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Does the Biden Administration Intentionally Go Out of Its Way to Hire Stupid People?
Someone (possibly Jim Geraghty at National Review) recently offered up the opinion that Obama’s “E Team” (those left after the A, B, C, and D teams had left the White House over two terms) were Biden’s “A Team.” Clearly in the Biden Administration, we are not getting “the best and brightest.” Does the Biden Administration intentionally hire stupid people, or is the problem that only stupid people will work for the Biden Administration?
I am posting this because of a story so idiotic it would be unbelievable, but we have seen so much idiocy at the Biden Administration, maybe it’s true (and not Babylon Bee).
The Secretary of Education (Miguel Cardona) reportedly said arming teachers was a stupid idea because, in his mind, doing so would require giving the teacher’s substitute the gun if the armed teacher was absent. Is anybody really so stupid as to come to the conclusion of what the Secretary of Education is saying?
The new press secretary (Karine Jean-Pierre) demonstrates daily that she is an idiot. Her predecessor, Jen Psaki, lied almost every time she opened her mouth, but at least she made an effort to be convincing in her lies. Ms. Jean-Pierre is just plain incompetent. She rarely has an answer of any kind, even to questions that can be anticipated. And the answers she does give are clearly scripted and rarely relevant to the question asked.
The now-approved-but-not-yet-seated Supreme Court justice who was selected for her race and sex (Ketanji Brown-Jackson) demonstrated in her Senate hearings that she is not intellectually curious enough, nor mentally facile enough, to be a proper Supreme Court Justice. Surely among black women lawyers and judges there was someone with greater intellectual curiosity and capacity than Ms. Brown-Jackson.
But an Education Secretary who thinks that a proposal to let willing teachers carry firearms requires that the teacher’s substitute carry that same firearm is a special kind of stupid.
Is the Biden Administration intentionally hiring stupid people, or is their problem that only stupid people are willing to work in this administration?
Published in Education
A former co-worker who has gone on to the great Salaried Performance Appraisal in the Sky used to say that some people follow the motto “Ready; Fire; Aim“. They give a response consistent with their world view. It is internally satisfying to them and that’s it. Are they stupid in what you might call a clinical sense? No, but still they manage to say and do objectively stupid things. Biden hires those people and we all suffer for it.
Yes, they’re intentionally hiring stupid people.
But there is more to consider.
First, those stupid people just function as facades. I’m convinced that the real decisions are being made by party operatives.
And secondly, the stupid people move the Overton Window of believability. Which is why you see crazier and crazier people being hired.
So it’s a “win-win”.
@drbastiat
I forgot what essay Dr. Bastiat put it but darn it he put it very well. The problem with Biden Administration isn’t the people, it’s the ideology. Everything stinks because in the normal lefty-Democrat ideology anything that increases oil supply is evil and racist. Anything that is pro-capitalist or pro small business is homophobic.
The ideas are wrong. Biden is utterly useless but if a superintelligent and hypercompetent Democrat replaced him, every would still be bad because the policies plain don’t work.
*hat tip to Dr. Bastiat
I respectfully disagree. Everyone really is that dumb. Renewable fuels will really replace oil if we work hard enough. They are actually that dumb.
Yes, they’re functionaries but their function is not to perform any traditional role, but to fill a traditional place. They don’t have the job that we think they do, their job is only stylistic. They are the equivalent of the two-color Soviet propaganda posters.
I actaully miss Peppermint Patty . . .
The question of stupid versus malicious progressives is an interesting one. BHO professed allegiance to the full climate change agenda, yet purchased a home on the seaside. He supported mask mandates yet was photographed maskless surrounded by masked blue collar workers. So it’s pretty obvious that he is malicious.
Then again, he appeared to actually believe that acting cravenly as regards foreign policy would work. Samantha Power actually appeared to believe in the soft power dividend, and I can’t think of a more obviously stupid policy position.
It’s a conundrum, but in the end we have to accept that they are all stupid.
Brazenly showing that the rules don’t apply to him. But he can get you to follow them. That’s power.
Exactly. This is a all according to plan.
I don’t think they are stupid. They are ill-educated and have been affirmed their whole lives for their idealism and right-think. They generally come from comfortable backgrounds and don’t have any experience with the blue-collar economy which forms the foundation of their fortuitous prosperity. They sincerely believe that government solutions work because their high school teachers applauded for their science fair projects on solar energy and calls for alleviating poverty by taxing the rich. They do not understand the complexities of the economy or society, and their childlike naivete is causing great harm.
Failure is proof that we didn’t work hard enough–in other words, we are “hoarders and wreckers”.
Ideology does make people stupid. And have you noticed how many foolish people there are in academia? That is, they know a lot about a narrow topic, but are grossly overconfident in their (nonexistent) knowledge of everything else. It is very common for them to have passively absorbed the prejudices of the “thinking classes” while they were getting their degrees, and assume that all that false knowledge is true gold. Worse, the most branches of the humanities are replacing actual knowledge with falsehoods.
There are indeed lots of those True Believers, but don’t forget the old revolutionary slogan, attributed to Lenin and other Russian fanatics, “The worse, the better”: Anything which can be done to destabilize a society and immiserate the population will help to bring about the Revolution and therefore is a good thing. The last thing these people want are policies that are likely to actually solve any social problems.
Dietrick Bonhoeffer wrote some brilliant stuff on this topic in “Letters from Prison”.
Stupid is a kind of evil when in power.
Pulling back to the wide-angle, I think we are seeing the manifestations of a collection of societal trends that are reaching their logical conclusion. They will be corrected, the only question is how long and how much damage is done during the correction.
Lowered standards across the board. The penalties for failure are less severe, and the coddling of feelings is more important than results. This latter is also a shield against penalty for failure, a kind of Tragedy of the Commons situation.
The current cry-bully craze is, I believe, a function of the anti-bullying craze of the 90s and early 00s. Now those kids are young “adults”.
Combine that with the general Left Wing attitude that words are actual violence, but physical violence shows how passionate you are about an issue.
Combined with the replacement of God with various secular “causes”. And the Great Awokening, instead of a Great Awakening. These are the same people who 150 years ago would have been running missionary trips to Africa and starting hospitals with Dr. Livingston.
Combined with social media’s business model being advertising, and combined with Big Data and Big Psychology, learning how to effectively manipulate groups of people (less so individuals, but that’s a longer comment).
Combined with the general attraction of Lefties to areas that allow them to create “realities” (entertainment, media, PR, marketing, “trans”).
There’s more, but that’s top of mind.
They’re not stupid, they have papers. They’re credentialed.
–Which is very different from educated.
Yes. That itself was combined with the self-esteem movement that gave out gold stars just for existing. No need to actually achieve anything or do good. Everyone’s a winner!
I thought it a bad idea back then, and here we are now.
This is the heart of the matter.
You rang?
What did I just watch?
Do you remember the researcher (criminologist?) who discovered that the criminals and juvenile delinquents were not suffering from low self-esteem but the reverse, an exaggerated sense of their own worth and accomplishment?
Yes.
Affirmative Action.
I think it’s just that they’re out to hire people who can be counted on to have no thoughts or beliefs that will keep them from doing and saying what they’re told.
There is a personal account of the rise of Nazism in which a man tells the author that he supports the Nazi Party because he has no talents, no real abilities, but the Nazis will make a profitable place for men like him, the men without qualities.
(If anyone recognizes this quote, I would very much like to be reminded of the source.)
I dunno, but it reminds me of Dorothy Thompson’s famous “Who Goes Nazi?” essay.
In today’s parlance the game might be called “Who Votes Biden?”
Democrats will try to steal the next two elections and have the White House and even more power than last time. They are fools as they have no idea how fast our country will collapse once they complete power centralization but they are masters at creating votes. How many votes must they create to steal the election? Biden, from the basement got more votes than anyone in history and we didn’t challenge it. Indeed our best and brightest don’t think Democrats stole the last election.
They are not our best and they are certainly not bright.
Or is it the ‘evil vs. stupid’ question again?