Because “stupid” is a pretty stupid term, I should probably take a minute here to describe what I mean. It’s not really a matter of raw IQ, and educational achievement only partially captures it. Stupid people are those who don’t understand what is happening around them and have no interest in actually finding out. Active ignorance would be another way of putting it, but “stupid” just sounds better. Despite being very well informed about electrons and such, a competent chemical engineer with a master’s degree could be very stupid indeed if he/she still believes that trickle down economics is a real thing.

you gotta feel for them: You know how unpleasant it is to feel like you don’t understand what everyone else is talking about, to have things explained to you twice, to feel like your opinions don’t matter and that you’ve been written off. And knowing that, it’s not far to imagine what a light in the darkness it must seem when someone who is just like you comes in and changes everything.

But see, not everybody was thinking that Hillary Clinton was an alien, that global warming was a Chinese hoax and that what America needed most of all was a plywood wall stretching from Texas to California. Only the stupid people were. And suddenly, in an instant, the most powerful man on earth was thinking just like them. With his clueless smirk and unstoppable rise, he turned people whose stupidity made them feel like nobody into people who felt like everybody.

That’s why he’ll never lose him. Because it was never about what he did or didn’t do. All that stuff is very confusing and the Stupid-American community isn’t interested in the details. They love him for who he is, which is one of them, and because he shows them every day that Stupid-Americans can reach the social mountaintop.

There’s this story we tell ourselves over and over and over again in this country: A new group of immigrants arrive or emerges and everyone else dumps on them. They face discrimination and miserable conditions but they persevere: They work hard, they organize, they assimilate to America and America assimilates to them, they grow, they contribute, they become proud of their new hyphenated selves and then one day, they break that last barrier. This is a story we can tell without words. This is a story we feel. This story is who we are. It’s in there so deep that you almost find yourself rooting for Stupid-Americans.

Low-IQ stupidity might still be spread across both sides of the political aisle, but willful ignorance — the dogmatic cultish belief that loudmouths’ opinions are on equal ground with facts and evidence presented by informed experts — is the entire basis of the MAGA movement. A regular stupid person might say, “Well, I don’t know anything about vaccines, so I better listen to my doctor, who is highly educated and well-informed on the subject.” An out-and-proud Stupid-American says “I don’t know anything about vaccines either, so I’m going to listen to a kook who admits that a worm ate part of his brain, because I can’t understand the science but I can understand conspiracy theories.”

the Supreme Court said the Trump administration needed to correct its admitted error of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador and attempt to get him home — without any dissents. But it also left some room open for the Trump administration to prevail in the lower courts if it says it has tried but simply cannot bring Abrego Garcia back, which you can read as a kind of victory — but only if your intent is to openly defy a court order and leave Abrego Garcia rotting in a Salvadoran prison.

to frame Abrego Garcia’s case as only about illegal immigration is just unbelievably dishonest. Nobody would be upset about a proven gang member being deported legally — at least I wouldn’t. Abrego Garcia might very well be a “bad guy,” or he might not be. Maybe the cop who claimed he was a gang member is the actual bad guy. I really don’t know and, frankly, I don’t really care. Our government violated a court order while effectively sentencing Abrego Garcia to life in one of the harshest prisons in the world, built for terrorists and the most dangerous gang members on the planet, without even accusing him of a crime (other than coming here illegally). Now, it appears to be gleefully defying a Supreme Court ruling. That’s what people like me are upset about. That’s what Trump and Miller and Vance are dishonestly leaving out of their framing.

Vance’s argument is also dangerous. It turns due process into some optional, squishy requirement that can be observed or denied by our government, based on what they say is possible with the resources they have or the public interest as they define it. Is that a can of worms he wants to open? That due process is now conditional? Does Vance or Trump ever imagine that Republicans will once again in the near future be in the political minority? Has that thought crossed their minds?

If Vance’s argument is that the government lacks the resources, then it can create them. This same administration is currently proposing a $1 trillion (with a “t”) military budget, including up to $150 billion of new funding to the Pentagon, and it’s paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to imprison Abrego Garcia and hundreds of others for one year. Why not put some of that money toward increasing the number of immigration judges to adjudicate these cases and clear the backlog? That’s an argument I’ve been screaming into the void for years (and one I was thrilled to see pushed in National Review this week), and an actual solution that can uphold the values of law and order the administration purports to stand for.

Just to put that all down clearly: The Trump administration is arguing that they cannot grant due process to every person due to resource and logistical constraints. They are also arguing that someone who ends up in a foreign prison because of the government’s own actions (or mistakes) is beyond their reach. They’ve deported some people who haven’t been accused of any crimes. And now they are suggesting they might start using this same process on U.S. citizens. If you put all of that together and don’t get extremely alarmed, then you are not paying attention.

I think I’m seeing things with a great deal of clarity. In some alternative reality, the Trump administration is winning court cases 9–0 and protecting American citizens from a dangerous invasion. In this reality, they’re ignoring the Supreme Court, deporting people against lower court orders, and violating the rights and privacy of U.S. citizens. The discussion shouldn’t be about whether I’m suddenly a partisan hack, it should be about why a usually measured moderate is suddenly ringing the alarm bells.

For context, I was angry when President Biden tried to create the “Disinformation Governance Board” — now, Trump is snatching college students off the streets for op-eds they wrote. I was angry when we learned the Biden administration was pressuring Facebook to take down posts it deemed dangerous to public health — now, Trump is using AI to monitor people’s social media activity and forcing U.S. citizens to hand over their phones at points of entry. Shoot, I was even critical of Biden for pursuing student loan relief through executive action — imagine if he had actually ignored the court orders that stopped him.

yes, Trump inherited a serious crisis we need to solve: Millions of unauthorized migrants are still in our country, and millions of them came in under Biden. Yes, solving this problem is a major logistical and resource challenge, and it’s why Biden deserves ample criticism for failing to take action while millions of people illegally crossed the border in a short period of time. But no, we should not forfeit due process and violate court orders and fundamentally undermine the American project of liberty in trying to solve those problems. We should not allow this current administration, or any other future administration, to become the arbiter of when rules should or shouldn’t be followed.

Some extended thoughts on where we are: David Brooks once said that President Donald Trump has the wrong answers to all the right questions, and I’ve been thinking about that quote all week.

Each piece makes all other pieces more powerful! It’s really a masterclass in the Art of the Deal. It’s not just the money. It's the power! It’s attention through the memecoin and Tiktok, political power with the inauguration and US presidency, and money through the tech CEO alignment. It’s all perfectly situated and absolutely explosive at the present moment, and that’s a machine that is extraordinarily valuable. Political Position ➝ Market Threats ➝ Token Value ➝ More Control ➝ Repeat. Political Position Creates Leverage: If you can threaten to ban platforms (or people or enact sweeping tariffs, you have immediate leverage. If you do it through executive orders and ignore checks and balances, there is no traditional regulatory process needed. The threats alone move markets and create opportunities through immediate power projection. Threats Create Market Opportunity: The markets are going to be very reactive to any political signals, and any sort of threat becomes a negotiation tool. All sorts of opportunities come from that. Market Moves Amplify Token Power: You could argue that political action could drive Trumpcoin price, and a higher token price could mean more political influence and bigger political moves, because money is very much power. Token Wealth Enables More Control: You could use Trumpcoin money to buy 50% of TikTok and use that platform to capture more attention, driving Trumpcoin price even higher (who knows if this will happen, but anything is in the realm of possibility). Infrastructure control expands. The power base solidifies. The attention distribution, the narrative shaping, the reality perception are all tremendously powerful.

This moment in time is quite unique because of: The speed at which wealth was created (36 hours to $70b+) The scale (if it goes to $2,100 a share it will surpass the value of bitcoin) The source (direct political influence conversion!) The integration (platform threats + token launch + power) This is compound power, not just compound interest, and I think all of this happening at the same time as the TikTok ban is important.

The basic formula is attention → improvement → value → compound. Trumpcoin doesn’t bother with those middle steps. Its process is simple: Capture attention. Convert directly into token value. The attention is the product. The narrative is the value.

This is the birth of the Attention Singularity, where power, narrative, and wealth merge into one self-reinforcing system. Think of the Attention Singularity like a black hole, but instead of gravity, it's attention that becomes so powerful it warps reality itself. We're watching the birth of a system where attention directly creates wealth (like $60B from Trumpcoin in 36 hours), wealth instantly enables power (potential TikTok acquisition), power captures more attention (platform control), and each cycle gets faster and stronger than the last.

Traditional limits like physical constraints, geographic boundaries, or institutional checks stop mattering because digital attention moves instantly and globally, while narrative overpowers physical reality. Once this feedback loop starts, it's self-reinforcing: attention creates wealth, wealth enables power, power shapes perceived reality, and reality drives more attention.

Real production could become secondary to narrative production - why bother with things like cash flow when all economic activity can simply be attention harvesting?

The more we treat things with no economic output as valuable, the less we'll actually produce.

Attention Harvesters: Create wealth through narrative and accumulate power rapidly wth minimal physical constraints Real World Maintainers: The people who keep society functioning and deal with physical constraints. These people essential but undervalued.

As more capital and talent flow to attention-based ventures, essential infrastructure could become neglected and society could become more fragile. I am in LA with these fires, and my goodness, we need people who can be in the real world and fix burned down homes and maintain infrastructure and nurse communities back to health.

For investors: Memecoins like Trumpcoin show the growing dominance of speculative assets. If you’re an investor, this signals a shift: attention is now a measurable driver of market value. You should probably have a memecoin strategy, if that’s of interest. Position yourself accordingly. For consumers: The rise of platforms and tokens driven by narrative suggests that your attention is more valuable than ever. Be mindful of how you spend it as every click and view reinforces this economy