this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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Leopards Ate My Face
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My only caution is to not always assume idiocy. You may underestimate evil.
Example: I consider myself a reasonably smart guy. I got the smart guy job and the smart guy degree. I also consider donald trump to be an incurious and generally incompetent moron.
But despite my smart guy credentials, and donald's obvious moronism...he convinced a third of the country to vote for him. That is a skill that I do not possess. That is a skill that very few possess.
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
Law #2 is at issue here. You and I would both probably outsmart a cat...until intelligence is measured by the ability to catch a rat.
He did not accomplish that by himself. The entire Republican party is responsible for that. The megadonors, the evangelicals, Fox News, the NRA, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, internet trolls, manosphere podcasters, all the way down to the lifelong down-ballot voters.
The Donald Trump that Trump voters see is not the same one you and I see, because theirs is nearly entirely fabricated from lies and omissions. They see fake successes and don't see real failures. Trump's benefactors, not Trump, constructed this alternate reality. And those voters have been living in this constructed reality for over a decade now, conditioned to protect it against all outside forces.
You're right, it's not just the idiocy of the country that put him there, but the evil of the conservative machine.
The machine exists for everybody, donnie was the one that turned it to his benefit.
I also can't do that.
According to Bonhoeffer, stupidity is a moral failing, not an intellectual one.
https://www.fisheaters.com/srpdf/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer-On_Stupidity.pdf
Interesting, I hadn't read that before. I do believe it is a moral failing too. Stupidity is cowardice. You pick one lane, one side, and then stick with it and stick your fingers in your ears to any contradictory evidence. Some people do this quite young and never change, and some people astoundingly start to do it in their 50s. That sort of mental rigidity makes no sense to me. We need to give these people a massive dose of shrooms and see if we can shake things up.
Dose your family at Thanksgiving. Make the political fights interesting