It's Never Too Late To Think

"Idiocy" is not the opposite of intelligence.  There is actually a positive correlation between the two, just as there is a positive correlation between intelligence and "stupidity" (which is emotional).  This is especially true in the culture which we are continually creating: one where the self and selfishness are idealized
in such toxic ways.

David Brooks thinks it's bad that Trump calls our leaders parasites and morons. He thinks we should understand the economy is turning more cruel because of "structural shifts" guided by the misunderstood "invisible hand".

Is it so difficult to understand that the economy is getting more vicious and society is shredding in such frightening ways (for the 99.9%) because of structural shifts enabled, encouraged, and partially engineered, by parasites and morons?

The parasites and morons (actually classical idiots) are a much more inclusive group than the oligarchic .01%.  It's much more than the investors and bankers with all their lawyers, lobbyists and pocketed politicians.  It includes the majority of journalists, pundits, professors, teachers, administrators, managers, consultants, Rotary & Chamber of Commerce luminaries, and "too hip not to fail" entrepreneurs.  They are the "talking classes" called out by Christopher Lasch in 'The Revolt of the Elites' who, in their narcissistic self indulgence, echo the banal absurdities and mendacious mystifications designed to keep us all so bewildered and distracted.

The mother of those mendacious mystifications is the (very lame) claim that that the most devastating "structural changes" are NOT being partially engineered and amplified by deliberate practices and policies at the global corporate and governmental level.

• Think the erosion of collective bargaining rights. (Taft Hartley showed the rollback of the New Deal started under Truman.)
• Think tax cuts for the rich. (Started under Kennedy who championed and signed the bill.)
• Think taxpayer funded bailouts for financial sectors deemed "too big to fail".
• Think fast tracked "investor protection pacts" hatched in secret and falsely labeled as "free trade agreements."
• Think the financial-ization of the domestic US economy since the 1960s.

Think!

The hands are not that invisible. The Idiot Elite will obviously leave it to SOME invisible force to promote the public interest whether it be the domestic or the global public. But right now they are too busy doing everything possible to crush and dismember it.

If pushed, a member (or cheerleader for) the Idiot Elite would probably say that he was not a free agent, and to a large extent he might be right.  That's why idiocy is so difficult to struggle against.

IDIOT (from Wiktionary) From Middle English, from Old French idiote (later idiot), from Latin idiota, from Ancient Greek ἰδιώτης ‎(idiṓtēs, “a private citizen, one who has no professional knowledge, layman”), from ἴδιος ‎(ídios, “one's own, pertaining to oneself, private”); ἰδιώτης ‎(idiṓtēs) was used derisively in ancient Athens to refer to one who declined to take part in public life.