A Failed Prediction For the past four years I have simmered in a state of moral outrage over Trump’s behavior, watching him trample the defining values of America – integrity, truth, justice – without consequence. How could a country constituted on these ideals not only elect but continue to support a man so inimical to them? My only resolution to that dissonance has been to view Trump as an aberration (“he didn’t win, Hillary lost”) enabled by spineless legislators.

#RantMode Let’s stipulate: There is a distribution of cognitive ability among humans, and some individuals, whether through genetics, upbringing, a lack of personal drive (or, in reality, some combination of all three) fall on the low end of the curve.1 They just aren’t smart, aren’t able to produce the same societal value as those further up the curve, and so they can’t compete in a meritocracy. Trump is the avatar for the anti-intellectuals’ revenge.