I spend a lot of time writing about how the discourse is getting dumber. Ten years ago, anti-vaxxers did not have any role in national politics. Now they’re running HHS. During Obama’s first term, the most prominent conspiracy theory on the right was that the president had been born in Kenya. That wasn’t true, but it’s a fundamentally different belief than the idea that Charlie Kirk was a time traveler who was monitored from the time he was a child, or even that each election Republicans lose was probably stolen. The leaders of half of the political spectrum now consider Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old who does not know common English words, a great journalist.
I’ve also discussed why this has happened. The internet, social media, and the removal of gatekeepers have all worked to democratize the public square. Dumb beliefs have always been prevalent, but political debates were previously curated by people like academics, TV producers at major channels, and newspaper and magazine editors. With that gone, the discourse surrounding politics increasingly resembles the broad spectrum of public opinions and attitudes. Crude prejudice, quack health beliefs, conspiracy theories, and primitive tribalism are having their day.
Four Heuristics That Have Made Smart People Smarter
That said, to stress only the story of us getting dumber is too pessimistic. I think that there has been a parallel trend, in which the highest levels of public discourse are getting better. Twenty years ago, there was no equivalent to Candace Owens, but there was also no Scott Alexander either. Fools can now find one another much more easily and reinforce each other’s views. But the same is true for smart people with good epistemological standards, who have faster and more copious access to information than anyone else in history, and can share ideas and discuss issues on platforms like Substack and X. They sometimes form group chats and more easily collaborate on projects. Below, I’ll go over just a few examples of how the highest-level discourse has gotten smarter over only the last two decades. Afterward, I will put forward some thoughts on where we go from here in terms of what the great human capital divergence means for politics.
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I'm not convinced Elon is a super-genius playing dumb for MAGA's support. When he does things like lie about being a world class Path of Exile player, and then stream himself playing the game, failing to complete the most basic in game tasks, there seems to be something seriously idiotic and wrong with him. He engages with magat slop 24/7 on twitter, I don't think he's faking that dedication. When he crashes out on Trump and calls him a pedophile, it's like he has the mind of a toddler. When he goes on Rogan, he lies about the most inconsequential things, like reaction time in gamers, of course the alternative is that he's not lying and is just completely stupid. I think the ketamine severely damaged his cognitive abilities.
My prediction for a while now is that Trump & MAGA are going to take conservatism into the toilet (arguably they are already there), much in the way that wokeness & unhinged progressivism made Democrats nearly unelectable. A new Democratic leader, probably Newsom, will arise and make centrism sexy again - and the Republicans will lose big time. And much in the same way as happened on the left, the right will begin to purge the MAGA freak show from their ranks.
This will happen just in time to see a neo-woke resurgence after Newsom leaves office, with the formerly Democratic centrists jumping the unbearably left-wing ship to join the newly centrist Republicans under a delightfully boring Rubio-like character.
I've been saying for a while now, I'm not really a liberal, I'm just a 2040's conservative.
But the left-wing and right-wing freakshows never go away, they just alternate power with the centrists, in the same way that Democrats and Republicans alternate power. American government is no longer a pendulum, it is a Rubik's Cube.