Anatomy of Political Ignorance
In my last post, I quoted my Republican sister-in-law’s favorite adage: “You can’t fix stupid.” When dealing with figures like President Trump or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, it’s tempting to treat that phrase as a simple insult.
But political scientists, philosophers, and theologians have long recognized that “stupidity” isn’t a measure of low IQ or a lack of formal education.
In my new book, The Architect: Authoritarianism, the Political Mind, and a Blueprint for a Better Democracy, I present the work of Daniel Kahneman, George Lakoff, John R. Hibbing, and dozens of other scholars who reveal the influences of political attitudes and behaviors. However, I do not address the concept of political stupidity who, many experts assert, is a more dangerous enemy of democracy than malice.
The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to that effect from a Nazi prison cell in 1943. Bonhoeffer noted that against evil, one can protest, expose, or use force since evil always carries the seeds of its own subversion because it forces decent people to unite against it.
Stupidity, however, leaves us defenseless.
You cannot argue against stupidity with facts or reason, because when facts contradict a foolish mindset, the facts are simply brushed aside as biased, fake, or irrelevant. In The Architect I present an arsenal of evidence to this effect, exemplified by Trump, MAGA loyalists, and congressional Republicans.
Understanding why Hegseth’s policies—from mandatory “High-T” screenings to abolishing Rules of Engagement—seem so immune to rational critique requires breaking down the four pillars of modern political stupidity:
I. Outsourcing Moral Reasoning
In 2014, philosopher Robert Howell introduced a thought experiment called “Google Morals.” He pointed out that while using Google Maps to find a safe, efficient route is harmless, using an app to decide moral dilemmas—like “Is the Iran War justified?”—robs us of character.
Today, millions of us outsource our critical thinking to AI tools, party leaders, cable news hosts and podcasters. When citizens and policymakers offload their moral judgment to an external doctrine, they surrender the very practice of ethical reasoning. They no longer evaluate right and wrong; they simply execute commands.
II. Amathia: Celebrated Willful Ignorance
Ignorance itself is not stupid. Socrates famously stated that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing, so he spent his life striving to learn. The danger arises in what Aristotle called amathia: willful, proud ignorance.
Amathia occurs when a society actively celebrates not knowing things, creating an inverse elitism where domain experts, scientists, and veteran commanders are mocked as out-of-touch “elites.”
When the Secretary of Defense dismisses decades of military medical consensus or legal doctrine under the banner of fighting “politically correct rules,” it is amathia in action.
It is also amathia for Trump and Hegseth to discount (or not know of) Lt. General Van Riper’s successes in the Millennium Challenge 2002 wargame.
III. Conformity and Epistemic Citadels
In “Beyond Good and Evil”, Friedrich Nietzsche argued that people rarely care about objective truth for its own sake. Instead, they care about loyalty and identity. Modern philosopher Chris Ranalli builds on this in his work on indoctrination, describing how individuals build “epistemic citadels.”
Ranalli states that when a belief becomes tied directly to a person’s political or tribal identity, any counter-evidence is no longer seen as a logical argument—it is perceived as an existential threat or a “test of faith.” Followers close the gates of their citadel, insulating themselves from reality.
In The Architect, these philosophical concepts are supported by research conducted in the fields genetics, epigenetics, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, neurology, psychiatry, social psychology, and political science.
IV. “Intelligent Stupidity”
In his 1937 lecture On Stupidity, Austrian writer Robert Musil distinguished between ordinary stupidity (a lack of cognitive capacity) and intelligent stupidity. The latter occurs when highly articulate, educated, and talented individuals use their intellectual gifts to serve completely foolish or destructive ends.
Intelligent stupidity is what Bonhoeffer witnessed in 1940s Germany: professors, doctors, and lawyers channeling their intellect into state-sponsored madness.
It is this exact brand of stupidity that is on display when Trump and Hegseth craft pseudo-intellectual justifications for dismantling military readiness or dismissing Van Riper’s battle-tested war-game lessons in the Millennium Challenge 2002.
The Power of Pathos Over Logos
In Aristotle’s Rhetoric, he famously outlined three modes of persuasion:
Logos: Logic, reason, and empirical evidence.
Ethos: Authority, status, and perceived character.
Pathos: Emotion, feeling, and tribal instinct.
As I argue in The Architect, human political psychology is hardwired to prioritize pathos and ethos long before logos ever enters the equation. To this point, Trump and Hegseth aren’t engaging in logos. They operate entirely in the realms of ethos and pathos.
Trying to debate someone trapped in intelligent stupidity using purely rational arguments is a fool’s errand. I refer to this in the book as similar to wrestling with a pig. The pig doesn’t like it, and you’re the one who ends up covered in mud.
Until we recognize that political stupidity isn’t an absence of intelligence, but a refusal to engage with reality, rational debate will continue to fall on deaf ears.
References & Sources
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics & Politics. (On Amathia and civic virtue).
Aristotle. Rhetoric. (On Logos, Ethos, and Pathos).
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. Eberhard Bethge (Ed.), 1943. (On the “Theory of Stupidity”.)
Howell, Robert. “Google Morals and the Outsourcing of Moral Reasoning.”
Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2014.
Musil, Robert. On Stupidity (Über die Dummheit). Vienna Lecture, 1937.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. 1886. (On truth vs. identity and loyalty).
Ranalli, Chris. “Closed-minded Belief and Indoctrination.” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 1, 2022.