Do Americans lack the brain hardware necessary to run a democracy?
We can only fight racism, misogyny, and greed if human intellectual hardware is adequate. I’m switching to first person to make the case it is.
Recent accusations against human brain competence have reached new highs. There is an enormous base of ride or die Trump voters that are even now, in May of 2026, not giving up on their boy.
Some commentators say its a cult. Others say humans have built in responses to anyone different that prevent rational thinking. Still others say humans cannot handle logic and science enough to even have shared experiences with reality.
Is there a Trump cult?
According to AI, if Trump supporters are a part of anything then it’s not a cult but a sect.
You are not born a Trump supporter and neither were Trump voters taught to vote Trump as children. Furthermore while you could have seen Trump in media, read his book, been told about him in church, it’s very unlikely you met Trump in person or that he had anything to say to you that didn’t also apply to millions of others.
Trump voters did not lose their personal freedom or finances upon entering the sect. Very importantly, as a sect you benefit from all of the early age indoctrination the denomination you are splitting from achieved.
As a sect of Republicans / Christianity, Trump voters are particularly against liberal values like tolerance, pluralism, and equal opportunity. We don’t know how the human brain works, but I think opposing tolerance, pluralism, and equal opportunity is a software problem.
Let’s do a thought experiment to see this.
Imagine you live in a zero sum world
Imagine you are transported to some alternate reality where of you and your 9 neighbors, one must be consigned to live in poverty (not really that alternate as American poverty rate is a staggering 10.6%).
Further imagine that the only way for you and your children to avoid poverty is to join other neighbors ganging up on someone in your neighborhood. Would you keep your values of tolerance, pluralism, and equal opportunity and risk consigning you and your children to poverty?
Note that you don’t have to be poor yourself to be overcome with this fear — just live in a world where not everyone can avoid poverty.
Belief that this is a zero sum world is not a cult and also not a knee jerk reaction to people that are different. Also zero sum sect explains most of what we see from Trump’s base except for being idiotic enough to think Trump would help them.
For now let’s table the idiotically thinking Trump would help them and come back to it later.
The question then comes down to whether or not Trump’s base lacks the brain hardware necessary to have shared experiences with reality.
Can someone reasonably believe our world is zero sum?
In a country that is running a caste (my last blog), anyone can reasonably believe that society is zero sum with dire consequences for falling behind.
Anyone can reasonably believe that allowing more American immigration might result in their losing their place in the dominant caste. Whether or not immigration actually is a threat is irrelevant (currently America’s declining birth rates imply we need immigration). If we don’t want people to fear immigrants then stop running a caste system.
Similarly any man can reasonably believe that woman going to college in higher numbers is a threat to his position in the dominant caste. The caste system is based on education and women are doing better in academia — end of story.
The same applies to racism against any race not currently doing well in school. If we make education more equal than anyone or their children could lose their acceptance in college.
Again I can only repeat that these zero sum, anti-liberal values ideas are going to become popular again and again in a country oppressing a caste.
Why didn’t this sect elect someone to stop the inequality?
Now returning to the idiotic part of this caste electing Trump and continuing to support him even though he obviously never had any intention of helping them.
In an evaluation of intellectual hardware we have to distinguish between mistakes and incomprehension. For instance Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania was eventually executed with his wife.
Francisco Franco of Spain died of natural causes while still in power but then his body, with majority approval, was exhumed and reburied somewhere more humble:
According to a poll by the Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, 43% of Spanish people approved of the exhumation while 32.5% opposed it. Opinions on the exhumation were divided by party line, with the Socialist party strongly in favour of the exhumation as well as the removal of his statue there.
Wikipedia has António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal followers as being an actual cult.
The media used the expression “golden era of Ceaușescu” and a plethora of formulaic appellations such as “guarantor of the nation’s progress and independence” and “visionary architect of the nation’s future”.
Still people came back to their senses after Salazar’s death.
The Viktor Mihály Orbán period in Hungary ran from 1998 to 2002, and 2010 to 2026. Citizens of a country must be allowed to make mistakes without being accused of being incapable of democracy — the question is how big and often of a mistake is acceptable.
Trump’s falling poll numbers clearly indicate he is a voting mistake:
Is Trump too big or too often of a mistake for a reasonable democracy?
This paper rejects the, “I’ll be rich someday.” and ignorance of inequality explanations. When provided information about the lack of fairness of inequality and how much taxes on the rich have fallen, the paper found that opinions could change.
Our fairness treatment, which provides individuals with information about the role of luck in being a top income earner by informing subjects about the level of inherited wealth amongst the richest US citizens, has a substantial and statistically significant effect on core fairness beliefs, as well as on preferences for cutting the top federal income tax rate. On average, the fairness treatment reduces tax cut support by roughly 5 percentage points.
Furthermore, informing respondents that previous cuts to top income tax rates did not coincide with higher economic growth leads to substantially lower support (of around 6 percentage points) for cutting taxes on the rich. However, this effect cannot be explained by individuals changing their core beliefs about the macroeconomic benefits of cutting taxes on the rich. Across models, beliefs in potential ‘‘trickle-down effects’’ are surprisingly stable. Instead, the treatment causes respondents to update their beliefs about how taxes on the rich have evolved. Knowing taxes on the rich have fallen substantially in recent decades provides a reference point for respondents, making them significantly less likely to support (further) tax cuts for the rich.
On the other hand it seems nothing could stop their respondents from believing in trickle down economics even after almost fifty years of it failing. So there is an element of rejecting reality to this, but maybe that has an explanation.
The real cult is college education driven meritocracy
In 2008, Charles Murray wrote:
A brick-and-mortar campus is increasingly obsolete. The physical infrastructure of the college used to make sense for three reasons. First, a good library was essential to higher learning, and only a college faculty and student body provided the economies of scale that made good libraries affordable. Second, scholarship flourishes through colleagueships, and the college campus made it possible to put scholars in physical proximity to each other. Third, the best teaching requires interaction between teachers and students, and physical proximity was the only way to get it. All three rationales for the brick-and-mortar campus are fading fast.
Much of what Charles Murray believed about education was dead wrong and maybe racist. However the continued existence and increasing cost of the brick-and-mortar undergraduate campus is a bizarre feature of life 18 years later.
Undergraduate education is obviously just a gated community intended to keep American class divides from collapsing. A system of free generalized education that refuses to cover a student’s last four years, cannot have any other purpose.
The original purpose of a liberal arts education was to produce better citizens. Now, amazingly, we both make that education unattainable for many Americans while simultaneously complaining about bad citizens.
The people outside the gate were never taught the citizenry skills and the people inside the gate easily succumb to fear of being exiled. The people inside the gate can never admit that their wealth inequality is undeserved — even to themselves.
Plus the people in the dominant caste control the media and the educational system. There’s not going to be any readily available information on the nature of this cult. The oligarchy are all declared the “visionary architect of the nation’s future” (no Steve Jobs was not any better than the current crop).
In an era of tax cuts and tax cut propaganda, the educational system is having its taxes increased with an up to 8 percent endowment tax:
Education experts have warned that the massive diversion of funds to the U.S. Treasury may force affected institutions to raise tuition prices, cut financial aid programs, or both to offset budget shortfalls. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The South African mafia — Elon Musk, Peter Thiel (lived there from ages 1 to 7), and David Sachs (White House AI and crypto czar — no confirmation hearing — Trump said that Sacks would safeguard free speech online), are building an even higher gate and contrary to what you might have heard South Africa was never desegregated.
The spatial and economic segregation enforced by the legacy of apartheid remains deeply entrenched, leaving the country heavily divided along racial lines.
Segregation is what makes this cult a real cult where you are cut off from people on the outside and your personal freedom and financial security depend on adhering to cult rules.
In evaluating if America is smart enough to run a democracy we have to look at whether our dominant caste is smart enough to be less dominant. We cannot rely on waiting for our oppressed to find their FDR because even FDR’s solution didn’t knock down the gate.
Are college educated Americans capable of democracy?
While Democrats do better in general with college educated and Republicans with not college educated the margins are only 5 to 10 percent until you get to postgraduate degrees:
Even with a postgraduate degree in 2025, 35% declared themselves supporting a political party run by a fascist?!? The most recent NPORS was conducted from Feb. 5 to June 18, 2025, among 5,022 U.S. adults — the fascism was on the table by then.
In January 2025 Trump pardoned capitol rioters found guilty of federal offenses. He used military planes to ship off immigrants. He banned transgender service members. He started withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He rolled back most federal regulations. He illegally let Elon Musk form DOGE. He illegally began a government-wide pause on federal grants, loans, and financial assistance.
Yet 35% of the postgraduate degree people PEW polled in Feb. — June were still supporting a party that was threatening (and still threatens) to end democracy. 35% of the people America had declared as having the best brains in the country and who occupy the lions share of the best careers were supporting a party run by a fascist pedophile president.
Yet if you look at this through a zero sum lens those 35% are just voting their economic interests. Lower taxes for them plus a higher gate around education means less competition from the lower castes for their children.
Nor are the 59% of postgraduate degree holders opposed to Trump necessarily against that higher gate. They might simply have calculated that the end of democracy isn’t a reasonable risk for that benefit.
Again this is what running a caste system does — it affects all moral calculations and so a fascist pedophile president can swim along in the already muddy water.