The Dangers of the Derp State

How we became a nation of so many dupes and fools is a matter at least as complicated as the causes of Donald Trump’s presidency.

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One of the aphorisms of our populist era goes that Donald Trump is more of a symptom than a cause. Fair enough. I’ve certainly said it many times myself. But for it to be more than just a way to dodge nettlesome issues, we have to be clear about the diagnosis.

As Trump’s second impeachment trial gets underway, it’s crucial to know which causes and effects we mean. Since Trump re-emerged on the political scene a decade ago hawking Obama birtherism like a box of frozen steaks, he and his antic carnival of grift have been credited with and blamed for everything from “bringing peace and prosperity” to the world all the way down to dating woes.

I don’t pretend to know everything that caused the nation to be such ripe pickings for a hustler like Trump. We all know some of the causes: cultural starvation that created a yearning for rabid partisanship as a simulacrum, economic transformation, weak political parties, atomization of media, the ease of employing mob tactics in the digital age, and on and on. In fact, Trump has been a big and messy enough symptom that one can find his origins in almost any longstanding ill he or she wishes. Confirmation bias didn’t just help make Trump possible; it has confused the work of an honest, complete diagnosis.

This is the kind of algebraic thinking that makes it so hard to address serious problems in America. If one already knows the product of the equation is that their opponents are to blame, solving for X is just a matter of looking for a root cause that originates on the other side. Satisfied that it’s somebody else’s fault, the mind closes with a pleasing “snap.”

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  1. Lynn Matthews

    I would point out that if you stand back and look at Trump from an international perspective he's part of a larger group of politicians who share common traits with Poland, Hungary, the United Kingdom, etc. There's an international trend among right-wing political parties which have shifted towards more population rhetoric and anti-immigration.

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  2. Ryan King

    IMO this is the best paragraph of the article. From my experience this all is true.


    "This is the kind of algebraic thinking that makes it so hard to address serious problems in America. If one already knows the product of the equation is that their opponents are to blame, solving for X is just a matter of looking for a root cause that originates on the other side. Satisfied that it’s somebody else’s fault, the mind closes with a pleasing “snap.”

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  3. WallyM

    Like the previous commenter, "I ask Chris to dive just a bit deeper...". He claims that "..we are suffering the consequences from generations of Americans who are both undereducated and miseducated." But what do the data say? The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows a trend of improving math skills among 17-year-olds and a constant level of reading skills since 1990. (Below I pasted a link to a blog post with charts of the NAEP data.) Chris may believe that the NAEP data are false or irrelevant, but I would appreciate some notice that he is at least aware of the data.

    Thank you.

    (Link: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/page/5/ ...Yes, it's "Mother Jones", but it does present NAEP data in nice chart form. And I believe it's important to read a variety of points of view.)

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    Hank Carmean

    Terrific article.

    In an unforgettable (to me) TV interview in early 2016, a woman told the interviewer that she was going to the local Trump stadium rally because "I never got to see Elvis, but by God I am going to see Donald Trump!"

    As Senator John Kennedy has said: "No wonder aliens won't talk to us!"

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    Tim Murphy

    He nailed it. Mediocrity permeates every aspect of our society.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Tim Murphy

    He nailed it. Mediocrity permeates every aspect of our society.

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  7. Mary Stine

    Welcome Chris Stirewalt! This center left democrat is thrilled to read this. As a mom and former teacher and former retail business owner, I've seen the imbecility over and over again. Sometimes it was a struggle not to fall prey to it myself. But the overarching thing I saw as a teacher and later working with the public was the refusal to take responsibility for anything that went wrong. Parents refusing to acknowledge that their own behavior and lack of encouragement caused poor academic success in their children. Buyers who felt every product had a magical warranty that absolved their abuse or misuse of the product/. Owners who'd neglected to buy insurance but wanted the store to cover their loss. Employees that refused health insurance in liew of a cash bonus then got sick and wanted their medical bills paid.
    I could go on, but the combination of illogical thinking and irresponsibility was maddening.
    I've been saying on this commentary since I got here that we need a swift return to teaching
    civics, including the consitution, bill of rights and basic civic responsibility. But to do that would also require teaching critical thinking skills and logic, something most of the protestant Christian schools have publicly stated they are against.
    There is another aspect here that I rarely see discussed, even by teachers: learning abilities.
    For centuries most humans learned complex things by listening, repeating, reciting--aural learning. Some things, hunting, weaving, to name two were also learned visually and kinetically.
    When written language and numbers finally were developed, visual learning became more and more needed and encouraged. But we still have many learners among us whose best learning style is aural or kinetic. I'm old enough to remember writing in large letters or numbers on a blackboard (kinetic) or declaiming verbs, reciting multiplication tables or poems (aural) in addition to reading or writing at my desk (visual). Until we acknowledge the great need to incorporate all of these learning systems again, we will lose learners, we will have a partially literate, poorly educated populace.

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  8. I Am the Sixth Amendment

    This many nincompoops didn’t show up overnight, you’re right. They’ve been here all along. But in the days before the iPhone, they were safely hidden away in local newspapers. What changed is that we see them now, all of them, every day.

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  9. jim coleman

    Shouldn’t we stop blaming teachers even if they aren’t great and start taking responsibility for challenging our kids to learn history. The positives and negatives of our past. Chris is right, our country is teaming with fools. I know too many well meaning millennials that don’t have any context when they criticize the world around them. So glad the Dispatch is getting stronger every day.

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  10. Allan Herrera

    Nothing makes me happier than to know Chris found a home at The Dispatch. Great first article.

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