So, I watched this video today about the curses of being highly intelligent, and yeah, this is my life in a nutshell. And it kinda sucks, being governed by people who are my intellectual inferiors. I mean, we basically elected trump because half the country is too dumb to see through his grift, although, admittedly Harris was kind of a turd too. Still, at least she was competent...
Honestly, some men, like me, just want to see the world learn. We want people to become more intelligent and well informed on issues. Democracy, to actually function properly, needs its participants to know what the frick they are doing with their votes. American voters have no idea, they elected Trump, despite obvious warnings of how dangerous he was. I could explain away 2016, but in 2020 I started worrying after seeing how close he came to winning, and in 2024, I'm terrified by the state of democracy. We literally have wheatley in charge...again. After putting glados in charge...again. After wheatley got elected the first time. After glados was kicked out the first time.
Heck it goes back further. George W. Bush was also extremely dumb by the standards of the time, although infinitely preferable to the current administration. It's like we're living in the movie idiocracy. And people really are that dumb that they keep electing these guys over and over again.
Again, ideally, the answer is education. If people were more informed, had a higher baseline of intelligence, then the democrats would basically become the bare minimum and then the real adults in the room can finally talk. But it seems unclear if we'll ever reach this point. I feel cursed, like I stick out like a sore thumb in this society. I know so much more than your average person, at least on political affairs (I'm pretty dumb on a lot of other subjects), and I just keep watching them make the same mistakes over and over again.
It's no wonder the intelligent class of society that's actually in charge has this mentality that "well the people are dumb and that's why I have to be in charge." It's a tempting proposition. We all think it, us intelligent thinkers of politics. I even have my own fricking ideal economic vision if I were in charge. But, at the same time, we gotta resist this temptation.
I mean, in a way, we're living through that moment right now. Despite much of the trump administration, including trump himself, being sycophantic morons who toe the line and are dangerously unqualified for their jobs, you also got megalomanial masterminds like elon musk in charge. Musk is, a lot like me. High IQ, pretty well informed, at least on subjects related to his expertise, think he knows how to run the country better than everyone else and that he's a mastermind...but really, and this is where you gotta follow me on this one, just because someone is generally smart doesn't mean they're informed ON POLITICS, nor do they necessarily have good ethics. Like I kinda try do a philosopher king thing, and despite talking a lot about issues, i dont wanna be in charge, because i know i would screw it up. part of it really is being in a democracy with separation of powers and knowing I can't do what i wanna do how I wanna do it, but I also know that power is a corrupting influence. And that's kind of a problem. Those who should rule...often dont want to because they know their limitations, while we get governed by overconfident blowhards who dont know what they're doing but think they know everything.
And Elon Musk? He's using his power FOR EVIL. He's cutting "government waste" as he sees it, sometimes not knowing what he's cutting (see: him randomly laying off the people overseeing our nukes, only to realize, OH CRAP WE NEED THOSE PEOPLE!). He's doing the republican "cut all government" thing and doing it with sociopathic efficiency. He's literally governing the government like he would a corporation, and using the top down authority of a corporation to do it. Heck, we all know my stances on corporate rule. CEOs are functionally tyrants, and people are functionally their slaves. Even if they can, in theory, walk away, most won't because of the economic relationships involved and how most peoples' state of "being there" is based on NEED. Of course, if you notice, my answer to this ins't "socialism", in part because, quite frankly, I dont trust the masses on anything, rather, I support a form of individual independence where every worker has the freedom as the power to say no. Instead of having to rely on others, i want individuals to be able to make their own calls, and this is my answer, as an intelligent person, the way to solve economic tyranny. I dont trust the rule by many much more than i trust the rule of the few or the one. I dont want to be ruled. So I assert a system of economic rights to give me my freedom and autonomy.
In some ways this mirrors the constitutional government with separation of powers and rights that we have. Our founders did kind of have elitist tendencies for better or for worse and did seek to put checks on pure democracy. We have the bill of rights that we have to ensure that government oversteps bounds, understanding that liberty should not be abridged simply because the masses will it. Of course, this has been corrupted, with the elites using such functions to exert control over elections and in practice, our government is an oligarchy that is more receptive to political donors and money than the people.
And that is probably the greatest evil of our time. You see, if you dont let the masses govern, you end up with oligarchies or autocracies instead. America is an oligarchy. It is the rule by the few, and the indirect rule by the rich (although it's more direct with the trump administration). The people don't matter much. it's the wealthy. They control the political parties, and they control the media infrastructure to control the narratives. They keep the people in various information bubbles to keep them dumb and uninformed, and when a smart person like me stands up to them, nothing happens because we're a minority, and no one cares what we think.
But in a way, before we get delusions of "If i were in charge again"...well...that's how the billionaire class thinks, and they DO think they're superior than everyone else. That their ideas are better, that they're smarter, that they're morally better due to their work ethic, and that they EARNED their right to rule. And that's the worst part. Like, a lot of what I argue against, like being forced to work, the protestant work ethic, meritocracy, etc., it's a massive ego boost to the wealthy. They have this idea of entitlement, as they adopt the morals of the society that they created to justify their wealth and power, and they believe they are the superiors and that everyone else is just too dumb and lazy and that they're only fit to be beasts of burden or whatever, while THEYRE the smart ones.
And heck, if you go further, with the dark enlightenment a la elon musk, they think that democracy is just an inconvenience. That checks and balances are inefficient. And that they are just such fricking geniuses and no one else will ever understand. So they try to break the democracy we have so they can rule directly.
In a lot of ways, i think that elon musk, the dark enlightenment, and a lot of the ego that these guys have should put a pause on these delusions for the rest of us "smart people". Because we're not a ton better. I mean, we think we are, and as I say it I'm totally thinking "nah, I AM better", but really, what justifies me being better? Well, the fact that I come from a different social standing with different socialization factors that dont make me an entitled sociopathic d-bag. However, despite that, let's face it, if i had power, others, including many smart people, would have issues with my governance. And at the end of the day, I really come back around to the whole "yeah this is why checks and balances, rights, and democracy exist". They're guardrails against tyranny. And the will of the people, as flawed as the people are, just ends up being the lesser evil.
And this is something I really keep coming around to. Everyone imagines that if THEY were in charge the world would be perfect, but each of our visions are different, they all have pros and cons, and many of us, dont even know what we're talking about in the first place. Like with me, at least im high enough on the dunning kruger spectrum to actually recognize the limitations of my own expertise and intelligence, and while i'd love to implement UBI and humanistic capitalism....well...let's face it, do i even have administrative experience? not really. Do i wanna deal with mundane administrative matters that an actual president has to deal with? Not really. Nor do I wanna pull a musk and say "we dont need all that" and try to fire them all to meet some insane ideal of "small government." So yeah.
Honestly, here's the thing, and this is where our founders were smart. They understood the very obvious problems with people just having unchecked power. They saw the problems with the likes of "factions." Their entire political system was designed to limit any individual's power and to distribute it across all three branches of government. And while, right now, that system is facing a stress test like it has never endured in the entire 250 years of its existence, I still support the system and hope it holds. Because let's face it. This system is the best we got. And it's GOOD it is as constraining as it is, it is only because of that, that maybe, hopefully, we'll survive this horrible, horrible administration.
Here's the thing. People are dumb, but a constitutional republic/democracy is still the best system that has ever been tried, for better or for worse. It maintains some level of stability. It stops us from just getting taken over. And while right now we kinda gotta be afraid because trump's faction, the republican party, controls ALL THREE branches of government, it doesn't do so by overwhelming margins. Still, the damage that trump can do to it is substantial, and that's why i've been squirming through this entire thing. Like, it's baffling that for all the guardrails we have, all of them have failed to contain this guy. And part of me has to blame the democrats for being so complacent and incompetent. We should've worked harder and moved faster to prosecute the guy post january 6th.
But...that's the thing, of everything i said, our system DOES have one GLARING oversight that's responsible for this entire mess, and that is the fact that the politicians are all beholden to those with money. And the billionaires control everything from behind the scenes. They control the republicans, they control the democrats. They control the media. And if anything, we need MORE checks and balances, against the wealthy and their ability to influence people and subvert democracy's rule. We need to overturn citizen's united. We need to publicly fund elections. We need to remove the corrupting influence of capital from our democracy. I'm not necessarily opposed to people having money, but in our system, when money is speech, some people have a bullhorn while others have virtually no voice. I'm just a mere feudal serf on wealthy corporations' servers like reddit and blogger. I exist on virtual property that THEY own. And while I can bring my ideas into the real world, I need money to actually do this meaningfully, and I have none. So, here's the screaming into the void I guess.
Yeah, I know this is depressing, but this is what I actually think about these things right now.
Honestly though, we need more democracy, and more checks and balances, and not less. And heck, maybe if we had that, we could improve our education system so people wouldn't be so fricking dumb in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment