One of the only things I ever got a trophy for was coming in third place as a third grader in the entire elementary school, K-6, in the first annual chess tournament they ever gave.

I learned how to play chess from my mom a few days after they announced that in a few weeks they were going to be having a chess tournament.

I'm not very good at chess compared to a computer, but when I'm playing people, I win far more often than I do not, so I'm not bad at it either, but the only thing that I had going for me is that when I would play, I would think about what I did allowed my opponent to do.

Technically, I did not lose a single game until I had played everyone, but the last two games ended in stalemates, and the judges didn't know that you don't decide the winner of a stalemate by the number of pieces on the board.

At the time, I didn't either, so for a brief moment, I thought I was first place. The only reason I didn't get first place was that with the other top three chess players having had the opportunity to play me once, they were able to beat me on the second go round.

Needless to say, my school was in a fairly rural, south-eastern location, and it's not exactly like they "promulgated excellence in education" or anything fancy like that. Most people there turned every single syllable word into a two or three syllable word just by their pronunciation.

I said all of that to say, in support of the conversation at hand, that having the ability to think about the consequences of your actions, to logically look at the board that is laid down at you, and what can happen because of what you choose to do, is one of the default characteristics of high IQ people.

And when you think about the consequences of policies such as:

Murdering women for having an abortion.

Criminalizing the use of birth control.

Assembling a team of shittroopers to hunt down legal immigrants and imprison them and then throw them out of the country without due process.

Allowing those same shit troopers to murder your own citizens in broad daylight on camera and go unpunished.

Failing to punish felons for their crimes and instead appointing them to the highest office in the country.

Looking the other way as that same felon gives kickbacks and tax breaks to his already absurdly ultra-rich buddies just for the funsies.

And so many more things that no single post can fairly describe them, then it becomes incredibly difficult to be even a moderately moral person and vote conservative.

I say that it is practically impossible to be anything like a moral person and vote for conservatism when you have the intelligence to see what conservatism stands for.

The grand majority of these people are what you call single issue voters, and that's because a single issue voter is too stupid to actually think about the issues.

Their thinking can barely handle anything more than, "immigrants = bad, trans = bad, abortion = bad, woke = bad".

They do not stand a chance against the propaganda machine that they paid $1400 for at the Apple Store, telling them what to think and making their conclusions for them and parroting what the computer told them to say.

I know I am also vulnerable to propaganda. I am not trying to prop up the other side. I am just saying that conservatism has, by and large, always been the party of making the rich white people richer and whiter, and the only reason why the grand majority of people support them is either because they hope to one day be the richer, whiter person or they have been conned by the rich white people.

And although you can easily fool smart people, smart people tend to be more likely to see through the con.