People Are Stupid

I’m still processing why the people of the United States once again voted for Donald Trump, and it will take me a long time to understand how this country believes Trump is fit to sit behind the Resolute desk once again. I hate to say this, but this vote has shown me that people do not believe in democracy. Tocqueville wrote the following;

“Democratic republics are more likely to perish through misuse of power than through lack of it.” — Tocqueville Democracy in America pg. 298 A new translation by Arthur Goldhammer

It’s as if Tocqueville looked into the future, saw Trump what he would do, and provided his words as a warning for us. Unfortunately, if any of Trump’s acolytes ever read Tocqueville, their behavior to date shows they are working towards the dismantling of the democracy many claim they cherish.

I often find myself asking, ‘What are these people thinking? Do they not see what Trump wants to do? Why do they believe Trump gives one iota about them? Do they think they can control this man and that living under an autocracy is a better form of governance?

These are not hard questions to answer. All these supporters of Trump have to do is pick up a book, and, oh snap, I forgot, these same Trump acolytes have banned all the books that would provide them the information they would need to understand what they have done along how it worked out for those who thought their authoritarian leader gave a damn about them.

The funny thing is those who know Trump know he is a self-centered, ignorant imbecile but willingly yield to his whims and wishes, thinking he will grant them some favor. It resembles those folklore tales where someone finds a genie in a bottle. Let it out, hoping to get three wishes, only to realize that without concise specificity, such as wishing for a million bucks and suddenly finding themselves in the middle of a herd of really horny male deer and suddenly realizing you’re the only female deer in the herd.

Seventy-five million people voted to put Trump back in the Whitehouse believing he is going to give them their wishes of secure borders, lower gas and grocery prices, encourage them to ramp up their wanton hate for anyone who doesn’t fit their criteria to be part of their ‘Christan Nation’ fostering the belief to bring balance back to the country by need ridding the country of a made up issue they have described and ‘wokeness’ this is their plan for making American great again.

What this election has given us is not a person who is going to do what is suitable for the country, as he claims, but what is going to make him and his already rich backers even more wealthy as the people find out too late their rights have been stripped away the same way the frog realizes it’s in a pot of boiling water and too weak to jump out.

When I try to understand why people vote against their interests, I cannot reconcile it. These individuals have done what Timothy Snyder advised them not to do: obey in advance.

“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.” — On Tyranny Twenty Lessons from The Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder, pg. 17

As I watched and read what Trump was saying, I didn’t hear anything portraying the country as prosperous, where unemployment is at an all-time low, the stock market is at an all-time high, and infrastructure projects are getting done.

What I did hear and read was how the country was falling apart: Haitians were eating people’s cats and dogs, gangs were taking over towns, and all the dumbass comments on wokeness.

Article after article on Trump’s campaign demonstrated a fatal flaw in the democratic process: voter apathy. We have shown the opposite with our voter participation for a country that places freedom and the right to vote as its highest values.

The fact the people chose to give the presidency back to Trump after the Biden administration fixed what Trump broke and is bringing it back to a level before Trump was in the office causes me to agree with the following recently;

“To effectively self-direct, the individual must have the cognitive capacities for integration and abstraction. They must be able to observe the particulars of a situation, including their position in it, and relate them to one another and to a larger context in which they may be embedded. With this systemic understanding of the larger context in which they may be embedded. With this systemic understanding of the situation, the individual can discern its dynamics in light of the various causal influences that are operating on it and the various effects that different interventions may have. This enables the individual to act in a way that is not simply a response evoked by a stimulus but rather reflects a broader consideration of the nature of the stimulus, and possible responses to it. Thus the individual is not only able to act in a presumably more effective way but also in a more fully self-directed one.” — Democracy Devouring Itself: The Rise of the Incompetent Citizen and the Appeal of Right Wing Populism, by Shaw W. Rosenburg.

The individual must have the cognitive capacities for integration and abstraction. In other words, the ability to think logically and know the difference between the truth and bullshit. And once they have separated the bullshit and recognized the truth make the right decision for themselves and, eventually, the country.

For a long time, I believed the American people thought long and hard about who they wanted as their country’s leader. It was no different for me in this election, but it became clear that the American people have lost the cognitive ability to make logical decisions. The evidence is indisputable.

Donald Trump propagated and supported a riot so he could stay in office. He has yet to admit that he lost to President Biden in a free and fair election. He continues to lie about the economy, at this moment, one that is ever far better than it was under Trump’s idiocy of a presidency.

He is an agitator, pitting people against each other, something he has always done. Trump thinks it funny and doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process. Donald Trump and I will never affix the title of President to his name. He is an evil, vicious, and psychologically sick being, as pointed out by the following:

“Trump embodied a specific personality type: an unbridled, or extreme, present hedonist. As the words suggest, present hedonists live in the present moment, without much thought of any consequences of their actions or of the future. An extreme present hedonist will say whatever it takes to pump up his ego and to assuage his inherent low self-esteem, without any thought for past reality or for the potentially devastating future outcomes from off-the-cuff remarks or even major decisions.” — The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, pg. 23.

Leopards don’t change their spots, and evil people do not stop being cruel. 

You can count on Trump to be faithful to his word, and the next four years will be nothing more than him pursuing those he has on his enemies list. 

There will be a time when many of our descendants will ask the question, ‘Why did our forefathers agree to elect someone like Donald Trump?’ They will answer in the following manner,

“People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it true or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.” — Wizard’s First Rule, Terry Goodkind, pg. 397

Goodkind’s words provide a reasonable explanation I can accept for what the American people did in this recent election. Believing that Trump would make life better for them, they have again voted against their interests. Goodkind was right; People are stupid!