Stupidity: Is It The New Political Power?

How grievance, identity, and performance are reshaping self-government

Allan J. Feifer | October 8, 2026

We have spent centuries building societies on the assumption that people can govern themselves. Our institutions are premised on individual responsibility, private property, free expression, voluntary association, markets, constitutional limits, and the belief that adults can generally be trusted to govern themselves.

Yet much of today’s politics appears to be moving in the opposite direction.

Competence increasingly seems negotiable, perhaps even disqualifying. Expertise is often treated with suspicion. Complex problems are compressed into slogans. Identity matters more than accomplishment, authenticity more than knowledge, and how a politician makes people feel more than that politician’s ability.

Why? And more importantly, what happens to our democracy when understanding a political argument matters less than producing the politically correct reaction?

That is a different question from whether conservatives or liberals are right. It is a question about self-government itself. The old populist argument was simple: the elites have failed you, so “power to the people.”

The emerging version may be something stranger: you don’t need knowledge; you only need someone or something to blame.

That’s a very different kind of populism.

Self-government is hard work. It requires citizens to absorb facts, recognize tradeoffs, distinguish evidence from assertion, remember history, tolerate disagreement, and occasionally accept outcomes they don’t like.

None of that is particularly riveting. Anger, outrage, fear, and identity are.

And the modern infosphere is exceptionally good at delivering them.

A politician no longer needs to explain how a complicated policy will work. A social-media influencer doesn’t need expertise in the subject he is discussing. A political movement doesn’t necessarily need to persuade anyone through argument. Identify an enemy, construct a grievance, provide a slogan, and you have an audience that can be........

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