Dear Friends,
It seems to me, if you aren’t ruled by evil people, you are ruled by the stupid. There seems to be no middle ground. As Bonhoeffer said, there are far more stupid people than you realize. Moreover, what makes the stupid so dangerous to society and themselves is that they think they’re smart. Indeed one of the primary attributes of stupidity is the certain knowledge that one is infallible. This mindset leads people to seek to rule. If you were absolutely convinced you are smarter, wiser, and a better person than everyone else, wouldn’t it just make sense to rule the morons? Unlimited power would be required since the fools would balk at your brilliant leadership. The stupider a leader is the more convinced that they must have absolute power. To save the rest of us fools from ourselves.
Stupidity is acting in the world in ways that harm everyone. A stupid person might cause an accident that blocks a road, thus harming their own interests and those of everyone around them. They didn’t mean to cause an accident, it wasn’t malicious, and they may want to do only good. Nevertheless, they leave a wake of chaos behind them. Take the example of Jack Ryan the republican candidate for Senator, who ran for the seat won by Barack Obama. The democrats exploited his divorce records to force him out of the race. Those records illustrated that intelligence is not the same as prudence. So, had he won that power would have been in the hands of an idiot, but it went to the hands of the malevolent instead. Probably the most dangerous thing about the stupid is their lack of self-awareness.
If someone’s personal life is a disaster movie in 3D, they are probably not the wisest of people. That isn’t to say misfortune befalls everyone. It is part of life. The wise, however, take precautions, don’t overextend, stay faithful, and most of all, they learn from their mistakes. It takes self-awareness to learn from one’s mistakes. This is because no problem can be solved until it’s identified. If one’s actions are the source of the problem, then self-awareness is crucial to identifying it. I can’t pluck a plank from my own eye if I can only see the motes in the eyes of others. This shows up in people’s personal lives. Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin had dysfunctional personal lives. Those men and many others who have sought unlimited power were either evil or supremely stupid people.
Stupid people are quick to wrath. Nowhere and at no time is this more true than when their stupidity is exposed. Being stupid, they will act out in ways that not only damage their intended target but themselves as well. This makes dealing with stupid people dangerous. One must maintain situational awareness of their mood at all times. Few are as quick to anger as a purple haired woman with a nose ring, or a wide eyed man who talks through his bottom teeth. Such people are on a hair trigger. Moreover, this makes them easily manipulable by the malevolent. Like Hogan on Hogan’s Heroes leading Major Hochstetter around by his perpetual anger. This trait is bad enough in the general population, but give the stupid power and their wrath becomes an existential threat.
This isn’t to say that there are no wise people in positions of power. There are and they work diligently to undo the damage the evil and stupid do. The wise, however, are very limited due to the wrath of the stupid and conniving of the evil. Maybe twenty percent of elites aren’t stupid or malevolent, but they live in perpetual fear of the stupid. This means the efforts of the wise are largely negated. The result is that the stupid inevitably fail with the power they have. Lacking the self-awareness and humility to realize the failure was their fault, more power is the only possible solution. It’s not because they want to lower the lot of Mankind, it’s because they are too stupid to know better. Smart and wise people would limit the power of government and so limit the power of the stupid and evil to harm. If there are enough.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
