Artificial Unintelligence

I remember studying literate cultures that somehow spontaneously lost skills and wondering how it could happen. Now we witness it in the American cultivation of incompetence. It is deliberate, narrowly self-serving, and short-sighted. It is seen most obviously in the ascendency of Trump, a product of inheritance and privilege.

Privilege is a form of interference. Personal and social devolution doesn't occur naturally, being the inverse and reverse of the mechanisms of Darwin. Trump, for example, was born too-big-to-fail. He nearly failed anyway but that is another story. In nature the practice, mastery and refining of incompetence can't last and endure.

Individuals and species would not survive. Habitual stupidity requires subsidies. We are the subsidizing entities which is why the sons of privilege are drawn to the government, the agency through which they rip us off, directly and indirectly. They also seek to "starve the beast" of democracy by fruitlessly burning through resources.

The law of interference begins with someone like Trump interfering with himself. This is commonly called denial or indulgence: the uselessness of the person must be denied by themselves or indulged, if not denied, by them and their "enablers." For decades Trump's family had to ignore the signs that he was helpless and incapable. 

Unconsciously sensing his own inferiority and neediness Donald became a horrendous asshole, in compensation. Interference was extended into Trump's relations in the world as he made the transition to being artificially subsidized and supported by the society, a hand-off, sparing his family further wasted effort and expense. 

Trump has been rescued when he should have crashed and burned naturally--interference at every turn. Multiply that by the thousands and you have the kind of societal decline and collapse we now face, though Trump is clearly appropriate as a figurehead for the movement because of his extreme fecklessness, ignorance and indecency.

He must be endlessly reassuring to the army of losers, henchmen, attack dogs and greedy reprobates he represents. History has taught us that this kind of situation cannot go on but it requires our continuing financial and administrative support. That support must be withdrawn at once, if our American species and traditions are to survive.