The Anakin Skywalker Theory of History

There’s a bunch of discussion in the thread below about whether Donald Trump really got confused about whether Vladimir Putin fought in WWII, and perhaps thinks he was the leader of Russia at that time. These arguments fall into two camps, one of them being the nobody could possibly be that dumb camp, so “obviously” when Trump said “he” he meant not Putin literally, but Putin as the metaphysical embodiment of the Russian state, given Trump’s careful reading of Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies, etc. The other camp, which includes me, functions on the axiom that anybody who thinks nobody could be dumb enough to believe what Trump appears to believe is invariably wrong.

But let me try to split this epistemological baby a bit by offering a companion to the Ariana Grande theory of politics, which I’ll call the Anakin Skywalker theory of history. The latter goes like this:

I would guess that I’m within a standard deviation of the median for someone of my generation — I was 17 when the first Star Wars movie came out — in regard to knowledge about the history of the Star Wars metaverse. I think I’ve seen maybe five of the nine canonical if that’s the right word films of the original saga, although I haven’t seen anything else Star Wars related, or read any related materials, or gotten into furious arguments on message boards about the tax structure of the Empire or what have you. So I know more than some people for sure, but way WAY less than an actual fan. This btw is not meant to be some sort of snobbish comment about people in the latter category: all of us have our more or less esoteric interests trending toward obsessions. For example I would put myself in the following percentiles in terms of the general population in terms of my level of knowledge:

1970s Michigan-Ohio State football games: 99.99%

History of World War II: 98%

The Star Wars universe: 50%

Harry Potter: 30% (have never read anything, saw one movie but don’t actually remember anything about it)

Japanese anime or manga or something: 20%. This is probably too low tbf. I know it’s like some sort of comic book.

The poetry of Thailand; 5%. Total blank here. I have heard of Thailand and can find it on a map so again probably too low.

Anyway, the point here is that arguments about whether Donald Trump “really” thinks Putin fought in WWII may well involve a category error, in that I more than suspect that Donald Trump relative to knowledge about WWII is analogous to me and knowledge about Star Wars or maybe Harry Potter. In other words, he just doesn’t care, much as I don’t care that I don’t know who Anakin Skywalker “really” is, or whether Harry Potter was in Gryffendor or Balliol or what have you.

What I’m trying to convey, echoing my many Ariana Grande theory of politics rants, is that most people barely know anything about almost all historical topics, including something as relatively recent and relevant as the history of World War II, and don’t care that they don’t know, just as I don’t care that I know little about Star Wars, quite a bit less about Harry Potter, and almost nothing about anime or the other thing.

And most people very much includes Donald J. Trump, which, for reasons that should be pretty self-evident, is kind of a problem. I believe, gentle reader, that you would become overcome by vertigo if you stared into the abyss that is the abandoned mine shaft of the average person’s knowledge about stuff like history, American, international, recent, ancient. etc. etc. That’s bad enough, given the whole “democracy” thing, but what’s much, much worse is that Donald Trump is clearly very average at best in this sense, and WORSE YET he was elected in no small part precisely BECAUSE he doesn’t know a goddamned thing about stuff like that, and THINKS THAT DOESN’T MATTER, because history is for nerds and anyway he’s really smart, being a wildly successful businessman with a really hot trophy wife, so he can figure out whatever he needs to know from a two-page bullet point summary, or maybe five-slide PowerPoint deck, about any topic, because expertise is a bunch of bullshit and what matters is street smarts and toughness and being a Great Negotiator to get America, which is the greatest country ever, Great Deals.

What Trump’s most devoted fans love about him, despite all his other apparently charismatic qualities, is his stupidity.  Of course his zealous followers don’t call it that: they call it “common sense,” not trusting the “so-called experts,” having “street smarts,” and so forth.  But what they’re really talking about is how he revels in his own stupidity, and it is that quality that creates the strongest bond between him and themselves.

The Triumph of Stupidity (forthcoming)