One of the striking things about the Canadian trucker protest is that we have been able to get a good look at Justin Trudeau. To this point no one outside of Canada has had a reason to care about him. Sure, he is a ridiculous person who likes wearing funny outfits in public, but that is democracy. Until now few people outside of the great white north have grasped the depth of this man’s ridiculousness. The whole world now sees that Canada is ruled by a feckless airhead.

In fairness, Canadians can point out that while Trudeau is a ridiculous person, he is not wearing diapers and unsure of his own name. In the theater of the absurd that is western liberal democracy, Joe Biden has to be the headliner. The Global American Empire has a dementia patient in charge. Not only that, when Joe Biden was at his peak fifty years ago, he was considered one of the dumbest men in Washington, so he is a dunce with dementia now.

Most people tend to write off these examples as exceptions. After all, the system does produce some serious people. At least that is the hope. What keeps people voting is the belief that someone will come along who will actually do the people’s bidding and be reasonably good at it. In the daily life of most people, there are plenty of capable people doing important work. In a nation of three hundred million, we should be able to find enough competent people to fill these offices.

The trouble is the system is stuffed with people who are probably worse than Justin Trudeau or Joe Biden. Is Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi an upgrade over Joe Biden in terms of cognitive ability? Is Justin Trudeau more ridiculous in his role than Maxine Waters or Ocasio-Cortez. Allegedly the most important legislative body on earth has a bag lady and ditzy barmaid. You can probably find one hundred members of Congress who are more ridiculous than Justin Trudeau.

It is not just at the top of the system either. Again, the habit is to think of the people as exceptions rather than the rule. The rest of the system has decent people who can be elevated to the national stage if people just vote harder. Then again, one of those people is Marjorie Taylor Greene. She is supposed to be the antidote to someone like Ocasio-Cortez, but in reality, she is just another flavor of the same thing. Silly people are the one thing that both parties embrace.

When you look down at the entry point of politics, what you see is the system seems to select for these people. Here is a young women with a bright future. She is currently in the Nebraska senate. Her Twitter profile reads, “State Senator in Omaha’s District 8. Vice Chair of Urban Affairs. Bi queen. Abolish ICE. She/her.” It is not hard to see her getting elevated to Congress at some point and then becoming a national figure as the first pronoun American in Congress.

Her web site says she is an “entrepreneur and small business owner” but that is a gross exaggeration. When you dig into her business career you learn she owned a boutique for a short time and then founded “Safe Space Nebraska, a nonprofit organization that protects bar patrons from harassment.” That is not the work of an “entrepreneur and small business owner”. That is the work of a public nuisance. She is why in a better age the scold’s bridle was popular.

Gormless dingbats like Megan Hunt are not an exception. She is the rule in modern politics, up and down the system. In fact, when you look down the ranks what you see is that demented old men like Biden and feckless airheads like Trudeau really are the best the system can produce. When you look at the actuarial tables, it is clear that a guy like Trudeau will be remembered as Canada’s Pericles in a few years. Joe Biden will be the Zoomer generation’s Patrick Henry.

The Founders, of course, were opposed to democracy because they assumed the people would be manipulated by craven opportunists. Ambitious men with little regard for the common good would play on the passions of the people. This would inevitably lead to factionalism. The people would care more about the narrow pursuit of their faction’s interests rather than the public good. Democracy becomes mob rule, where different mobs take turns ruling over the other mobs.

We are certainly seeing that in modern America, but what the Founders never imagined is that the craven opportunists would be stupid and ridiculous. Justin Trudeau is a simpleton, but he also possesses a rare set of social skills that has allowed him to rise to the top of his government. Joe Biden was a stupid crook, but somehow managed to stay in the Senate for generations. Even in his current condition, he was able to manipulate the system to win the White House.

What the results are telling us is that mass democracy in large technological societies selects for moronic sociopaths. The most likely reason for this is that democracy quickly becomes pointless in a large technological society. It is just window dressing for the managerial elite that operates the vast administrative state. The system can tolerate Joe Biden, because the president is a ceremonial position. In fact, all of the elected offices are ceremonial, just part of the performative democracy.

Circling back to where this started, the trucker rebellion in Canada is probably the first real test of this system. Thirty years ago, Justin Trudeau would not be tolerated because the Cold War required serious men in these positions. Three decades of easy times has allowed the system to evolve into the absurdity we now see. Reality, however, is coming back from holiday. This will be the first real test of performative democracy and the actors and actresses that populate it.

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