the average elector’s intelligence quotient (IQ), what consequences would that have for your career?

Behold the fundamentally flawed foundation of representative democracy.