The coming dark age of stupidity

The 2024 election damaged America in ways that will reverberate for generations to come. While every American will feel the pain, the targeting of scientists and intellectuals points in a direction reminiscent of China's Cultural Revolution — a self-inflicted lobotomy on a national scale.

A nation lobotomizes itself

Elon Musk and his gang of frattish techbros are purging federal employees on a massive scale, with all the care and caution of a ketamine addict waving a chainsaw over his head. They're decimating the specialists who safeguard us and keep society running smoothly, from park rangers to meteorologists to cancer researchers to public health experts, with no concern for the damage they inflict. If anything, they've shown a sadistic glee in firing people who've devoted their lives to public service.

Trump's administration is choking off federal funding for science, arbitrarily banning whole categories of research, and withholding grants across the board to punish universities that don't bow to his whims. He's sending gangs of ICE thugs to terrify legal immigrants, arresting and deporting foreign students without cause.

A crackpot anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is in charge of the nation's health watchdog, with the predictable consequence that infectious diseases like measles are already making a comeback.

On top of it all, the Trump administration is launching an economic war against the world. He's shredding trade treaties, including some that he himself signed, and imposing punitive tariffs based on formulas apparently derived from asking ChatGPT. He's tariffed tropical crops, like bananas and coffee, that the U.S. can't possibly produce for itself. He's tariffed islands inhabited only by penguins.

The magnitude of this error is breathtaking. Trump and his cronies fail to grasp the difference between tariffs and trade deficits. In other words, they don't see why it is that rich countries buy more from poor countries than vice versa.

The near-term result of this unforced blunder is a crashing stock market, skyrocketing prices for American consumers, and American businesses going bankrupt from retaliatory tariffs. This sheer, self-destructive stupidity has left economists' jaws hanging open in disbelief.

The only word that fits

I use the term "stupidity" advisedly. It's the only word that adequately captures the scope of what's happening in America.

What's going on here can't simply be chalked up to ignorance. Ignorance just implies a lack of knowledge, and that's not the root problem. There's no shame in ignorance — all of us are ignorant about some things. More importantly, ignorance is correctable with education, something that Trump and his cronies have no inclination to engage in.

It's also not just poor judgment. That term implies that the person in question was aiming at a good goal, but made bad decisions and so failed to achieve that goal. Again, this can be tempered and tamed by experience, but it too isn't an adequate descriptor of the situation we're facing.

The mindset I'm referring to is more malicious than either of these. It encompasses both ignorance and poor judgment, but also an aggressive disdain for the very concept of expertise. It's a mindset which refuses to admit that some people can know more than others. It refuses to admit that reason and evidence should guide our decisions, or that there are facts which don't bend to political ideology.

Instead, this mindset holds that inconvenient facts can be dismissed by sheer force of will. It holds that those who have the power can do as they like, have no need to study the problem or consult with anyone, and will never have to worry about the consequences. "Stupidity" is the term that best connotes this arrogant and willful rejection of reality.

All this poses the question: Has intelligence become a suboptimal survival strategy? Are we entering a new dark age where smart people will be persecuted and hunted?

Intelligence still pays dividends

The good news, such as it is, is that the economy runs on science and technology, and that's not going to change. We're not going back to a society based on rural agrarian labor and animal husbandry, or on people toiling in coal mines and sweatshops. Those eras are gone for good. No president can undo that, any more than he can give orders to the tide.

This means that economic rewards will still accrue to those who value knowledge, education, and the scientific method. In fact, the more that stupidity dominates our politics, the greater the advantages will be for those who choose a better path.

In a world of rational, science-driven public policy, individual bad choices are less dangerous. If the vast majority of people are vaccinated, creating a protective wall of herd immunity, a few anti-vaxxers can slip through without doing too much harm. If insurance prices climate risk correctly, people will be steered toward buying property in safe places. If higher education is widely available and affordable, most people will opt for it as the default choice, and the higher taxes paid by a prosperous society will create a safety net that catches the vulnerable.

On the other hand, if society no longer has these guardrails, then the foolish will feel the full weight of their folly.

When infectious disease is a real threat, people's choices to vaccinate, to wear masks in outbreaks, and to trust health experts about which drugs to take all matter. When voters in anti-science states chase away doctors with arbitrary restrictions and draconian laws, progressive states that welcome them will benefit from better, more accessible health care.

When governments pretend climate change isn't happening, those who move to climate refuges will prosper. Meanwhile, sunbelt cities will suffer more and more from drought and heat, and people who buy fast-sinking coastal property will soon be underwater in every sense of the word.

When education budgets are slashed, libraries are hobbled by book bans, and teachers are barred from teaching American history, science, and other ideologically inconvenient subjects, the result will be an education system that's scarcely better than no education at all. It will leave its graduates totally unequipped to compete in a modern economy. Those who vote for this degraded system and send their kids through it are dooming them to a hardscrabble future. Meanwhile, people who still value education enough to seek it out will have a massive advantage when competing for high-paying jobs.

Obviously, this strategy won't shield us from every danger. When society makes awful decisions, we all pay a collective price. No single person can turn back that tide. But no matter how chaotic the world becomes, we have the power to make choices about how to respond. For as long as stupidity reigns supreme, it's even more crucial to make the best choices possible for you.