Rabbit CohenI used to buy into the common leftist idea that intelligence isn't real, that outside of people with intellectual disabilities, everyone is pretty much equally smart (albeit in different ways). And honestly? As a smart person, it made me less compassionate.
CyThe way I see it, smarts can work against you. You can get lost in logical labyrinths, and make big/multipart posts that nobody's gonna fucking read. Harder to fool yourself, and harder to not get upset when everything is one leap of intuition away from an atrocity. Holding intelligence as a virtue is kind of... like holding weight lifting as a virtue. It's a real thing, and some people are dumb as bricks, but should it really matter? Are we making it matter more than it necessarily does?
I'll respect someone who can bench hundreds of kilos, but I'll still treat everyone with the same basic kindness. Olympic athletes don't get free drinks, and a PhD doesn't grant you reserved seating. So that's how as a leftist, everyone can be "same same, but different."