I typically listen to music when I’m trudging on the treadmill, and my preference is for tuneful songs with lyrics I can understand. (I’m old!).
I’ve previously posted about the insights and real wisdom often conveyed by musical lyrics, especially a favorite line from Fiddler on the Roof’s “If I Were a Rich Man.” Tevya sings that, if he were rich, the men of the town would all call on him for advice; he then sings “And it wouldn’t matter if I answered right or wrong. When you’re rich, they think you really know.”
As Trump assembles an administration of very rich men, we are about to see the fallacy that Tevya identified play out in real time.
Americans have a long history of confusing celebrity with competence and wealth with intellect. Those with eyes to see have always recognized that Trump himself is a deranged ignoramus with a bloated ego. Before Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into “X,” he’d been able to maintain a reputation as highly intelligent partly because few people knew that–like Trump–his fortune began with an inheritance, and that he’d purchased Tesla–not invented it.
The United States is about to be governed (or ruled) by a whole cohort of equally clueless rich White guys, and the most pertinent question is how much damage will they do? These are, after all, the “captains of industry” who think they know more than they do, who don’t know what they don’t know, and who are unlikely to listen to people who have actual expertise in economics and/or a wide variety of public policies. (As Tevya would say, “they think they really know.”)
Paul Krugman recently considered that conundrum in a newsletter titled “Never Underestimate the Ignorance of the Powerful.” He began by reproducing one of Trump’s “Truth Social” posts, in which the incoming President proposed substituting tariffs for income taxes. “Tariffs” Trump posted, “Will pay off our debt and MAKE AMERICA WEALTHY AGAIN.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m still extremely unsure what the incoming president will actually do about trade. The Smoot-Hawley level tariffs he promised during the campaign would be disastrous, but sometimes I think he may have at least a vague sense of the damage those tariffs would do, so what he’s really aiming for is an extortion scheme — one in which most companies would secure exemptions via political contributions and/or de facto bribes (e.g. buying Trump crypto.)
But then he’ll come out with something like the Truth Social post above, and I’ll be reminded that wealthy and powerful people like Trump or Andreesen or, of course, Elon Musk are often far more ignorant than policy wonks can easily imagine.
As Krugman reminds us, Trump very publicly disdains expertise, and Musk “appears to get what he thinks is intelligence from random posts on X.”
Krugman attributes this intellectual defect to “the arrogance of success.”
In the academic world there’s a familiar phenomenon sometimes called “great man’s disease,” in which a successful researcher in one field assumes that he (it’s usually a “he”) is so much smarter than experts in other fields that he doesn’t need to pay attention to their research. Physicists make confident, deeply ignorant pronouncements about economics; economists make confident, deeply ignorant pronouncements about sociology…
This kind of arrogance presumably comes even more easily to men of great wealth. After all, if these so-called experts are so smart, why aren’t they rich like me?
As Krugman also notes, wealth and power attract hangers-on who will tell the great man what he wants to hear. “There are wealthy men with enough humility to accept constructive criticism — I’ve met some of them. But such men don’t seem likely to play a role in the incoming administration.”
When Trump or Andreesen ask why we can’t go back to the McKinley era, when the government subsisted on tariffs and didn’t need an income tax, their problem isn’t failure to understand the revenue function; it’s failure to appreciate the simple fact that in the 1890s America barely had a government by modern standards.
Sure, tariffs could pay for a government without Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, at a time when even the military was tiny. But the constituency for returning to that kind of small government consists, as far as I can tell, of a couple of dozen libertarians in bow ties. And the kind of government we have now needs a lot more than tariffs to pay its way.
Bottom line: we’re about to discover the real downsides of a kakistocracy…
Music through the ages has played a part in the lives of nations; the National Anthems of many nations attests to the importance of music in our lives.
I have received numerous Facebook complaints regarding Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood singing John Lennon’s “Imagaine” at President Jimmy Carter’s funeral. A song of peace and love referred to a being communistic by some and simply a poor choice by others; as if that one song was of importance rather than the man being honored for a life of giving. No mention of the beautiful hymns during the lovely service President Carter himself planned long ago…as our presidents are wont to do.
The other oft repeated Facebook post is regarding Melania Trump’s dress, including a description of the picture it portrayed. Also mentioned was the sad look on her face; WTH could Trump’s immigrant wife possibly know about President Jimmy Carter’s history and importance to our nation? Could be she was sad to be forced to attend any public outing with her husband who, due only to presidential protocol, put in an appearance at that funeral. Facebook/Meta ending their fact check action has already resulted in offensive Trump/MAGA posts on my page which I always Block.
Another possible indication of what our future holds after noon on January 20, 2025; I attempted to Google U.S. history in Panama…I received a full screen notice “That information is unavailable.”
“Bottom line: we’re about to discover the real downsides of a kakistocracy…”
Addendum: my daughter-in-law has Comcast and was able to access Panama information. Maybe it was/is just my AOL that is the problem.
Many of us have been weaned on fairy tales where the evil witch eventually gets thrown into her own oven, or the house made of bricks does not get blown away by the huffing, puffing wolf, or any other fable where eventually the bad person receives a comeuppance as a result of their own bad acting. And those myths just seem to be proven to be ineffective in this time on our lived history.
We will soon find out if an administration built on lies and misinformation will crumble like the house built on sand when the waves of reality surge.
The question is, as always, are we prepared to deal with the results of that collapse when it comes? Or will MAGADOGE continue to prevail despite the lessons we have absorbed from our myths, that justice eventually prevails, and evil carries the seeds of its own destruction within it?
Trump is a despicable slimy mob boss who uses extortion, intimidation, blackmail and threats of physical violence to get whatever he wants.
We are all born with poor skills but sufficiently wealthy in DNA, which makes us 100% dependent on caregivers for everything. (Some of us die that way, too.) We survive by reacting to chemical signals like crying when uncomfortable. We are taught by what we notice, starting with who our caregivers are and how they appear and act. We soon acquire language, numbers, friends, those who don’t like us, and a self-image of how people like us behave.
Every day, we wake up, notice enough to prepare for the day, and then launch ourselves into the great unknown.
Each day we survive is an incremental investment in becoming a person on a spectrum of possibilities. Energy moves us through spacetime each day, and we use our five senses to navigate another day based on who we were the day before.
When we accumulate enough days, we are ejected into being our caregivers and use who we are to advance our position on all the spectrums we notice and care about.
Each day is a step, forward or backward, in becoming who we are. I became me, and you became you; that is just as true for everyone else.
We share that same process with all other life forms and individuals. Consider mushrooms and Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or JD Vance. DNA and accumulating knowledge and position dictated the outcome we can observe today for everyone—and, of course, for you and me.
We all have individual stories which can be aggregated into collective ones.
In Computerese, we are massively networked computers splish-splashing in the soup where we find ourselves an ingredient.
The collective behavior on a single day last year of the 341,190,268 human beings that the population clock says live in the US and the 156,302,318, or 46%, of the people served by the government here who cast ballots was to give MTV (Musk, Trump, Vance) CEO-like power over all of us.
One of my experiences long ago was learning that Lord Acton taught that power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We’ll see how the next four years turn out. My experience has taught me that the good Lord was correct regarding human behavior. Our liberal democracy brought us here. What will our collective behavior on one day last year give us to work with in 2028?
Here’s an expression for Krugman, “Money talks, bullshit walks.” Our culture has been about money and power since day one. “He who hath the gold makes the rules.” We were set up to be ruled by white men with money because they inherited it or were in a social circle that allowed them to be in a position to assume positions of power, and then money followed.
Meanwhile, the fairytale world sold to the masses by the Christian religion is if you work hard, you too can become successful. Some of the hardest workers I’ve known barely have enough to bury themselves when the time comes.
One quick note: did anybody see the clips of Mel Gibson on Fox News over the weekend? OMG!! I think he has brain damage, but Murdoch thought it was a good idea to show him off to the masses who have formed all the conspiracies for the LA Fires, including lesbianism. LOL
Nancy nailed the bottom line with Trump – though he’s a pretend “mob boss.” He owned casinos and grew up with a slumlord for a father in New York. He did business in New Jersey. I still crack up that he went bankrupt running a casino. Nobody goes bankrupt running a casino.
As I’ve mentioned several times, some forces want Trump to succeed, and they are pumping money into his campaign to curry his favor. Bezos is paying Melania Trump $40 million for the rights to her story so he can produce a documentary. Will Jeff leave out the stripper and gold digger part? What about the parties with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, whose daddy was a “media mogul” and served British and Israeli intelligence? Some even say he was being used by Russian intelligence. Robert was found floating naked in the ocean. Jeffrey was found dead in his jail cell during Trump’s watch. 😉
That’s why I recommend that people read the backstory of Trump’s Truth Social. How can a company that has never made a profit be worth billions? Trump Store is on the Mammoth Nation conservative website but has no owner. Who goes to any length to conceal their ownership of a company? 😉
Check out this story about the federal lobbyist from Florida who will be Trump’s Chief of Staff. It’s classic Washington, D.C. The soulless politicos sell their power to those with money, and so it goes round and round. Trump’s claims to drain the swamp were a scam in 2016 and they’re a scam today.
https://popular.info/p/the-corporate-lobbyist-who-will-run?
We won’t have to wait four years since Trump has 100 Executive Orders to implement on day one, and they weren’t written by him or populist outsiders. LOL
Selective memory seems to be a big problem. Think back to 2020. We all remember that gas prices were way down, but 77,303,573 of us apparently forgot the reason for the low prices was the epidemic, which was massively mishandled by Orange Jesus.
I don’t know about you, but I lost a lot of friends and acquaintances to Covid. Some might be gone because they took the advice of the Moron in Chief and swallowed Ivermectin, rather than get a vaccine that works very well. How do people forget about that? How do we prioritize gas prices over the deaths of friends and family?
How very un-Christ-like of the White Evangelical Christians!
Good article, thanks Todd. I’ve long cautioned against draining the swamps. What do we get when we do? Here in Florida, we would be left with pythons, alligators, crocodiles and a wide variety of snakes and rodents without a habitat. What happens when we take habitats from animals? They are more likely to end up on your lanai or in your garage.
Let the K Street boys and girls do their thing, then fire the Senators and Congressmen and women who accept bribes in their next elections.
One week from today, all of our lives, no matter our political ideology, will be profoundly changed, likely in ways not immediately apparent. His promises about actions “from day one” are yet to be revealed. My guess is that his handlers have a pile of executive orders already prepared, most of which he will not have read or may not even understand. He is not interested in governing. It is all to enhance his self-image of celebrity and privilege.
I will be surprised if he spend even half his time in office in the White House. His wife hated it the first time and likely still does.
The Heritage Institute will be the seat of power for all intents and purposes. The fools, lackeys, toadies and boot-lickers who inhabit the GOP Congressional delegation will reap what they sow eventually. The MTV triumvirate, wholly owned and dominated by M, will eventually die of its own corruption. It cannot happen soon enough.
In the meantime, the rest of us will suffer and die in great and small ways, the world will move on to the next great power as it always has.
Each of us have the ability to resist through individual passive action. Choose at least one a day, no matter how small. A message of resistance to a local/state/federal politician, meeting a like-minded person or persons, even if just a phone call or text, an act of thoughtfulness or kindness to another, anything that will demonstrate that the values we hold will continue no matter who is in the WH.
I was born in the middle of a world war against fascism. It was defeated temporarily but has revived and thrived in the heads and hearts of its conquerors as power corrupts.
The power of one, a step forward, holding on to personal integrity may be our only means of resistance. Change is a constant no matter who is in power. It is all I can hope for.
Todd, I think the more appropriate expression is “Money talks, even if it’s bullshit”.
166 hours 45 minutes and counting!