MAGA and the Dunning Kruger effect
Imagine you’re a professional of some kind, a plumber, say, and an inexperienced novice shows up at your workplace and starts telling you your business. In the course of their arrogant lecture they call a wrench a hammer, they insist that the best way to clear a drain is to use dynamite, they’re full of confidence and ignorance in equal measure. Anyone who disagrees with them they snidely refer to as a “shill for mainstream plumbing.”
Welcome to the world of the Dunning Kruger effect. First described in a study by Justin Kruger and David Dunning in 1999, the Dunning Kruger effect is a phenomenon whereby people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. Sometimes the overestimation can be jaw-droppingly vast, their incompetence bafflingly obvious — to everyone but themselves.
In recent months I have done a medium dive into the world of Flat Earthers, people who not only believe the earth is flat, they insist on it. It’s a breeding ground for the Dunning Kruger effect. Flat Earthers disdain modern science while simultaneously hijacking and misapplying the very technical terms of science to “prove” their ludicrous claim. Flat-earthism is a re-emerging belief system, given fresh wings thanks to social media.
At first I thought they were joking. They are not, and many of them are full of rage and contempt for anyone who disagrees with them. They sometimes refer to the saner nonbelievers among us as “globe-tards.”
Many places in the Bible appear to suggest that the earth is flat. A passage in the New Testament book of Matthew, where the devil took Jesus “to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory,” is a case in point. So it’s little wonder that many Flat Earthers are MAGA evangelicals. MAGA is over-represented among Flat Earthers.
Flat-earthism is becoming vogue among the young. This is worrying, because it undermines their ability to distinguish fact from fairytale. If you believe that the earth is flat, it’s a short and easy step to believe any bullshit the MAGA Republican Party tells you. Instances where MAGA Republicans are disavowing democracy are becoming more and more common. So it is hardly surprising that anti-democracy sentiment is becoming increasingly common among the young.
In a recent Republican convention in Washington state a MAGA GOP delegate put it this way to the convention: “We are devolving into a democracy, because congressmen and senators are elected by the same pool. We do not want to be a democracy.”
It’s unbelievable, really, that in the space of less than a single generation many Republicans could actually become anti-democracy. Republicans used to be the guardians of democracy. It used to be their mission to convert the world to democracy. Today democracy is becoming increasingly anathema to them, and the spread of this dangerous idea is fueled by glassy-eyed acolytes full of the Dunning Kruger effect.
For the MAGA Republican today, up is down, black is white, the earth is flat, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. The seeds of totalitarianism are all-too-easy to plant in the soil of such ignorance. This is why the MAGA Republican Party is dangerous. This is why thy must go. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.