How Did the West Become So Stupid?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theory is now a conspicuous reality
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a Substack post about Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 1943 essay “On Stupidity.” At this time last year, I was concerned that Bonhoeffer’s observations seemed to be ever more pertinent to our own era.
This morning, while reading that Russian intelligence intercepted a phone conversation between ranking German military officers about blowing up the Crimea Bridge, I realized that much of the West, including Bonhoeffer’s native Germany, is now officially stupid.
We live in an era in which patent nonsense is widely accepted by most of our political class and media, and (apparently) by at least half the adult population. And it’s not the garden variety stupidity of being distracted and not paying attention. What we are now seeing is a reversion to the intellectual and emotional life of a 7th grader—a perfect storm of emotional dysregulation, lack of perspective, truculence, and gullibility.
When did this happen and how did it happen? Increasingly it seems to me that the genesis of this contagion is that our debt financing of EVERYTHING has enabled us to become detached from reality without suffering corrective consequences.
Every time it seems that reality might intrude and send us back to concerning ourselves with real things instead of adolescent fantasies and obsessions, another CRISIS erupts that gives our central banks yet another excuse for another round of massive credit expansion.
Since 2020, credit expansion has been accompanied by inflation, which seems to have accelerated and intensified the problem.
Inflation destabilizes every aspect of life, including our perception of reality. As Paul Cantor noted in his essay “Hyperinflation and Hyperreality: Thomas Mann in Light of Austrian Economics.”
Everything threatens to become unreal once money ceases to be real. I said that a strong sense of counterfeit reality prevails in "Disorder and Early Sorrow." That fact is ultimately to be traced to the biggest counterfeiter of them all — the government and its printing presses. Hyperinflation occurs when a government starts printing all the money it wants, that is to say, when the government becomes a counterfeiter. Inflation is that moment when as a result of government action the distinction between real money and fake money begins to dissolve. That is why inflation has such a corrosive effect on society. Money is one of the primary measures of value in any society, perhaps the primary one, the principal repository of value. As such, money is a central source of stability, continuity, and coherence in any community. Hence to tamper with the basic money supply is to tamper with a community's sense of value. By making money worthless, inflation threatens to undermine and dissolve all sense of value in a society.
I thought of this essay when Bud Light’s advertising team had its “Weimar Moment” by casting a burlesque actor named Dylan Mulvaney as a “spokeswoman” for the Bud Light brand.
I believe this was the greatest act of stupidity ever committed in a business setting in history. Only people with money to burn would even contemplate such folly, much less go through with it.
Here in Texas, Anheuser-Busch products are distributed by Ben E. Keith. The CEO, Howard Hallam, is a prominent member of my community in Dallas. I was saddened to hear that backlash against the Mulvaney gag created distress throughout the company, which employs hundreds if not thousands of working men. How could the directors of Anheuser-Busch be so disconnected from their customer base and the wellbeing of their company and its distributors?
All of us do stupid things, especially in our younger years. With luck, our stupid acts do not result in our death or ruin, and over time we gain wisdom. At the moment, the West appears destined to share the fate of these guys.
There's nothing stupid about the west, this is a controlled demolition of the west by our own treasonous government officials aided by NGOs and the UN. The heart of this madness is blackmail, what is it that you think Epstein was doing?
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Anchor: Congressman why do you think that so many democrats are committed to protecting the list of a dead pedophile. What possible national security implications could that have?
Congressman Burchett: What you're seeing so many times, my dear friend Marsha Backburn, I thought she was snubbed, that's why I got involved, but she can handle her own.
But when the democrat controlled senate did that I went to Chairman Comer in the republican controlled house and I said we need to fix this. This is wrong. And too many of my colleagues I'm afraid are compromised, uh, in this area for whatever reason. Somebody's whispered in their ear and said hey, you don't want something to come out on something else you better keep your mouth shut on this. And that's exactly what they've done. And um, it continues to go whether it's the honeypot the Russians used to use or something worse I don't know but but it's clearly, you see that up and down the line - you see good conservatives vote for liberal policies and frankly you see some liberals occasionally that will vote for something else.
So obviously the um, congress has been compromised and this continues on through the White House, through the Justice Department.. it's uh, the trash can is very deep. It uh, it's not a swamp it's an open sewer.
Excerpt from: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/burchett-the-intelligence-agencies
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The American way of life as constructed by our founders is the only thing standing in the way total global domination, tyranny, and abject slavery. What you’re witnessing with the world falling into ruin is their global reset plan in action, where one entity will own and control everything on this earth including you.
Stop them at all costs.
While I agree completely about the debt illusion, (one of most important things I learned on Wall Street was "Debt will kill you"), all paper money systems throughout history have failed because of human weakness.
I think the current level of stupidity is unique in human history. It is unique because so many people have never lived so well before. As a result, they are removed from the ugliness and truth of reality. During college speeches I often ask "how long could you live if the power gird goes out?" In a modest percentage of the audience, it starts an interesting conversation of how do you survive without food, water, toilets, lights, heat, gasoline, medicine, transportation, etc. Most of this group has never seriously contemplated those thoughts. They have lived their whole lives without every thing about it because it has always been there.
The reaction of the great bulk of audiences is pure stupidity. They look at me as if that is the most ridiculous question ever asked. Of course there is always electricity. Food comes from the grocery store, water from the tap, gasoline from the pump, take drugs or doctors make you well, and electricity comes from the wall plug. Everybody knows that.
When I ask if they have ever cleaned a fish or gutted an animal to eat, they think I am mad.
I would add to Bonhoeffer's Stupidity, that without reality, there is no apparent cost in our society to being stupid. You will still survive. If nothing forces you to deal with physical reality and there is no real costs for not doing so, it is easy to believe in any other alternative reality. Just assume you will survive and you can believe anything.