ON STUPIDITY
Stupidity, stupidity everywhere – and not a word to witness.
“Stupid”
is a commonplace term casually used in every-day conversation. Much
less so in writing
– especially when the subject is political personalities. It is heavily
weighted with inhibition. Why this hesitation? Why at a time when there
is more manifest stupidity in speech and action, by far, than in
recorded American history?
“Stupid”
is both blunt and conclusive. Straight-forward Anglo-Saxon. It does not
welcome qualification
or discussion. It implies: matter settled, closed. Moreover, it
suggests a character flaw as well as inadequate intelligence. That
somehow makes us uncomfortable. So we prefer: dense, slow, dim or
dim-witted, or elaborate euphemisms, e.g. “not the sharpest
tool in the kit,” or “out of it.” There
are words that disparage intelligence that are even sharper or stronger
than “stupid.” Think of these: blockhead, lamebrain,
numbskull, In addition, there are those that refer directly to
intelligence: moron, imbecile, idiot. They, too, are in currency but
suffer from the disability of taking in vain a descriptive word that
refers to the poor souls who are born with mental deficiencies.
“Stupid”
is used as an epithet 95% of the time. Not as a depiction of someone’s
Intelligence
Quotient (IQ). To do so in the latter sense is to complicate matters.
Intelligence, as we now are aware, is a broad concept that covers 4 or 5
or 6 mental attributes whose correlations are quite low. So, almost no
one thinks that through before throwing the
word around. To the degree that one might consider basic meanings, it
implies lack of logic – the core characteristic of conventional IQ
intelligence.
Squirt
kerosene on a simmering barbecue
– that’s stupid. Sending more troops to Afghanistan when you’ve failed
miserably to achieve your objective over the past 8 years with much
larger contingents – as
Obama
did in 2009 – is stupid, i.e. illogical. Threatening North Korea with a
military strike by a naval task force and sending said task force in
the opposite direction is stupid, i.e. illogical. Bestowing praise and
honors on the Saudi leaders as declared brothers
in the “war on terror” when in fact these very persons have done more
to propagate the fanatical creed that inspires and justifies acts of
terror is stupid, i.e. “illogical.” However,
they do not derive from sub-par intelligence in the IQ sense.
These
instances of stupid behavior draw us to the connections between
intelligence and knowledge
– between “stupidity” and “ignorance.” Stupid (illogical) behavior is
more likely when you don’t know what you’re doing because important
information is lacking. Here, though, the information at the heart of
logical thinking is known to the parties taking
those actions. Not just accessible – it is lodged (somewhere) in the
brain of the actor. “Dumb” in popular usage is the word that combines
“stupid” and “ignorant” – with the connotation that the ignorance is
willful. That notion is of cardinal importance.
Obama’s decision to instigate the Maidan Coup in 2014 had nothing to do wit
h
IQ. Rather, it was a matter of flawed judgment. Similarly, his decision
to abet the jihadi
controlled opposition to Assad in Syria, with all its dire
repercussions, derived from a fundamentally flawed understanding of the
forces in play and a very narrow strategic perspective. Bill Clinton’s
plan to unleash the financial predators who gave us the
great Wall Street crash by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act stemmed
less from irrationality than from ideological commitment to a dogmatic
market fundamentalist ideology reinforced by political corruption.
Assuming
that the “stupid’ actors are not mentally deficient, why do they act as
if they are?
That is the persistent question that crops us as we see and read the
antics of public officials, commentators, and a host of celebrity
personalities. Several explanations, not excuses, come to mind. Above
all, willful
ignorance is a form of stupidity.
The Biden people chose, in some sense, not to inform themselves about
the realities
of Russia’s resilient economy and political stability before embarking
on it woefully misguided strategy to cut the Putin regime down at the
knees by provoking the crisis in Ukraine. Equally, it put on blinders to
avoid seeing that the deepening Sino-Russian
partnership would be greatly strengthened by the plan to knock Moscow
out of the great power game before confronting the ultimate challenge
represented by China to America’s global hegemony. Intellectual laziness
of this sort is convenient in allowing a simplistic
– if mentally and comfortable - mindset to guide behavior undisturbed
by dissonant, more complex formulations of reality.
A
second noteworthy consideration is that some highly influential players
in the policymaking
game may be acting on an unspoken implicit logic that is not
acknowledged but salient for the person(s) involved. The Pentagon brass
may well have been less concerned about “winning” in Afghanistan,
whatever that means, than they were living with the intolerable
perception that they “lost.” No general cum security policy-maker wants
to be saddled with the label of “loser.” That sensitivity can become
generalized. Individuals like Generals Mattis and McMaster were in
little danger of being blamed for failure in Afghanistan.
What seems to have counted is that they did not want the U.S. military
to be stigmatized as a failure. They were acutely aware of how much the
image of the uniformed military suffered as a result of America losing
its first war in Vietnam. It follows that
they might hope against hope that the outcome in Afghanistan would be
fudged enough so as to escape that fate.*
There
is a practical side to this concern, too. Failure, as perceptive in the
public eye,
could tarnish the splendid image so successfully cultivated during the
“war on terror” era. That could translate into less support for bigger
budgets, less lucrative consultancies after retirement, and less
acclaim. And a weaker voice in policy debates.
A
second truth to keep in mind is that governments are plural nouns – or,
pronouns with multiple
antecedents. The numerous organizations, bureaucracies and individuals
involved in decision-making typically leads to a complicated process
wherein it is easy to lose track of purposes, priorities and
coordination. Where little discipline is imposed by the
chief, the greater the chances that the result will be contradictory,
disjointed, sub-optimal and often poorly executed policies.
We
can observe a related phenomenon of compounded ‘dumbness’ unfold on a
far grander scale
in regard to the Ukraine-plus exercise in fantasy strategy. There, in
the face of manifest failure to achieve the original objectives (and
suffering enormous collateral diplomatic damage - formation of the BRICS
counterforce to the collective West), our leaders,
joined by virtually the entire foreign policy community, plows ahead
heedless of the mounting costs, and the foredoomed plight of the
Ukrainian forces. This mindless behavior is rooted in a common inability
to contemplate not only a national failure of the
first magnitude, but also the need for a drastic reworking of
profoundly held beliefs about American singularity and predestined place
as global supremo.
All
of these adverse consequences are more likely to register, and actions
to be stupid, when
the man nominally in charge lacks the intelligence, emotional
stability, self-awareness and advisors to recognize either the
requirements for sound policy-making or for implementation. A lack of
capacity to accept responsibility and to be held accountable
exacerbates matters.
For
a President to avoid acting “stupidly,” he need not have an exceptional
IQ – or score remarkably high on other dimensions of intelligence. Two
things are most important: he must be honest with himself; and he must
put in place a policy system that is both logical in process and
self-aware as to why decisions are taken with what
end in mind. To
borrow an analogy from the football terminology favored in the
corridors of Washington power: you can win a championship with a
mediocre quarterback if the other pieces are in place (e.g. Bart Starr
of the legendary Green Bay Packers, Nick
Foles of the 2018 Super Bowl winning Philadelphia Eagles). A corollary
is that an emotionally handicapped or narcissistic quarterback – however
talented – will cripple a team sooner or later. One who suffers from
the latter condition(s), along with an utter
lack athletic talent, is a guarantor of disaster. “Stupidity” will be
the least of the derogatory terms applied to the ensuing performance;
that word should be reserved for those who chose him.
Moral:
we should not hesitate to call things as they are. Feigned politeness
in situations
marked by systematic deceit and ill-will serve no good purpose.
Concerned about the proverbial “dignity of the office?” Take your shoes
off before entering the Oval Office. If “stupidity” displayed by stupid
people it what we observe, virtue lies in calling
it as such.
*Vietnam
is the central reference point for McMaster’s strategic perspective. He
wrote his doctoral dissertation at Duke on the topic – the work that
has given him the reputation of being the best mind in the Army – the
embodiment of the “soldier-scholar.” The book’s
thesis is that the uniformed military’s leaders failed in their duty by
not remonstrating against Lyndon Johnson misrepresentation of conditions
in Vietnam. The premise is that they had an accurate, unbiased
understanding while Johnson was a chronic liar who had his political
image foremost in mind. This is a very dubious proposition. The top
United States’ commanders in Vietnam were as blind to realities
as were the civilians in Washington. Their lying about capabilities
(theirs and the Communists), the battlefield picture, and what was going
down became proverbial. The daily briefing at command headquarters in
Saigon was universally called the “Saigon follies’
by the press corps. Today’s daily follies heralding successes in
Ukraine is a moveable feast offered at the White House, State, the
Pentagon, and at every media site. The difference is that today’s
‘reporters’ don’t recognize the folly, nor dare announce it
in the very rare instances that they do.