What could go wrong? Trump has ordered lakes in America to be renamed Lake America. Every lake shall forthwith be known for what it is, to reduce confusion about where it is. This genius move is believed to be the kind of bold and decisive action to make travel far easier, while it rapidly increases American test scores in geography. Likewise, every state will be more appropriately named to United State, with capitals renamed to State Capital.
I’m not a young man. Over the course of my lifetime, there have been many occasions when I have needed to estimate the mental acuity of the average American, as a factor in my decisionmaking. For a long time, I concluded that the average American was fairly smart. (I am aware that human intelligence is such a nebulous and multifaceted characteristic, we have almost no practical clinical understanding of it. I also recognize the paradox inherent in the idea that the average American is smarter than average.)
With shame I remember one early fall morning in 2016 when I sat in a room with faculty members of the University of Arkansas–Fort Smith. Uncharacteristically, someone had spoken to the room, of the upcoming presidential election. I was very pleased with what I considered to be the prospects of the upcoming election; I was doubly pleased to have this chance to broadcast evidence of my own political prowess. My peers all seemed to be burdened by a pall of timid uncertainty. How could they not feel the same golden warmth of hope that had grown ever greater within my own bosom during the course of the presidential campaign? Fie upon their gloom, for now was the moment I would deliver them by announcing the obvious truth!
“Trump is the best thing that ever happened* to the Democrats,” I said. “There is no way that he can be elected president of the United States of America. It is im-possible!”
I’d overstressed the first syllable of my final word as a rhetorical flourish. I knew I’d drive everyone wild. When they heard my proclamation that Trump’s run was doomed, the thrill would make them all leap with joy!
No one leapt. All sat silent and still. The gloom remained. It even seemed to have grown yet more thick.
In the moment, I was immune to any self-awareness of my own delusion. I was puzzled. What was wrong with everybody? Wasn’t I in the midst of a group of people who had a better-than-usual understanding of things? The answer to that question was Yes. I was in the midst of such people, without being one myself.
In 2016, I learned that the average American is not fairly sharp. The average American is an idiot.
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“Did he learn thus from the election result? Or does he refer to his discovery that he’d overestimated his own smarts?”
“It’s ambiguous.”
“Ambiguous good? Or ambiguous bad?”
“How could either one be good?”
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*close readers of the American political news may recall that Trump recently made an almost-identical statement about Abdul El-Sayed, the current Democratic U.S. Senate candidate for Michigan; Trump said something along the lines of El-Sayed being the best thing that had ever happened to the Republicans; the similarity between my 2016 statement and Trump’s recent comment is coincidental; that similarity also reflects very poorly on my contemporary mental process