Government By The Insane

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2024/12/13/government-by-the-insane/

If you’re feeling this morning like Alan Bates at the end of King of Hearts, join the club.


Full version?

There is a nugget of what I’m looking for in the terms below, but none of them quite captures it. I’m not the only one looking for a word to properly describe government by the insane.

plutocracy? : government by the wealthy
kakistocracy? : government by the worst people
oligarchy? : government by the few
kleptocracy? : government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed
autocracy? : the authority or rule of an autocrat (such as a monarch) ruling with unlimited authority
idiocracy? : a society governed or populated by idiots

When pre-MAGA conservatives like Grover Norquist mused about rolling back the 20th century to the McKinley era, they imagined rule by Gilded Age plutocrats. I don’t think they considered it might mean a return to an age of crippling and disfiguring disease.

But with the Second Coming of Trump, that’s just what they may get (New York Times):

The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death.

That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds.

Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.