Amathia—Our Nation’s Cancer: How Stupidity Controls Intelligent People

Stupidity is the most serious flaw in people worldwide, and the cancer that is overtaking the United States today. Stupidity has nothing to do with how smart you are, your IQ, or your education. The first thing that makes you stupid is when you stop thinking for yourself and let someone else make decisions for you—whether it be a leader, political party, some group, or someone you think is smart. The second thing that makes you stupid is when you know nothing about a topic and let others pretend to be the expert and accept what they say without regard. You don’t question or even try to learn; you just listen and accept the stupidity of someone with no qualifications at all.

“The first thing that makes you stupid is when you stop thinking for yourself.”

The Greeks called it amathia, which means willful ignorance—the choice to ignore facts and the refusal to learn. Aristotle said, “Amathia is the greatest threat to any civilization,” and Socrates viewed amathia as a dangerous condition of the soul. He said, “You are not only ignorant of the greatest things, but while not knowing them you think that you do.” He went on to say, “There is only one good, that is knowledge, and only one evil, that is amathia.” Sextus Empiricus said, “Amathia together with a mob is the greatest evil.” That described the insurrection of January 6, 2021, which the stupid deny. Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 individuals who participated in the insurgency. By June 2026, at least 97 of those arrested faced subsequent arrests. All the while, partisan stupidity kept Republican politicians quiet—amathia controlled their deficient minds.

Philosophers showed it caused smart people to make foolish and harmful choices because they refuse to test their own beliefs against reality. A person simply takes what another says as fact without checking or questioning. Smartphones will give them answers, but they couldn’t care less, and they go along with the group even when the group is clearly wrong. When they have doubts, or question it to themselves, they accept the stupid because belonging is more important than truth. Only three Republican senators voted against Trump’s big-beautiful-bill, and all three were punished for it. The message was clear—think for yourself and we will destroy you. It’s not that those Republican politicians can’t think; it’s that they stopped thinking for themselves and accepted nonsense because ignoring the truth kept them in the group and didn’t jeopardize their income or their partisanship—they stopped “thinking” altogether—the epitome of stupidity. Puppet partisanship is the highest form of amathia.

People aren’t born this way; they are made this way by others. The power of the one relies on the stupidity of the others. Trump’s power lies with the puppet Republican politicians who ignore his stupidity. The stupid person is living a delusion, and you can’t get through to them because they are literally under a spell that blinds their ability to think—or, worse, they know it’s stupid but ignore it for selfish reasons. These individuals have no mind of their own and violate their responsibility to their constituents. Step outside the cage of partisan stupidity and you lose everything: group membership, identity, and maybe even your job (look at all those Trump fired for that reason alone).

In 1986, Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote about how truth dies within that cage; the title of the paper was “On Bullshit.” A liar knows the truth but tries to hide it from you; the bullshitter doesn’t care if it is true or false, just whatever works or gets a reaction, and when you catch them lying, they just smile and move on. Trump claimed that Governor Wes Moore told him at the Army–Navy game that he was the greatest president of his lifetime. He was filmed for a documentary that proved Moore never said that. Trump was corrected, but the next day he repeated the same lie. He didn’t care that he knew he was lying; this is a bullshitter. As this keeps happening, the cage just gets stronger, and people stop questioning. You don’t need propaganda anymore; you just need volume, repetition, and more bullshit. Steve Bannon said it out loud: “Flood the zone with shit.” So, when they stop caring about the lies, you can tell them anything. They are lackeys of the stupid.

Perhaps the best example of ignorant bullshit stupidity is Trump’s April 23, 2020, White House press briefing, when he publicly talked about scientists testing injections of bleach or disinfectants inside the human body to fight COVID-19. In the days following his speech, several state and city health agencies reported sudden increases in emergency calls regarding bleach consumption. The NYC Poison Control Center reported 30 exposure cases involving bleach within 18 hours of the briefing; Maryland received more than 110 calls asking about ingesting bleach; Illinois, Michigan, Kansas, and other states reported similar findings. This was amathia at its most dangerous. As he said it, he looked over at the Coronavirus Response Coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, who sat stunned at his stupidity and immediately looked down at the floor in order not to respond. Had she shaken her head in response or replied “no,” she would have been immediately fired. Even gross absurdity doesn’t alter the minds of the truly stupid.

During his first four-year term (2017–2021), Trump made approximately 30,573 false claims—lies, an overall average of 21 per day—according to a comprehensive tally by The Washington Post Fact Checker database. They quit tracking for his second term.

Stupidity is more dangerous than evil. You can fight evil, you can call it out, and you can stop it with force. Evil knows what it is doing and knows it is wrong, while the stupid person feels nothing. You bring them facts and they don’t listen; you show them proof and they ignore it. You can’t argue them out of stupidity—not with facts, logic, or evidence. So how do millions of people stop thinking for themselves? Well, the power of stupidity rises, slogans take hold, the cage gets built from the inside, and the people deepest in the cult are the ones most convinced they are smart, while the stupid blindly follow—MAGA.

Einstein was right on when he said, “Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear, and greed.” This wise statement describes many politicians and, sadly, many Americans, for those are precisely the three forces in our government and nation that are creating the chaos in our wondrous United States today. The adage “You can’t cure stupid” sadly is true. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Against stupidity we are defenseless.” So, what’s the answer? The only way to fight stupidity is to break the machine, dismantle the cult’s power, and shut it down by tearing it apart and removing the stupid, partisan, puppet political leaders and their boss. Then smile as you ignore all the bullshit from their followers, while we all work to heal the country using facts, truth, and empathy.