Much has been written in these parts about the crisis of competence that is creepy up on all aspects of life like the fog. Every day, competent people are aging out and being replaced by people who lack the competence. A complimentary problem, one also driven by demographics, is the Dunning-Kruger crisis. This the problem of incompetent, but highly confidence people, getting elevated into positions for which they are unqualified, simply due to the new ethics of the elites.
The difference here is that the crisis of competence is somewhat correctable, as the unqualified millennial replacing the retiring boomer, has some hope of learning what he needs to learn to do the job. He and his organization will have to suffer through the learning curve, but there is hope he will become competent. Alternatively, the race to supplement or even replace the incompetent millennial with technology offers the alternative of a robot competently doing the job.
The Dunning-Kruger, in contrast, offers no such hope. The person elevated into the position to satisfy the needs of the new morality has no chance to ever become competent at the task. Replacing them with technology is impossible, because it would undermine the whole point of the process. Instead, the system is simply expected to adapt to these new islands of confident incompetence. Every organization is being loaded up with crosses to bear as a form of contrition.
You see how this works with the Kamala Harris campaign. Regardless of the result, it will be remembered as one of the most inept operations in modern history, perhaps rivaling the 2004 Howard Dean campaign in Iowa or even the 1988 Mike Dukakis presidential campaign. After the initial media gaslighting, it has been one unforced error after another, all stemming from the fact the people running the campaign are sure they know everything, but in fact know nothing.
One small example is the Joe Rogan flap. Rogan is the biggest carnival act in so-called new media, so doing his show would be like doing Johnny Carson back in the 1970’s or the Rush Limbaugh show in the 1990’s. It offers a unique setting in front of a huge audience, which itself will attract an even bigger audience. It is the sort of platform a candidate needing attention craves. You take the gig, hope for the best and prepare for the explosion of post-show media coverage.
The Harris campaign never understood this. Instead, they tried to strong arm Rogan into rolling over for them, even leaving his comfy studio to meet them at a hotel somewhere to record a one-hour interview. They should have known he had no reason to take that deal, but stupid people lack second order thinking. Their unearned confidence in themselves compounded the error by carrying on as if they were doing him a favor by entertaining the request.
Rogan, who never liked Trump, did the shrewd thing and invited Trump on his show and Trump happily accepted the millions in free media. The resulting program broke the internet and further humanized Trump. The theme of his campaign this time is that he has dropped the sharp edges, having learned from the past. Hamming it up with Rogan, who was a smitten kitten the whole time, underscored this theme. Team Dunning-Kruger handed Trump a huge win as a result.
This one incident among many is a microcosm of the growing Dunning-Kruger crisis we see unfolding everywhere. It is not just that these people lack the required talents or experience for the task. It is that they lack the innate ability for the roles and the self-awareness to recognize it. Stupid people who realize they are outmatched can be managed, but stupid people who think they are geniuses are a danger to everyone and everything they touch. Invisible stupidity is lethal.
Look at who is running the Harris campaign, and the problem is obvious. The campaign boss is named Julie Chávez Rodriguez. She has three names because her only reason to exist in politics is she is the granddaughter of Cesario Chavez. Her qualifications for politics are that she is female, brownish and related to a famous brown guy. She has parlayed that into a career doing busy work, so that the nice white ladies could put her face on the organization brochure.
Julie Chávez Rodriguez no doubt looks in the mirror each morning and sees a world bestriding figure, when in reality she is a hapless simpleton. She is in this role because of her long relationship with Kamala Harris, another strong diverse female who is brimming with confidence despite having done nothing on her own worth noting, other than being a concubine of Willie Brown. The Harris campaign operates like the marketing pitch for the Christopher Rufo project.
There have been terrible national campaigns in the past, but the cause was always a candidate with little to sell running against a favored incumbent. Mike Dukakis never had a chance in 1988, so his people had few good choices. Bob Dole in 1996 was simply running to pad his obituary. He had no chance against Clinton, and he certainly knew it, but played the role anyway. Harris has the full support of official Washington and the political regime but is still losing.
Given the reality of our politics, this sort of ineptitude may seem trivial, but the Dunning-Kruger crisis is rolling out everywhere. It is why certain members of the economic elite are panicking about DEI at elite universities. They suddenly realized that their good deed installing someone like Claudine Gay as president of Harvard could come at a price to them beyond embarrassment. Handing power to entitled stupid people brimming with unearned confidence is playing with fire.
It is comforting to think that maybe the outbreak of incompetence among the elites due to the cult of diversity will cause them to pull back, but that is not the way to bet because of the religious fanaticism around the cult of diversity. If Harris loses next week, expect to hear endless cries of racism. If she wins, the resulting catastrophe will be blamed on the bogeyman. The Dunning-Kruger crisis ends only when the forces and people behind it come to an end.
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Every chance we get we should impose diversity on the elites (and on every liberal we know). Shame your liberal friends into getting black doctors. Demand our military and top level officials fly on jets with black pilots. Tell them to take migrants into their neighborhoods. Encourage feminists to let transsexuals into their locker rooms. You’ve got to be vicious and strategic. The character of these people never changes but they do feel pain and they will back off.
Well you hit the nail right on the head, T. I got into the workforce just affirmative action was ramping up. The diverse workplace back then was in the shipping department and out on the shop floor with the peons… but you never saw it in the office where the management worked – and for good reason. Management HAD to be taken seriously, dontchya know!!! Whenever I was hunting for a job hunting I kept a very sharp eye out for diversity. If I had to work in close proximity to it I turned my nose up at it. F… Read more »
They will, of course, refuse to do it, with myriad excuses…LIberals are completely untroubled by hypocrisy…
There is a vast gulf between the liberals and the elites. You might force DEI on the former, and that will happen if this proceeds (it may collapse soon), but the latter–never. You never will see video of the pilots who ferry the anointed to Davos.
Providing security to the Klaus Schwabs of the world must pay really well. Cause I dunno how else they live with themselves.
This is rampant in the corporate world. But in olden tymes, the “first” to be elevated to a position was generally smart enough to understand the game that was being played. So they would surround themselves with competent people and it all worked out. Worked indirectly for two of those early in my career. Problem now is you have these “new” university cohorts that have been told how “special” and “smart” they are from grade school (as well as how “bad” whitey is), thus hubris + no self reflection. And they surround themselves with Chavez types. You can’t work around… Read more »
I recently saw this with a former client. Girl boss replaced old white guy who was there forever. She then cleared out the finance department of the pale and stale, replacing them with diversity. Soon, I started receiving calls about how various programs and processes were not working. These are things that were put in place long ago. I would get emails like “I entered all of the data but now it is missing. The system must have erased it.” Turned out that she did not understand how to save her work. Something that compounds this is the millennial assumption… Read more »
Your second path is worthy of Websters in defining a key aspect of millennials and younger.
You say this, but have you ever considered competent millennials are not promoted on purpose because they’re viewed as “mean”?
Ah yes! PICNIC! Problem in chair not in computer.
PEBKAC – Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Computer
Resist pressure, keep your head down and don’t hire them so you don’t have to fire them (which you can’t).
First or second stage of Marching Morons.
I was at the border crossing shopping mall the other day (Sam’s Club) and it hit me worse than it usually does. Sunday must be diversity plus day but all I could think was, how do you govern these people? Win or lose next week we are still stuck with all of this.
My special hell is waiting behind diversity attempting to master self-checkout.
I live in a metropolitan exurb on the edge of farm country.
You wouldn’t believe how many different tongues I hear spoken there on any given night of the week.
The focus won’t be racism, but mostly sexism. The childless cat ladies will be outraged and may focus part of their rage on black men if they don’t turn out for Kamala in high enough numbers. My theory on her lagging numbers with black men is that she reminds them of the worst ex girlfriend they ever had. I doubt the black vote even matters that much in key states, but these women are not rational about anything and are just looking for anyone else to blame.
Living around NYC for decades, saw plenty of these. Long ago called them “DUBBs” Dried up bitter bitches. They bought into the Cosmopolitan mag “you can have it all” myth and either waited too long and remained single or did end having kids late. But had to subcontract raising them, messed the kids up, and were exhausted all the time. Then eventually drove their husbands away and are alone, angry and with seriously screwed up offspring that don’t like them.
Obama was the ideal black candidate because he was polished enough for black men to admire and safe enough for black women to view as a role model for their sons. He was their favorite actor, Denzel Washington, as a politician. Harris reminds black men of their baby momma and black women find her alien and false. Blacks will still vote 90-10 for her, but turnout will be much lower than typical. It will not matter all that much, outside of PA or MI, maybe.
My favorite part of the election so far was when Former President Polly Prissy-Pants went out to lecture black men about voting for Kamala and coming across as “disappointed” in them because they wouldn’t vote for her. I saw the video and he was the most tin-eared I’ve ever heard him. It was like even HE didn’t believe what he was trying to sell. But it was all hectoring and I imagine the men he was talking to were fighting mightily NOT to roll their eyes. 🙄 Between him and Michelle his wife nagging men to vote for Kamala, oh… Read more »
The cat ladies might think better of that plan and instead focus their anger on “Mormons” like they did after the gay marriage referendum didn’t pass in California (largely due to the high number of blacks and hispanics voting against it)
I dunno, Z. I’m inclined to agree about declining competence… but a week or two back, I saw the first stage of a mighty rocket fall out of the skies, punch a hole in the clouds on the way down… and then stand on its tail, and gently lower itself on a column of flame back onto a gantry and shut down. It is my contention that technology like that may indeed allow the upcoming Artemis program to put diversity on the moon. Then you can beat on the bongos for me while I recite freestyle poetry about Blackie On… Read more »
Isn’t the Musk-owned SpaceX company that built that rocket being sued by the Justice Department for not hiring illegal aliens?
If NASA does it, you can safely bet that they’ll get a non-white male to be the next one small step for (man)kind on the moon. My guess would be a black person or a white woman. I put $50 on Jeanette J. Epps. If Elon does it, I can see him just picking the best individual(s). I think all the news about Elon’s rockets has discredited NASA, and you also have the ongoing discrediting of Boeing, the Armed Forces, and DEI in general. People see what great men can do, after a long period of media-created “great men” like… Read more »
Oh, they’ve already announced the required diverse gender and racial mix for the crew. They did that before they even had a fucking clue what the required skill set would be and who the best candidates would be. For that alone, I kinda want the first landing capsule to crash into the moon at high velocity while Pilot Jontavious screams “bitch cut me off!”
Musk’s success at rocketry can be simply attributed to the fact that he refuses to kowtow to DEI in any fashion…of course he’s being sued, and doesn’t care…Musk hires the best he can get his hands on, pays them well, and most important, turns them loose….That used to be common in America, but now is a rarity….
everyone always forgets that the lunar landing camera man was named Tyrone, those cameras don’t pan-up on their own 😉
And we’re all learning that teams of black women were needed to keep those white boys heading straight, or they would have been lost in space!
SpaceX is a White Guy operation.
That last sentence. Keep your eye on the Middle East, because the incompetence that has infected our institutions has reached into the military-industrial complex and into the highest reaches of the Pentagon. It will be difficult to gaslight 300 million Americans should one of our aircraft carriers get split in two by a Persian missile.
That’s what it’s going to take, unfortunately. A Battle of Sedan-type disaster is wonderfully clarifying for the national mood. Alas, it’ll have to be in a declared war against a near-peer opponent. Not just Houthi and the Blowfish doing it, as that will be written off as sneaky Arabs getting lucky (as they so often do, vs. AINO). But since Netanyahu is so obviously trying to drag AINO into a war with Iran, at the same time the Neocons are so obviously trying to drag AINO into a war with Russia, many opportunities to lose a carrier or three should… Read more »
Yes. This has been my point here recently. Thermodynamic/kinetic events bring about change. Disasters and crises bring about reform.
Today’s aircraft carriers are as obsolete as battleships were in World War II. The only thing keeping them afloat, should the United States pick a fight with the wrong country, is the residual fear of its military left over from the 1940s.
My 4-D theory is someone in the Pentagon has been tasked with tipping the Iranians off about what Israel is doing in order to prevent the big war between Israel and Iran. Lots of rumors about the last Israel attack having to be aborted. They supposedly put a hundred planes in the air and then fired a few dozen missiles at some abandoned buildings. The rumor is they encountered air defenses they did not know the Iranians possessed and had to abort the mission. Of course, if Iran knew what was coming, they would be better able to intercept the… Read more »
The American military industrial complex (MIC) have been running a scam on the taxpayer for decades now, whereby they wage lopsided conflicts against third world peasants with overpriced weapons of questionable efficacy. The end of the Cold War could have been a problem for them, as no one was funding the farmers and herdsmen, but they solved this by funding both sides themselves (perhaps unintentionally). The Middle East is a far bigger problem for the MIC. They cannot say no to the Jewish-influenced politicians upon whom their funding relies, any more than they can risk having their scam exposed. Dead… Read more »
Yes. The Izzys pulled their punches for some reason. The confirmation is that no one is bragging about the attack. If it was at all successful we would be seeing endless reports from the neocons concerning their defeat of the “mad Mullahs” of Iran.
Supposedly the latest, greatest gen 5 F-35Is were easily tracked by Iranian radar and had to turn back after an early launch. The Israeli F35s are probably better than the scrap heap ones in our military and have a much higher in-service ratio compared to ours well under 50%. Yet the neos are slavering for a shot at backwards Russia.
Yes, yes…eventually the only real “experts” left at the DOD will be experts in procuring $$$ for boondoggles like the F-35.
You mean this salty sea dog does not inspire confidence in you and fear in our enemies?
“Mr. Putin, I want to talk to the manager!”
For the true believers it is about diversity. For the scheming misanthropes it is a patronage network and an enforcement network. This is about burning the ladders and shutting the doors. The country has been occupied for a long time. Now it is conquered. The, “diversity”, is a permeate satrapy designed to wall off any and every avenue to those who have been conquered. It is the failed leaders of the conquered who were so incompetent that they put themselves into this position and fell for such a stupid idea. Now some people who are extremely competent are going to… Read more »
Upvoted for the phrase “burning the ladders and shutting the doors.” This is the future unless changes are made and competence is restored. We will be shut out of everything until finally the end comes.
“unqualified millennial replacing the retiring boomer” As a card carrying member of Gen-X, I want to thank you for skipping us. Hopefully we can continued to slide by unnoticed.
That seems to be the plan. Everyone my age I know in the business world is just hoping to lay low until retirement.
Just playing out the string Boss. 🍹😎
We’re like the new Silent Generation. All of the benefits, none of the blame
The biggest problem with elected politics is the overwhelming presence of lawyers running for office. These mouthpieces have the gift of gab and an enormous ego, but no real experience running anything. We could happily trade 30 lawyers in power for 30 engineers and tradesmen. The goal of a harmonious society should not only be to maintain the status quo but to improve things. Lawyers improve nothing. They are troublemakers and busibodies, honing their skills like wasps. It should be noted that both Lenin and Castro were professional lawyers in a peasant country. Setting a lawyer to run an economy… Read more »
Dunning Kruger may be our only hope for the failure of globohomo’s burgeoning tyranny. If they can’t run basic utilities then they can’t very well impose an effective CBDC regime. Bearing this in mind, we should probably demand all the dieversity we can in the federal government. Does anyone have a more feasible or more effective idea of how it can be crippled?
‘Julie Chávez Rodriguez no doubt looks in the morning each morning and sees a world bestriding figure, when in reality she is a hapless simpleton’ America has to replace tens of millions of white male boomers who are semi-competent to maintain national infrastructure and techno-creative potential. What the nation has replacements are gazillions of three-named empowered wimmin. Julie Chavez Rodriguez and Kammie Harris are prime examples of government-by-snowflake that is the modern American Deep State. Bureaucracy is over-run with fifty years of increasingly empowered princesses, few of whom are fit to replace the white male boomers they have degraded, toxified… Read more »
The irony of ironies is that Cesar Chavez was absolutely opposed to illegal immigration, for the obvious reason that it depresses wages. He was really an old-school leftist.
Yes I’ve been reading about JCC’s attitude toward illegals. Of course if he was still around he’d have to do a 180 or face oblivion. I remember in the mid-2000s, seeing, I believe it was the Sierra Club, which had always opposed more immigration, being harangued into “seeing the light”, and dropping their opposition. So much for the environment…
The whale donor of the Sierra Club became an open borders fanatic with a predictable early life, so the thinking evolved. I would hazard a guess that AGW is no longer as big of a thing since it conflicts with mass migration, which is the endgame.
The worst part is that, because these people are superstitious primitives, there will never come a “you won’t have Nixon to kick around moment” for the white race. Surely, if a state were to hypothetically lose one-hundred percent of its white population, they could not blame that state’s failures on the white man? Oh, but they could, and would (and will, if they get the chance.) There could literally be no white people left in America, and, like a neolithic cult, the diversity would gather around statues and paintings of white people and shout at them. “There’s no more glow… Read more »
Well, as we know, black neighborhoods are terrible because White people had the audacity to flee them and take all the magic dirt with them. Damn White people.
The Dunning-Kruger thing requires one key system feature: no short-term feedback loop. Foreign policy failure – total military hegemony to enforce our will. Financial failure – reserve currency printing, endless bailouts and welfare. Educational failure – confer worthless degrees and forgive student loans. Societal failure – SSRIs, pot, narcotics to numb the hopeless masses. Of course, eventually thermodynamics assert themselves.
I still think it’s harsh.to compare Kamala Harris to Michael Dukakis. If you were to transport Harris and walz back to 1988, I doubt either of them crack 35 percent. That’s.hoq dumbed down society has gotten
*that’s how
The Harris campaign is in flailing mode, desperately reaching for anything shiny enough to distract away from their inept candidate. She is like the beauty pageant who when asked her most important issue, she’ll reply, “world peace, or ending world hunger.” A vacuous person who began her political career on the arm of SF political heavy Willie Brown, she was introduced to the right people at important dinner parties, who then utilized her as a front for their own interests. Imagine getting picked as a VP for Harris so you can make her look smarter. That’s not an achievement. Walz… Read more »
It is playing with fire to nominate someone for president who has never before had to win a competitive race. This was true of Hillary also. One could cite Dunning Kruger as the culprit in both cases.
In many ways Kamala Harris is the perfect representative for the Banana Empire, and you listed several of those.
Walz is the perfect example of “rising to their level of incompetence” aka “The Peter Principle”. Tampon Tim worked fine as long as he stayed in Minnesota. He fits in with the “You Betcha” Socialist Germans and liberal Scrowegians that populate that state. After all, who really looks at the Governor of a state that’s not New York or California? Sure, Florida and Texas have Governors that have made their names in the public sphere, and Michigan and Illinois have self-promoting governors who don’t understand The Streisand Effect when they seek publicity, but Minnesota? Where it’s cold all around? So… Read more »
One interesting angle to the Trump-Rogan beef is that Rogan is terminally a Boston Southie, whereas Trump is literally the personification of 1980s NYC.
That said, and maybe I’m reading the situation wrong, but I feel like the Trump-Rogan beef is a bit oversold.
They’ve been at mixed martial arts events in the past, they must’ve had some brief conversations at those.
“The Dunning-Kruger crisis ends only when the forces and people behind it come to an end.”
Not sure it can *ever* end—because it’s a remark on human nature, and that’s not going to end soon. If one thinks of the concept and is familiar with history, one can describe many important figures throughout antiquity with this problem. Alcibiades comes immediately to mind.
There’s a lot of thrust vectoring combining to fly this plane into the ground… Dunning-Kruger married up with the Peter Principle, Parkinson’s Law, and more! “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” & “In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.” – Peter The number of workers within public administration, bureaucracy or officialdom tends to grow, regardless of the amount of work to be done, attributed mainly to two factors: First, officials want subordinates, not rivals, and second, officials make work for each… Read more »
One of the attributes of civilisations in decline and dissolution is the lack of attention to detail and quality, the lack of emphasis on quality and performance. And this is throughout the collective West, not just the USA. Sure, DEI is a major culprit — but the malaise goes deeper than this and one might argue that the tolerance of DEI is itself a symptom of broader decadence. Performance and accomplishment have largely ceased to matter in both popular and elite culture. Hence my running around manically to find a competent mechanic, a competent electrician, a competent plumber, a competent… Read more »
On the subject of campaign incompetence, I’ve been kind of amazed at how ridiculously out-of-touch Harris’ ads are with the actual campaign being run by Trump. A few weeks ago they started up with a bunch of “tax breaks for the rich” ads because Trump’s a “billionaire” don’t you know. Even setting aside the fact that they’ve been painting Trump as a failure in business lying about his wealth for the past 8+ years, Trump has said absolutely nothing about tax cuts. It’s the kind of ad that might have made sense in 1980 during the Reagan/Carter campaign but means… Read more »
Good essay. The proposed peace agreement in Ukraine must have also been cooked up by a simpleton. The Secretary of State landing in the Middle East in a war in which the United States should seek peace and then declaring himself a Jew first is the act of a simpleton. Alowing a person from the board of the Hebrew Aid Society promoting importing refugees into the United States to be in charge of the security for very border of the United States is the act of simpletons. The list of the acts of simpletons never ends in the 21st century.… Read more »
Hopefully the lizard people who control the nuclear codes don’t have opposable thumbs.
Handing power to entitled stupid people brimming with unearned confidence is playing with fire. Hence, Ukraine and being forced to the brink of nuclear war. The people in today’s Pentagon and State Department would have been hard-pressed to be middle managers only a generation ago, but today they assure us mushroom clouds are overrated. Women and Incompetents of Color loom large in their ranks. I disagree with you that there will be doubling down if Harris loses, which seems possible. In fact, her vapidity and incompetence will provide a chunk of the elite the cover to move past DEI on… Read more »
If Shakespeare in Love were filmed this decade instead of in the 90s then ol Bill would definitely be a negro