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Smartism is the absurd idea that smart is bad. Like Ableism, the examples of Smartism in our society abound. The bias against intelligence is easily exemplified by vacuous celebrities spouting on subjects as if they know what they are talking about, and the number of social media influencers on places like Instagram and YouTube who get rich from being able to vomit out a seemingly endless amount of useless drivel. One would think that Dumb as the new Smart seems to have reached rock bottom with TikTok. But then there’s The View.
Social discourse is one thing. There have always been silly fads. Perhaps you remember Hula-hoops, Cabbage Patch dolls, Pet Rocks, and the entire eighties? But when the lack of intelligence makes the slow climb to the top of our institutions and our government it is time to sit up and take notice.
You think only the best and the brightest can ever reach the top? Think again. That time is over. The current university academic climate nearly mandates stupid to get anywhere. A couple bright young scholars decided to test that theory. They wrote an academic paper by making up the most ridiculous social theory they could come up with, and then peppered their supporting discussion with the trendiest woke words and phrases they could find, even though none of it made a bit of sense. Low and behold it got peer reviewed, approved and published. They repeated the experiment picking the most outlandish ideas they could invent. One paper argued that the penis was not an biological organ but merely a social construct of toxic masculinity. Another paraphrased Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as a feminist treatise. They repeated the exercise nearly two dozen times before someone finally caught on.
The drive toward idiocracy picked up pace when it was recently announced that the serial plagiarist and shamed former president of Harvard would now be tasked with teaching a class on research and ethics at Harvard. She had lost her position as president after being unable during a Congressional hearing to figure out that calls for genocide were bad. When the plagiarism surfaced she lost her job, but retained her lucrative teaching position. Apparently genocidal plagiarists are welcome at Harvard. Can’t make this up.
Entrance tests for college may become a thing of the white-privileged past. Apparently learning and doing well on tests is all part of the white supremacy plot, whatever and wherever that is. Never mind that the non-white Asian demographic has been crushing the SATs so much better than any other groups that top schools had to deliberately skew acceptance away from them to ensure what they laughingly call fairness.
The latest doomed social engineering for lower education includes cancelling Algebra for being somehow oppressive, and condemning hard work as racist. The whole transgender push in grade schools is bereft of any grounded science. The surgeries are barbaric. The fact it is endorsed by much of the medical establishment speaks only to the low IQ bar in that field. And teaching anti-racism instead of reading and math will not end well for anyone.
With DEI, trophies for everyone, and blatant white hatred masquerading as tolerance we have veered so far from competence and achievement as a sensible goal that we might as well hold blind lotteries to choose everything.
Everywhere you look you can see the rise of Idiocracy. For several years we heard Anthony Fauci talk in circles about COVID-19 while telling us he is science. Very little of what he said turned out to be true. Remember safe and effective?
Science was once a world of rigorous and unbiased research, a place where heated debate was normal, and where any idea had to stand up to an onslaught of the most intelligent challenges before finally being accepted. Now sloppy and slanted research, character assassination and censorship, and name calling rule the day. Take climate change. Consensus science, right? Sure, if you fire, invalidate and censor all the scientists who disagree, you do get ‘consensus.’
Intelligence experts railed about Russia, Russia, Russia and Trump working for Putin right up until the inconvenient facts proved them to be liars and fools. Our schools are pumping out low reasoning useful idiots to fill the intelligence agency ranks, as well as the rest of the bureaucratic state.
The media followed suit, even winning Pulitzer prizes for Russia stories they got completely wrong. As a whole the MSM talking heads parrot regime talking points in unison like mindless robots. I have never heard such idiocy from millionaires who pretend to be journalists, and the so-called experts they interview. There once was a time when getting the story wrong had consequences. And lying ended careers. Now you get promotions and a pay raise. In that environment could you expect anything but idiocracy?
Now we have the revered AI digital brains, supposedly smarter than us all, who are so wokified they cannot show a founding father or pope without making him a person of color in a mind-numbing homage to DEI. But I suppose, if we keep dumbing down the citizens, AI will be the smartest thing in the room.
Of course AI is helping a lot, according to experts. The latest DEI move is to eliminate the LSATS for law school altogether. These tests have helped ensure that at least some intelligence was necessary for lawyers and judges to become lawyers and judges. But tests are so judgmental. And the new reality is that with AI to do all the heavy legal thinking, third grade skills are all that are required of lawyers. Why think? That’s for Luddites.
While there was initial concern about finding future competent judges, experts pointed out that because judges are expected to be social justice warriors that rule in step with whatever woke principles dominate the scene, that should not be considered a problem. Everything they need will be available on TikTok and WhatsApp.
And as for current judges, well, don’t ask one to define a woman. The latest addition to the Supreme Court of the United States, Ketanji Brown Jackson thought she needed a degree in biology to speak on such high-level intellectual matters. Several other supposedly qualified candidates for the federal judiciary flamed out when they couldn’t answer the simplest Constitutional questions. Sadly, some got approved anyway. Apparently being well versed in social justice protests and anti-racist DEI rhetoric makes one plenty qualified to reinterpret our laws.
I think when the World Economic Forum head, Klaus Schwab, said, you will own nothing and be happy, he left something out. He should have said, You will own nothing, be stupid, and be happy. I appreciate real experts. We all should. I know quite a few genuinely smart people who know their field. But when the experts are no brighter than the kids who keep trying to jam a square peg into a round whole, it’s time to face facts. They are not experts. One dead giveaway is when the expert tells you it is complicated and you wouldn’t understand. As a genius once said, if you can’t explain your idea to a child then it is you who don’t understand it.
With smart people rapidly becoming persona non grata we can look forward to more leaders like stumbling and mumbling Joe Biden, grade school genius Kamala Harris, and the senselessly babbling White House press secretary manning our highest government positions. And don’t forget our Alfred E. Newman transportation secretary or the health expert trans admiral, Rachel Levine.
I wonder what foreign leaders think when they see and hear what we have to offer on the world stage. Do they shake their heads? Laugh behind our backs? Wonder what is wrong with those crazy Americans? Maybe. I have seen a couple of Italian comedy spoofs on Biden. But, then again, maybe not. Perhaps too many of them have already joined the idiocracy.
Ed Thompson has worked in education for over 25 years, both tutoring individuals and teaching classes. He has helped students from three to seventy-three years old, and in subjects from beginning reading all the way to MBA classes and postgraduate biology. Students ranged from severely challenged to gifted and advanced. This work has given him a unique perspective and has led to insights on what’s broken about our educational system and how we can make it better.
He is the host of the Basic Education Series podcasts and author of educational books. Learn more at https://basiced.substack.com.
