Donald Trump’s Dunning Kruger Cabinet

| 3:00 pm EST December 15, 2024
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Geologist and British Journalist Peter Hadfield explains how easily the Dunning Kruger effect can happen to anybody this way. Imagine you’ve found a new enthusiasm and you only know one thing about it. After a short period of time you learn ten things about it, that is, you learn ten times more about it than you knew when you started. Not only are you filled with confidence, but, if you’re a little naive, you might even convince yourself that you’re something of an expert. Part of the problem is a real expert might know 10,000 things about it.

Who hasn’t discovered a new hobby and been a little, shall we say, delusional about their talents at the start? Who hasn’t thought they would be the greatest gardener, or tennis player, or guitar player on the block? Probably everyone, a little bit, at one time or another. That’s the Dunning Kruger effect, too. It’s not always inimical. Sometimes it can be sweet, even charming. Sometimes the people around such a person want them to succeed. And hey, sometimes, once in a blue moon, they actually do.

The point at which the Dunning Kruger effect becomes dangerous is when it’s wielded by a tyrant with power who is categorically certain he or she is right. Donald Trump has been and will become just such a Dunning Kruger president. He is surrounding himself with a Dunning Kruger cabinet, and he’s supported by millions of Dunning Kruger specimens who have so little regard for the office of the presidency that they think a gameshow host with no experience can be and will be again the greatest president who ever lived.

It’s the ultimate nightmare. It’s the scenario where the drunk at the end of the bar, who is forever sermonising about how simple the world’s problems are and how quickly they would be solved if they put him in charge, has in fact been put in charge. Not only have they put him in charge, they’ve re-elected him. And he’s picked a cabinet.

The problem is too many people fail to understand that being a great president is like being a great Olympic gymnast. It takes years of training and talent and not everyone can do it. But because too many people don’t understand this they’re prepared to anoint anybody to the job, like Oprah or a gameshow host. Thankfully Oprah was smart enough to know how silly that idea is. The gameshow host wasn’t.

And now he’s picking a cabinet. Most of them are stupendously, breathtakingly, unbelievably unqualified for their prospective jobs. Each of them is a Dunning Kruger specimen. None of them (as far as I know) have said the obvious: “Are you kidding? Me? What the hell do I know about doing that?” Most of them embrace the appointment they’ve been given.

I don’t know who’s the worst. RFK, perhaps. Robert F Kennedy Jr would be the last person on earth you’d want for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He’s a loony conspiracy theorist, an anti-vaxxer who thinks HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and children are turned gay by chemicals in the water. He thinks the pandemic was the “PLANdemic.” He is a talent-free moron with a name.

Then there’s Kash Patel. Patel is tipped for director of the FBI. Patel wants to turn the J Edgar Hoover building into a “museum of the deep state.” Patel is a Q-Anon conspiracy wackadoodle who wants to make “beat cops” out of FBI agents. He doesn’t understand that a lot of people who work in the Hoover building do vital administration work for the FBI. I know this because I spent thirty seconds on Google. The purported next director of the FBI hasn’t bothered.

The nightmare continues. There’s sexual predator, daydrunk and serial hand non-washer Pete Hegseth, a nominee only a mother could love. Only his mother doesn’t. But wait. The best, as the saying goes, is yet to come. Sexual harasser and lunatic shouter Kimberley Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece? Does she even speak Greek? Does anybody know or care? She once called the Greeks “freeloaders.”

The jobs Trump is handing out like candy have real requirements for actual expertise. Many of Trump’s Dunning Kruger picks have expressed a desire to destroy the departments they are being nominated for. Lee Zeldin, Trump’s choice for head of the Environmental Protection Agency goes even further. He wants to rollback regulations on industry and promote fossil fuel use. In effect, Zeldin actually wants to kill the environment.

The Dunning Kruger effect is at its most scary when it’s mixed with religion. There is never any crisis point that you can reach to stop you from committing a crime against your country when God himself has told you that you’re doing the right thing. It’s the ultimate tyranny when you KNOW you’re right, and no power on earth can dissuade you. Most of Trump’s Dunning Kruger picks are religious, or at least claim they are.

The good news is Trump’s government, if permitted to achieve its illogical goals, will become a nightmare of chaos and inefficiency. Hopefully the heads of his various departments will be kept busy with the game of idiot’s delight of their own creation, too busy to do any real harm. Let us hope. Hang in there friends and neighbors and get ready for a very bumpy ride.