When stupid people get together, they tend to elect stupid candidates. Those candidates, once in office, appoint other stupid people to help them mismanage the government. Naturally, stupid politicians make stupid decisions. And stupid decisions, like a biblical plague rain chaos and destruction on everything they touch.
That, in a nutshell, is a brisk and brutal diagnosis of our current political condition.
But what about the so-called smart people? Are they truly intelligent if they keep letting the proudly ignorant run the country—and ruin their lives in the process? A genius who surrenders the steering wheel to a blindfolded clown isn’t a genius at all; he’s just a polite passenger on the road to nowhere.
There was once a time when a stupid person had the humility to recognize he needed the expertise of smarter minds. That time has passed. Today, asking for advice is seen as weakness, and expertise is treated with the same suspicion once reserved for door-to-door preachers. Guardrails? Who needs ’em when you’ve got overconfidence and a social media following?
The rise of stupidity in America isn’t a fluke—it’s a feature. For at least a quarter century, our culture has glorified the simple-minded and vilified the competent. Stupidity has become endearing, even charming. Meanwhile, intellect and nuance are treated as elitist sins. Smart people are mocked, threatened, canceled (by both the woke and the anti-woke), and exiled from conversations (and decisions) they might actually improve.
So what happens? Smart people stop running for office. They quit their jobs. They retreat from the public square. Why volunteer for a high-stakes pie-throwing contest where the prize is harassment and the consolation is a subpoena? When idiocy becomes fashionable, intelligence becomes a liability.
If democracy dies in darkness, it may also perish in stupidity—with a laugh track.
Esot-eric 