We are surrounded by more idiots than we are capable of recognizing at any given moment. That, in itself, is one of the fundamental laws of idiocy. It also implies something uncomfortable: there are a lot of idiots. Possibly a simple majority of humanity, at least to some degree. That part is not new and hardly surprising.
What is interesting—disturbingly so—is where I have found the highest concentration of them. Not among the desperate, the poor, or the morally flexible souls willing to sell a spine for a paycheck. No. The worst specimens cluster among the elites, and especially among the academic elites. These are not cynical opportunists. They are far more dangerous than that. These are people who genuinely believe they know better than everyone else—and therefore feel morally compelled to force the entire world into alignment with their worldview, consequences be damned.
History is positively soaked with examples of what happens when such people manage to turn opinion into policy. I have seen dictatorships up close during my travels. Ordinary strongman dictatorships are, oddly enough, transactional. Don’t challenge them openly, don’t humiliate them, don’t threaten their grip—and you will usually be left alone. Brutal, yes. Predictable, also yes.
The truly catastrophic regimes are the enlightened ones. The idiot-led ideological dictatorships. The systems run by people convinced they are saving humanity from itself. Those are the regimes where millions perish—not accidentally, not reluctantly, but as a necessary side effect of righteousness. The cruelty is not a bug; it is a feature.
In such systems, the free market does not matter. Freedom of choice does not matter. Personal safety does not matter. The simple human desire to live a decent life and give one’s children a better future does not matter. All of it becomes irrelevant when appeasing the ideological deity becomes the highest priority. Reality is sacrificed first. People follow shortly thereafter.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/01/07/net-zero-fantasy-red-herring-or-reality/