No, I think that's a hopelessly reductive interpretation that mistakes stupidity for malice.

Since arguably the 1940s the people running the United States have been consistently trading power over the domains they consider illegible and confusing for power over the domains they consider tractable and familiar, under elite job market conditions where they are incentivised to know as much as possible about abstract court politics and the manipulation of language and as little as possible about the real world.

Even right now, you see the Trump family, the various oligarch families in the cabinet, fiddling the figures, stealing and enabling mass disasters, they are doing what they believe is right and good while having horrific delusions.

Two excellent primers on this, albeit with more of a focus on the parallel problem in the EU establishment than the US, are below:

https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/not-getting-it-together

https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/starting-from-zero

> Since arguably the 1940s the people running the United States have been consistently trading power over the domains they consider illegible and confusing for power over the domains they consider tractable and familiar, under elite job market conditions where they are incentivised to know as much as possible about abstract court politics and the manipulation of language and as little as possible about the real world.

My question was grounded in ignorance and curiosity. Appreciate the response, gives me a lot to think about. Cheers

I’d take the re-election of Trump to mean the US isn’t a serious society/people anymore.

I don’t say that lightly, and it’s certainly not just the US that has that problem either. Australia, where I live, is infected with it.