Back in 1972, journalist David Halberstam wrote an excellent book with the title The Best and the Brightest that was a devastating critique of how Kennedy and Johnson stocked their administrations with those they considered considered brilliant people, consisting of highly credentialed people with elite educational backgrounds or who were seen as successful heads of industry. Those people took the US down a devastating path in Vietnam.
The book title refers to Kennedy’s “whiz kids”—leaders of industry and academia brought into his administration—whom Halberstam characterizes as insisting on “brilliant policies that defied common sense” in Vietnam, policies often implemented against the advice of career U.S. Department of State employees.
People who, for whatever reason, pride themselves on being extremely clever can often be blinded by their own sense of being brilliant and make decisions that are reckless and unwise. The beginning of Alexander Pope’s poem An Essay on Criticism succinctly warns about the danger of such shallow brilliance.
A little learning is a dangerous thing ;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Those who have achieved success in some area can succumb to thinking of themselves as being clever at everything. A truly intelligent person knows that their knowledge is both limited in depth and narrow in scope, knows that there are people with greater depth of knowledge in every area, and seeks them out for guidance. No one can accuse Trump of hiring the best and the brightest. He has seemingly chosen people on the basis of how sycophantic they are to him and they are turning out to be best described by the opposite of Halberstam’s title. They are the worst and the dimmest.
As it becomes ever more obvious that Trump is completely at sea in the war with Iran and has little idea what to do, comes this report that the military is outsourcing ideas for solutions from lower-level military people.
The request from a senior officer at the US military command carrying out President Donald Trump’s war with Iran came in an email: We need ideas.
“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.
The crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited — and potentially unpalatable —options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms. Hoping to find an alternative, the official at CENTCOM kicked off the brainstorming session via email to see if anyone had a better idea. The second source said CENTCOM is looking at everything, acknowledging it needs to reevaluate the strategy.
This is truly pathetic. It is not that the lower-level people could not have good ideas. They could hardly do worse than what Trump and Hegseth and crew have done. It is that crowdsourcing their plea for help in prosecuting a war six months after commencing it reveals not just their paucity of knowledge and expertise but also how desperate they are.
It is not only with respect to the war that we see this in the Trump administration. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been promoting dangerous vaccine skepticism for the longest time, spreading misinformation and going against the scientific consensus with supreme arrogance and confidence in himself. Now, faced with a measles outbreak, and under pressure in a highly combative interview, he grudgingly called on people to vaccinate their children.
Kennedy’s statement was extracted from him by Dana Bash, CNN’s host, who invited him to use his “bully pulpit” to talk directly to parents as the new school year approached. She urged him to tell families that they should vaccinate for measles “because it is safe and it will help them save their children’s lives”.
The health secretary replied: “Parents should get their children vaccinated for measles. A measles vaccine is effective, it stops measles in about 97% of the cases. People should get vaccinated.”
Later in the interview he added that people should also get the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, the main protection against the disease that has been a particular target of the anti-vaccination movement.
But the interview also revealed how arrogant he is. RFK Jr. is a nepo baby whose path through life has been smoothed by his wealth and family connections. But now he, trained as a lawyer, seems to think of himself as a serious scientist and talks condescendingly to the interviewer, who was having none of it.
Any hope that Kennedy’s measles statement might indicate a change of heart were dashed in the rest of the CNN interview in which he turned combative. Batting off questions from Bash, the health secretary responded with personal attacks.
He accused the CNN host of “saying nonsense”, “repeating like a parrot” and “making assertions you can’t support”. In one especially demeaning remark he said Bash had become “flustered”.
“I’m not flustered at all,” she asserted in a calm voice. “I am frustrated because you are the HHS secretary and you are talking about things that lead to vaccine hesitancy in this country.”
In a further comment dripping with condescension, Kennedy told Bash “you probably don’t understand this because you’re not a scientist”.
The journalist riposted: “But you’re not, either.”
The health secretary’s belligerent approach, in which he at times appeared red-faced while frequently poking his finger towards Bash, attracted the attention of commentators. The journalist Aaron Rupar described the performance as “RFK Jr’s epic CNN crashout” and said in a post on X that Kennedy’s “yelling” sounded like “a rabid dog barking”.
RFK Jr. is a perfect example of the danger that Pope highlighted, displaying the know-it-all arrogance that comes when people who think of themselves as generally smart develop some superficial familiarity with an area of knowledge and dismiss the expertise of others if they disagree with his conclusions. A good indicator of that is how prickly they get when they are challenged. It is an attitude leads to disaster, just like the Vietnam policies of his uncle.
An extract form the 1983 film WarGames: The only winning move
People from the Brit upper class that go to Eton are not more brilliant than others, but they leave with an unearned self-confidence, thinking they are the best of the best.
.
The most sobering example (and it ironically concerns a high-performing alcoholist that does not recall briefings for more than three days) is Boris Johnson, a compulsive liar who cost Britain tens of thousands of lives during the COVID pamdemic, and more lives due to widespread poverty in a resource -stripped society.
But he knows the Greek classics, while despising genuine expertise.
In fact, people who are truly intelligent can come to think that, although they just happen to know about their fields, they are actually not very intelligent, since they know so well how *very* much they don’t know, i.e., Newton.
I have to say, with apologies to any computer types who read this, that I have anecdotally experienced that a large percentage of tech bros succumb to thinking of themselves as being clever at every field.
I’ve seen so many announcements such as, since the progress of medicine has been so slow and that of tech so fast, tech will come in and make biology as successful as tech, by “cracking the code”. That all medicine needs is the help of tech to achieve cures of everything and drugs for everything. (Seems to me like medicine’s progressed a hell of lot more than tech since both got going in the mid-1950s.)
Things like that, that since they can code, they are experts at everything. (Now, not to say that this is all or the majority of tech, it’s just been among the ones I’ve noticed.)
The New Atheists were also quite prone to this, see: Richard Dawkins.
RFK is just a pitiful example: was he really ever successful at anything or an expert at any field? He’s so defensive in this interview because he feels that he’s so ignorant in the health/vaccine area, or any other.
couple of quotes which come to mind
It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worth hearing; but as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own business.”
-- Theodore Roosevelt
The whole political system is a disaster area, and it’s getting worse. There are some very sick people in the business today. It has gone from the Best and Brightest to the Worst and Meanest. I got into politics because I believed in things; now I’m getting out for the same reason.
-- Hunter S Thompson
“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” …
They’re not looking for solutions to the present crisis, nor for long-term strategies for peace. They just want to exercise the Trump urge for nastiness and violence, cruelty and coercion.
Perhaps they should organize a séance and channel the Marquis de Sade: surely Trump’s entourage includes persons skilled in such endeavors. Of course, that may lead to a wholesale replacement of the Cabinet by individuals even more aligned with the Presidential vision…
“… options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms.”
In my opinion there are none, in this universe anyway. The only universe I can imagine would be the one in which he is it, the entirety of the universe is him. Solipsism all the way down.
What’s really impressive is how much of an understatement this is. They’re not crowdsourcing ideas to to end the war, they’re crowdsourcing for more creative ways to punish Iran. So roll on the Trump war! Its going to give the Republicans such a boost in the midterms.
@Alan G. Humphrey
Reminds me of Zaphod Beeblebrox in the Total Perspective Vortex.
Which (with me at least) raises the question: Would Zaphod Beeblebrox be a better president than Trump?
Of course: two heads are better than one! But are you forgetting that Beeblebrox was President of the Galaxy, so the subjunctive is unnecessary -- we should be able to judge him on his record! (And even his tax returns.)
I don’t think that Trump/Hegseth initiated this. Trump likes to be the smartest guy in the room. That’s why he’s only hiring dimbulbs this time around. Admitting that he doesn’t have a clue what to do would be anathema to him, I think.
Retired lieutenant general Mark Hertling recently made the point that in the intelligence and military communities brainstorming and asking other for ideas is pretty common and expected behavior.
I’m starting to think that rich people just don’t learn responsibility. If your entire learning experience is that everything is always provided for you and no mistake can have serious consequences then I can see how they could avoid learning to be responsible. Some of them, like Trump, learn to be astonishingly inept. I think he screws up deliberately to give camouflage to his legitimate mistakes. He just looks like he’s deliberately being a nasty little hobgoblin all the time rather than a buffoon frequently.
The others, like Kennedy, just keep failing upwards. I imagine something like a person working at a company that makes children’s toys. They submit a design with sharp edges, pointed corners, and made of metal if they’re the manager of the design team then they’re able to influence the design from start to finish. There will be some injured children. If they’re that manager’s boss instead then the design team probably has free reign to round the edges and corners along the way. If they’re another layer above that, then they might not have much in the way of direct interactions with the design team. They can afford to have terrible ideas as long as they don’t hyper focus on the product (*cough* Musk’s cybertruck! *cough*). And I can only imagine the sort of ideas that would give you about accountability and responsibility.
Interesting… Three topics in a single post. The overarching one of the reckless incompetence in Trump’s administration (I was going to write piteous, but I have no pity for them). The display of complete ineptitude of looking to crowd-source additional nasty things to do to Iran. Which makes it obvious that they started this war without any strategy at all; bomb them until they capitulate is not a strategy (and it’s clear they don’t want the obvious solution, admit they have lost). Finally RFK jr.’s (as well as other Trump appointees) arrogance resulting from his privilege and ignorance.
For the crowd-sourcing of Iran, the paranoid part of my brain is suggesting that this is a blame-shifting exercise. “Cpl. Wallowitz suggested that we try nukes, so we did. It’s his fault!” But I have a hard time believing even Hegseth could be that stupid. There is an obvious solution to ending the war with Iran; admit it was a mistake and pay reparations. The final treaties would probably include clauses saying the Strait of Hormuz is jointly owned and operated by Oman and Iran, and they have the authority to collect tolls if they desire. I don’t even know if they would, so long as reparations are paid for the damage the US did in Iran. It would likely also mean that neighboring states will request many local US military bases to close, as they have been shown to be targets, not protectors. This can be done without any obvious loss of face, i.e. it could be spun to US citizens who are not familiar with foreign policy as a win. But just like the USSR in Afghanistan, or the USA in Vietnam, and countless historical examples, national identity cannot be eradicated by an occupying force. That occupying force must remain for generations to suppress national identity (and not always successfully, see the US and Canadian First Nations), or eventually be kicked out (See the Irish troubles for a recent example). There is a good case to be made that should WWII have resulted in a stalemate/peace treaty with Germany controlling most of Europe, within a couple generations they would have lost it all again (and possibly be occupied themselves).
I won’t comment on RFK jr’s arrogance and incompetence, other than to say that the USA hasn’t seen the “spoils” system of political appointees this blatantly for a long time, since before FDR in fact. Most presidents/presidential campaigns (because a lot of the decisions for who is in the cabinet is often from the campaign manager and not the candidate) pay at least lip service to experience. Trump’s appointees are as bad, and maybe worse, than Grant’s. Which brings me to the final point…
None of this is possible without the compliance of Congress. Congress could stop the Iran war today by passing a resolution stating that the United States is not at war with Iran and the military actions taken unilaterally by the President of the United States is not approved by Congress. They won’t. I don’t even know they will do this if the democrats win both the house and the senate in the mid-terms. But Congress can stop this today.
Further, the Senate has confirmed people who were clearly incompetent. This was known at the time. That shouldn’t have happened, but it did. The solution now is for Congress to impeach and remove these incompetents. That could happen immediately as well. They don’t even have to impeach Trump, but they can remove Hegseth (who is clearly incompetent), RFK Jr. (who is clearly ignoring standard medical knowledge/practice), and other people who are ignoring reality and their own staff.
Congress won’t do this, and I have little hope that even with a democratic senate and house after the mid-terms that they will. I expect that the leaders of Congress will “not want to set a precedent” of impeaching cabinet members, because they don’t want the opposing party doing so when they regain the presidency. This is, of course, crap. One of the jobs of Congress is to act as a check on executive power, and maybe they need to establish some guidelines before impeaching cabinet members, but starting an elective war without Congressional approval or denying basic medical knowledge are clearly detrimental to the future of the country. Any guidelines established would find these actions have shattered them.