• nifty@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Well, you can’t know everything about everything, that’s why you have to collaborate with other experts so you can supplement each others knowledge.

    But every job has some reasonable expectations of knowledge and standards because that’s what doing it competently requires.

    Why is basic history and civics important for a congressperson? You’re essentially helping right laws and regulations which will impact generations to come, and if you’re uninformed you may be open to being manipulated or mislead. The double danger for anyone in congress is that foreign interests can also mislead or manipulate for malicious reasons, and not just greed reasons.

    So expecting basic level of information from a congressperson isn’t elitism, I’d say it’s a matter of homeland and national security.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The right wing have spent decades spinning competence, experience, education, etc…as elitism. Having hiring/firing power and billions at your command? That’s not elitism. Knowing things, and saying it out loud - that’s the REAL elitism.

      I think that’s partly why the “term limits” mantra (and the ageism that often goes with it) is rather annoying. The anti-intellectualism that is typically at root of that is why.

    • Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      I’m not sure how accurate I could be on the spot with no resources at my fingertips but she posted this online, I find it more damming that she wouldn’t even verify something so easy to look up online. Why would she just blindly offer up her ignorance when even with as bad as google is these days the first link I get when searching is to the governments national archive website and lists not only their names but their birthdays, no cross referencing even required…