Eight Ways Trump Is the Smartest in the Land

So this is the ant farm we live in now: Trump wants to stack his IQ up against his Secretary of State's. He hints broadly that he knows exactly how that contest would come out.

Which reminds me of dead old Socrates: “I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”

Trump is no Socrates. (And for the record, Tillerson did not call Trump "a moron." He called him "a fucking moron."

Smart people who think they're smarter than everybody else create problems for themselves (might call them "self-inflicted wounds"). In the interest of understanding our head of state, seen through the gauzy screen of "high IQ" that he prefers, we offer Eight Ways Trump Is a Smart Person:

1. Smart people are overconfident, and they let praise go to their heads, giving them an inflated sense of their own infallibility. It's dangerous to always expect you'll win at everything.

2. Smart people push other people too hard. They set the bar too high, and when their "underlings" take too long or don’t get things quite right, well ... expect a storm. Smart alecks push even harder, and because of their overconfidence (see no. 1 above), they beat up other people emotionally as unworthy and simply lesser human beings.

3. Smart people always need to be right. Being right, in fact, becomes a part of their identity, so any admission of wrongness or error endangers the overconfidence (see no. 1 above).

4. Smart people lack "emotional intelligence." Winning is all that matters (see nos. 2 and 3 above). People's "feelings" and "emotions" (just weaknesses to be ignored) are irrelevant, and in fact emotional attachments (love, empathy, fellow-feeling) are just hindrances to always winning.

5. Smart people give up when they fail. Because failure is unthinkable, because winning is the only thing, when failure inevitably comes, Mr. Wise Guy is bludgeoned by reality and thinks it's the end of the world.

6. Smart people fail to develop grit. "When smart people can’t complete something without a tremendous amount of effort, they tend to feel frustrated and embarrassed. This leads them to make the false assumption that if they can’t do something easily, there’s something wrong with them. As a result, smart people tend to move on to something else that affirms their sense of worth."

7. Smart people think they're good at multitasking. They like to have many things going on at once, and if many things aren't going on, they're impatient. Multitaskers tend to think they're excellent at multitasking, but very often they're not. Jumping from one thing to another without completing anything is not an efficient use of time.

8. Smart people have a hard time accepting feedback or constructive criticism. They tend to under-value the opinions of others, or feel contempt for them. So they also tend to think that any other opinions are not worthy of attention. Which often leads to toxic relationships (see no. 2 above).

(Hattip: Travis Bradberry, "Eight Ways Smart People Act Stupid")