Trump's Functionally Stupid Army and America's Collapse

When Stupidity Becomes Policy

The Triumph of Functional Stupidity

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from a Nazi prison cell where fascists would eventually hang him, identified the cancer that's now devouring America's corpse. Stupidity is more dangerous than evil. This is because evil knows itself, creates internal friction, evil might even collapse under its own weight, but stupidity is a wholesale surrender of cognitive function. Stupidity believes itself righteous, stupidity believes itself to be doing good. This makes the stupid immune to evidence, logic, or shame.

This has nothing to do with IQ scores or educational attainment, doctors, lawyers, and MBAs fill Trump's rallies. Functional stupidity is a moral choice, not an intellectual deficiency. It's the deliberate murder of one's capacity for independent thought in exchange for the narcotic comfort of belonging.

Bonhoeffer was of course right about all of this.

I've documented this phenomenon before in "The Philosophical Suicide and The Red Hat Cult," how millions of Americans murdered the thinking parts of themselves to gain entry to Trump's simulacrum. They wanted a father who'd never ask them to clean their room, only to blame the mess on someone else. The price of admission was simple: kill your capacity for independent thought, and you are in.

The success of Trump's movement isn't suppression, it's making thought itself painful or at least more painful then being told what to think. To process evidence that Trump lost becomes an existential threat to their identity. To acknowledge his crimes means admitting they're fools. So they choose the morphine drip of stupidity over the agony of awareness. They're not victims, they're volunteers, and their voluntary degradation has created the perfect conditions for constitutional murder.

The Strangulation Of The First Amendment

The First Amendment doesn't die in darkness, it's being garroted on primetime while millions cheer the executioner.

"They're getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away,"

Trump declared on Air Force One this week, directing FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to punish ABC for insufficient genuflection. Carr's response was a masterclass in bureaucratic sadism:

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

ABC capitulated instantly, pulling Jimmy Kimmel off the air indefinitely. Trump's response?

"Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done."

A major network executed its own show to appease presidential rage, and the functionally stupid applauded this as victory over "bias."

The arithmetic of authoritarianism is breathtaking in its simplicity.

"When 97% of the stories are bad, that's not free speech, that's not fair, and we're going to stop it,"

Trump announced, making explicit what every dictator knows, criticism equals sedition, jokes equal treason, mockery demands annihilation.

Meanwhile, JD Vance transforms citizens into surveillance apparatus, asking Charlie Kirk's listeners to report neighbors for thoughtcrimes on social media. The Stasi had to recruit informants, MAGA will volunteer gleefully, creating a panopticon powered by resentment and righteousness.

The multi-billion dollar lawsuits against CBS, ABC, CNN, these aren't legal actions but financial executions, designed to bleed media organizations until they choose financial pain or bootlicking. Every outlet understands the message: Praise the Leader or perish.

This isn't tomorrow's threat, it's today's reality. Networks self-censor. Journalists genuflect. Churches that won't pledge allegiance to the Orange face IRS investigations while those preaching MAGA from the pulpit get protection. The First Amendment hasn't just been murdered; its corpse is being puppet-walked through the streets while the functionally stupid insist it's never looked healthier.

The Mathematics of Impossibility

Here's the brutal calculus that comfortable Americans don’t want to compute. You cannot democratically defeat people who want democracy destroyed. You cannot rationally engage those who've executed their rational faculties. You cannot vote your way out when a third of voters chose dictatorship, another third couldn't be bothered to stop them, and the remaining third brings parliamentary procedure to a knife fight.

Trump campaigned on terminating the Constitution, his exact words, and won. He promised to be a dictator and they cheered. He vowed to prosecute enemies, deploy military against citizens, and end free speech for critics. America heard this litany of tyranny and voted for it enthusiastically. Americans weren't deceived, they want this.

The traditional remedies are museum pieces. The courts are packed with zealots who've shown they'll contort law into origami to serve power. (Not even factoring in the insanely high likelihood that Trump appoints the next two Supreme Court Justices, meaning he will have five judges who will sit for the next 40 years.) The media is currently amputating their own spines to avoid federal retaliation. In Congress, Republicans have become willing executioners while Democrats draft strongly-worded obituaries for democracy. The military? Trump promised and is acting on his promise to purge any general who won't turn guns on citizens.

Even if Trump vanished tomorrow, the functional stupidity remains. Tens of millions have permanently surrendered their capacity for thought. Another demagogue would simply inherit this ready-made army of the cognitively capitulated. The infrastructure of oppression is built. The precedents are set. The population is primed.

This isn't pessimism, it's a calculation of where we are in America today. Democracy requires a minimum viable population of thinking citizens. We've fallen below that threshold. When enough people commit philosophical suicide, the very concept of self-governance becomes a logical impossibility, like dividing by zero.

The Collaboration Inherent in Staying

Every morning you wake up in America, you make a choice. Fund fascism or don't. There's no neutral ground in 2025 America. Your sales tax buys tear gas for protesters. Your income tax pays judges who've made law a servant of power. Your property tax funds the transformation of schools into indoctrination factories. You cannot buy groceries without subsidizing tyranny.

As Americans, we comfort ourselves with fantasies of "resistance from within," but this is masturbation, not resistance. Our angry tweets don't offset your tax payments. Our yard signs don't negate your economic participation. Every dollar you spend strengthens the regime we claim to oppose.

The comfortable lies Americans tell themselves would be funny if they weren't so inaccurate. "Other countries don't want Americans," dozens of nations actively court American emigrants through investment visas and skilled worker programs. "I'll lose my standard of living," is your comfort worth more than your complicity? "I can't afford it," you have more resources than 99.9% of history's refugees.

The Syrian refugee who fled with nothing wasn't wealthy. The Vietnamese boat people weren't young. The Soviet dissidents weren't without obligations. They left because they recognized what Americans refuse to see. When your country becomes antithetical to human dignity, leaving isn't betrayal, it's the only moral choice remaining.

Americans have been programmed to see emigration as failure rather than resistance. They imagine "real patriots" stay and fight, even when the game is rigged, the refs are bought, and the opposing team writes the rules mid-game. They cannot conceive that sometimes the most powerful resistance is refusal. Refusal to participate, refusal to fund, refusal to legitimize through presence.

The Global Consequences of American Cowardice

A fascist America isn't just an American problem; it's an existential threat to human civilization. Unlike Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, fascist America combines nuclear arsenals, global financial control, and surveillance capabilities that make Orwell's nightmares look quaint. This is authoritarianism with aircraft carriers, totalitarianism with satellites, despotism with dollar dominance.

Every American who stays, who pays taxes, who participates economically, directly funds this global threat. Your tax dollars don't just oppress Americans, they fund the machinery that will strangle freedom worldwide. Your continued participation doesn't just legitimize American fascism, it empowers it to globalize.

The world watches American cowardice with disgust. We claim to oppose fascism but won't sacrifice comfort to resist it. We call Trump a dictator while paying his salary. We say democracy is dead while participating in its corpse's economy. Every day you stay, you broadcast to humanity that fascism is acceptable as long as the wifi works and the coffee's good.

History's verdict is already being written. Just as we condemn the "good Germans" who stayed for convenience while their neighbors disappeared, future generations will excoriate the "good Americans" who funded fascism because moving seemed hard.

They'll ask: Did you really not see it? Or did you see it but value your 401k over humanity's future?

The Choice

The hour is late, not metaphorically but literally. The window between emigration and refugee status is closing. Today you can leave with resources you have. Tomorrow you might flee with nothing. The difference may be measured in months, maybe years, I personally wouldn’t count on decades.

If you stay, own it. Admit you're what you are choosing.

If you leave, understand that choice too will be incredibly difficult.

The America you knew is dead. Trump and his cult of the functionally stupid murdered it. The question isn't whether it can be resurrected, those who are paying attention will know it cannot. The question you should ask yourself is whether you'll continue funding its fascist replacement or if you can find the courage to leave it all behind.

May you choose while choice remains.

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If you’ve made it this far, you’re not just scrolling, you’re in it. Your voice, your presence, your willingness to look this in the eye, that matters a lot.

A like, a share, a comment, it doesn’t just feed an algorithm. It pushes a message through the noise.

That reach isn’t accidental. It’s you, and that power is real. You’re the reason this reaches further, and that’s powerful. Thank you for being here, and for being you.