Revenge of the Stupid People
The conjecture here is that what we have now are stupid* people taking over the political and economic system and exacting revenge on smart people
The conjecture here is that what we have now are stupid* people taking over the political and economic system and, while exacting revenge on smart people, trying to show that the so-called smart people have been lying about how complex and delicate things are. That these stupid people, by declaring themselves “smarter than all the rest”, are so smart that they can “manage” these complex systems without putting much thought or effort into it at all.
Stupid people are those that evaluate every policy from the point of view of what it (most obviously) does for them. There is no thought given about the benefits they receive from their political, economic and civic environment.
Stupid people ignore cause and effect. Their world view is always first order, often brutal and never subtle, “action”. Reactions to actions are not considered. They wonder why we have a justice system and don’t just kill or put people in prison when we all “know” they are guilty. They think money is wasted if it is invested in research and education. They think (e.g. safety) regulations are complicated obstacles to avoid. They think the existence of desperately poor people is fine as long as they are not seen.
Stupid people are confused and angered by the world. Things like airplanes and computers angers them instead of intriguing them. And they do not like it. They do not like it that there are people smarter than them. They do not like it that gratification is not always immediate. They do not like the fact that it takes effort and time to learn things that other people know.
Stupid people have a hard time imagining that other people are just like them. Having to be polite to people confuses and angers them. People’s expectation of civility and fairness and equal rights confuses them.
Stupid people are everywhere. And they are tired of seeing “smart” people who appear to be enjoying the world more than they are.
Who are these stupid people?
Many billionaires are stupid people. What smart public person would declare that they are anti-democracy and anti-women and anti-nonwhite-males in a society like the U.S. with so many guns. How many tens of thousands of mercenaries will it take to protect them if they should ever want to leave their underground bunkers?
Right-wing politicians are stupid people. Authoritarianism is a Ponzi scheme with only the person at the top calling the shots and everyone else only a boss’s temper-tantrum away from the gulag.
Anti-vaxx, anti-mask, anti-democracy, anti-woke, anti-DEI, anti-science, anti-academia, anti-reasonable censorship, anti-immigration, anti-any regulation people are stupid people. These people all prefer ideology over facts.
Politicians who pander to religions and billionaires and large corporations are stupid people. There are one good meme away from their constituents deciding they have been conned long enough and it is payback time.
Wallstreeters who believe republicans are better for the economy and Trump the best republican ever are stupid (ignoring history and the evidence in every single one of their technical charts).
All the above stupid people are also dangerous (which is why they are worth talking about)
All ordinarily stupid people are dangerous in a democracy. The above stupid people are more so because by joining ranks with the ordinary stupid people, they were able to wrest our democracy away from the smart people who built the democracy.
In the medium to long term, there then needs to be changes made to democracy so we are not terrorized by stupid people or changes made to reduce the number of stupid people.
Yes, predators who prey on us are ultimately responsible for the world’s problems being “unsolvable”, but our organizations, like governments, can keep them corralled if they are not perverted from with by predators and their conning of stupid people to give them power.
Use our Brains, Luke
In the short term, we have to use our brains to fight this war to win back our country. To win back our world.
This is war.
This is just another large project we have to work on, plan strategies for, and implement with step-by-step milestones and course corrections like any other complex project we have spent our careers working on.
We can call the project something cool (like Warp 10) which will take us to where we WANT to be, and not just undo the stupidity of the last few months.
A key principle of large projects is to set everybody’s expectations for what the outcome will be like.
Politicians afraid to not vote MAGA because they fear for their jobs and safety? Remind them about the Nuremburg Trials and what happens when we who are smart and sane inevitably win this war — what a life in prison will be like (obviously not put there by Democrats well-known for their fecklessness).
Similarly companies adopting white-male-supremacist hiring policies because they are now anti-DEI.
This is just another large project we have to work on, plan strategies for, and implement with step-by-step milestones and course corrections like any other complex project we have spent our careers working on.
We can call the project something cool (like Warp 10) which will take us to where we WANT to be, and not just undo the stupidity of the last few months.
What do you think? Time to start?
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*stupid people is an abbreviation for those with low IQ (unwillingness to learn, inability to apply whatever intelligence they do have to novel situations, and almost complete lack of humility) and EQ (inability to empathize with and care about other people who they do not know personally). The people we have in our current administration are stupid people who lack both.
Stupid doesn’t mean they don’t know how to hire smart people (Elon, once upon a time). Or be at the right place, right time and not become frightened and bail on a good thing (so many CEOs who got lucky and rode their labor force to make their millions and billions).