@Stigma

Yes, naturally, intelligence is a product of evolution.

I believe the dimension of machiavellianism is independent of intelligence (re @Vermillion-Rx). It has to do with using other humans, as opposed of using nature. So, if human society is considered something positive, machiavellianism is basically parasitism. It's a strategy.

You can have stupid machiavellians. You see them everywhere. They try this and that small con. They eventually end up playing only with other stupids, because a smart guy figures them out.

Something I, and others, have been pondering, is the natural limit to intelligence. There's this unsolvable problem, death, for which there isn't a solution. We basically deal with it deceiving ourselves in a way or another. A bit too intelligent, and you might lose that capability, making you insane. The mad genius archetype, the bright kid who ends up with schizophrenia, etc.

And something that I have been pondering, is another problem of the same magnitude as death: realizing that your mother is not protective, but is taking advantage of you. The devouring mother is probably another route through which bright kids end up mentally unstable.

@Stigma

I figure a revulsion reaction to “socialism” is a deeply ingrained cultural phenomenon of Americans

Indeed. It's used as a thought-stopper: "this smells like socialism, don't even think about it"!

Now, the claims about Marxism and the Jews... It's actually quite simple, but you need to dig a bit to the emergence of the ideology, not its (mis)application.

Marx was a Jew. There was not a Jewish state back then. So, Jews worldwide either had to imagine a state of their own (as mercenaries to global forces, which is what came to be), or imagine an abolition of all borders and a fraternity of all humans, whereby they would be OK with just the human identity. That was Marx's vision. In total contrast to Zionism.

That's why it's ridiculous when people (Hitler as well) paint socialism as a Jewish conspiracy.

@adam-l

Hitler's obsession was against Marxists (which he conflated with Jews), and he specifically declared that they had nothing to do with these kind of socialists.

Now, I’m not talking to the veracity of his claims, but in Mein Kampf, Hitler talks at length about the Bolshevik’s influence on the German war effort during WW1.

Now if you think there’s anything in the historical claims of the Bolshevik revolution actually being a Jewish revolution, then the tantalising thread would be the jews subsequently demoralising Germany, pushing the culture of the Weimar Republic and even negotiated the treaty of Versailles between themselves.

I digress slightly, but the throughline is that Marxists are a jewish ideology. Again, I don’t make any claims of my own as to the veracity of the truth in that.

Anyway, all that being said, I figure a revulsion reaction to “socialism” is a deeply ingrained cultural phenomenon of Americans. I don’t mean that in an antagonistic sense, just that I find Americans the most difficult to have a pragmatic or even utilitarian discussion on socialist policy. I can’t even propose it to them with an ethnic agenda!