Trump’s Idiocracy
Trump’s war on knowledge hits a new low with the closure of the Wilson Center—a symbolic blow in his broader crusade to replace expertise and truth with ignorance and blind loyalty.
By Jeremi Suri
On Thursday, the Trump administration closed down the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The staff were told in the morning to clean out their offices by 5 pm the same day. Research and public programs terminated.
Congress created the Center in 1968. For more than fifty years, it brought together scholars, policy-makers, and journalists from around the world. It organized meetings between communist and non-communist officials during the Cold War, sponsored extensive research into the records of communist tyranny after the Cold War, and provided a space for scholars fleeing war zones, including Ukraine, among many other programs. The Center was strictly non-partisan, directed most recently by a former Republican congressman, Mark Green, and governed by a bipartisan board and cabinet officials.
The Center received $15 million annually from Congress – the equivalent cost of 84 hours of flying time on Air Force One. In the total federal budget of $6.8 trillion, the annual cost of the Center was .0002 percent. The savings for the federal government in closing the center is the equivalent of giving a single student two cents off from the $11,678 in-state tuition charged at the University of Texas. Closing this valuable institution for such measly savings does not balance budgets.
Closing the Center is not really about authoritarianism either. In other societies, including Russia and China, dictators keep institutions like the Wilson Center open, and they often expand them. They use the Centers to promote their agendas by showcasing the experts who defend them and promoting the research that justifies the dear leader’s policies. Authoritarians typically use expertise for their purposes, and Trump could have done that with the Wilson Center, too, through his cabinet officials and other Republicans on its governing board. But Trump has no interest in sponsoring research and education of any kind.
The fact that Trump chose to shutter the Wilson Center tells us that he has a different aim from most other authoritarians. He and his MAGA supporters are not trying to dominate expertise and governance in America; they are trying to destroy both. Killing the Wilson Center is symptomatic of a kamikaze effort by the administration to destroy any person, group, or institution that derives power from knowledge and intelligence. That includes universities and libraries as well as the CIA, FBI, CDC, and other “expert” agencies. The more you know and the more you build authority from that knowledge, the more MAGA hates you.
Why? Because Trump and his followers feel excluded from the prestige and authority that comes from knowledge in our society. They are not the fancy professors or respected experts or creative artists who derive power from their brains. What the experts say about vaccines, the environment, health, and foreign policy is not what MAGA supporters like. They feel excluded by the science, the history, and the facts. Trump and his followers want to kill knowledge because knowledge runs against their preferences. They are simply opposed to truth and want to promote self-serving alternative realities.
This is idiocracy – a revolt against knowledge and expertise. It is a carnival dream where those who deny what we know get to silence all the smarty-pants people. Power is reordered from those with knowledge and experience to those with little but strong, empty opinions. Witness Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy, Jr, Laura Loomer, Linda McMahon, and yes, Donald Trump.
Turning the world upside down and sending the best and the brightest to the ash heap is an old dystopian dream. It serves those who feel inadequate and disrespected. It is a vision for those falling behind who want to reverse the direction of history. It is a mirror version, ironically, of Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” – where the lessers cut off the heads of those who have been in charge. Curiously, this dystopian dream serves a few billionaires, like Elon Musk, who don’t want to play by the standard rules for other established rich people.
We know we have an idiocracy in formation when a president closes the Wilson Center and attacks universities while he promotes conspiracy theorists, far-right extremists, insurrectionists, and World Wide Wrestling. He is purging all talent and experience from government, replacing it with inexperienced, untrained blowhards and craven sycophants. Is there any person of substance and serious thought in Trump’s cabinet? The president does not just want loyalty; he wants a band of fools who can please people like him, who hate those with real knowledge.
We must push back by doing what defenders of knowledge have always done: build new institutions. Now is the time to invest and get involved with local schools, libraries, universities, non-profits, and community organizations that value knowledge. Now is the time to help those around us learn. Start a new book group. Bring learned speakers to your church, synagogue, or mosque. Participate in a serious Substack and other online discussions – like this one!
The struggle of civilization – old and new – is the struggle of knowledge against ignorance. Knowledge usually wins because it is difficult to smother curiosity and innovation. The Wilson Center might close, but serious scholars, policy-makers, and journalists will find other ways to share their insights. The attacks on knowledge from the White House should encourage each of us to double down on knowledge.
The MAGA idiocracy will die of its stupidity when people need real solutions for sickness, poverty, and war. Those problems are growing because of idiocracy, and preserving knowledge provides the path to escape this terrible abyss. Idiocracy has momentum, but it also has a short shelf life. Knowledge is true freedom.
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Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor in the University's Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Professor Suri is the author and editor of eleven books on politics and foreign policy, most recently: Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy. His other books include: The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office; Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama; Henry Kissinger and the American Century; and Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. His writings appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Atlantic, Newsweek, Time, Wired, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and other media. Professor Suri is a popular public lecturer and comments frequently on radio and television news. His writing and teaching have received numerous prizes, including the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Texas and the Pro Bene Meritis Award for Contributions to the Liberal Arts. Professor Suri hosts a weekly podcast, “This is Democracy.”
As a “knowledge” professional (I’m an oral historian), this gives me hope to a path forward. The only dissension I’d like to offer is that some of the information provided by public health officials during the pandemic, particularly with respect to how it affected children, was confusing and perhaps overly cautious. In that light, it’s no wonder that some of Trump’s supporters are skeptical of public health information. That still doesn’t excuse the blatant misinformation being put out there by RFK, Jr., but it’s worth keeping in mind.
Well said