I laughed so hard reading that Trump blamed A.I. for the video of a trash bag being tossed out of the White House window. 🤣 But behind the comedy is a tragedy: 77 million Americans voted for this clown. 🤡
I will never get over the fact that one of my ghostwriters—after working closely with me on my book, reading my story, and even helping shape my words—still voted for Trump. That was one of the moments I lost hope for humanity. If he couldn’t develop the courage to open his eyes and feel the truth staring him in the face, how many others will?
People often claim that only “uneducated” voters support Trump. But that’s simply not true. Just like one of my ghostwriters, I know plenty of people with college degrees who voted for him. The more intelligent people are, the more they tend to use their sharp intellect to rationalize, compartmentalize, and avoid their own painful truths. They remain emotionally blind to the dangers right in front of them.
Alice Miller explains this brilliantly in For Your Own Good (pp. 42–43):
“Just as in the symbiosis of the ‘diaper stage,’ there is no separation here of subject and object. If the child learns to view corporal punishment as ‘a necessary measure’ against ‘wrongdoers,’ then as an adult, he will attempt to protect himself from punishment by being obedient and will not hesitate to cooperate with the penal system. In a totalitarian state, which is a mirror of his upbringing, this citizen can also carry out any form of torture or persecution without having a guilty conscience. His ‘will’ is completely identical with that of the government.
Now that we have seen how easy it is for intellectuals in a dictatorship to be corrupted, it would be a vestige of aristocratic snobbery to think that only ‘the uneducated masses’ are susceptible to propaganda. Both Hitler and Stalin had a surprisingly large number of enthusiastic followers among intellectuals. Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self. Indeed, intelligence is capable of innumerable rationalizations when it comes to the matter of adaptation…
Here, tragically, early dependence upon tyrannical parents is preserved, a dependence that— in keeping with the program of ‘poisonous pedagogy’—goes undetected. This explains why Martin Heidegger, for example…was not able to see the contradictions in Hitler’s ideology that should have been obvious to someone of his intelligence. He responded to this ideology with an infantile fascination and devotion that brooked no criticism.”
Miller’s words reveal the heart of the matter: intelligence alone does not free us. Without access to our true self—without the courage to confront and feel our repressed childhood pain—cleverness becomes a tool of submission, not liberation.
That’s why the ghostwriter of my book, despite his brilliance, still voted for Trump. That’s why professors, doctors, and “highly educated” citizens march behind authoritarians. And that’s why humanity continues to laugh at clowns while walking straight into their traps.
Until we stop idealizing childhoods and start feeling what we were forced to repress, we will keep falling for new tyrants in old costumes.
My words above were polished by ChatGPT, and the new ones below were polished by DeepSeek.
The Intellectual's Blind Spot: Why Smart People Believe Nonsense
The source of this emotional whiplash was a headline so perfectly absurd it could only belong to our current era: “Trump Reveals a New Strategy for Dealing With Bad News: Blame A.I.”
The article detailed how a video, already confirmed by the White House as real, showing a trash bag being unceremoniously tossed from a window, was dismissed by the president as an artificial intelligence fake. His reasoning was a masterpiece of cynical, public-facing confession: “If something happens, really bad, just blame A.I.”
It’s a clown show. A farce. And yet, the sobering, terrifying reality is that 77 million Americans voted for this. The laughter dies in your throat when you remember that. This isn’t a sketch comedy bit; it’s the state of our world.
And what’s even more chilling than the spectacle itself is the unwavering support of intelligent, educated people. I will never get over the fact that my own ghostwriter, a man who worked closely with me for months, who seemed to understand my thoughts and values intimately, still cast his vote for this clown.
This experience shattered the convenient, elitist myth I often hear: that only the “uneducated” or the “poorly informed” form the base of such movements. It’s a comforting lie. It allows those with degrees and bookshelves to believe they are immune, that their intelligence is a shield against propaganda. My ghostwriter and countless other professionals I know are living proof that this is not true.
This phenomenon is something the brilliant psychologist Alice Miller explored with devastating clarity in her seminal work, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. She explains that our capacity to resist tyranny “has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self.”
Intelligence, she argues, is not a moral compass. In fact, it is often weaponized against our own best interests. A sharp intellect is capable of “innumerable rationalizations when it comes to the matter of adaptation.” We learn from a young age to obey authority without question, to view punishment as necessary for “wrongdoers,” and to equate compliance with goodness.
“The clever person gives in, the stupid one balks.”
This creates a tragic split in the intelligent person. They can exhibit extraordinary acuity in critiquing the ideologies of their opponents—even deconstructing their parents’ beliefs in adolescence—because in those cases, their intellect functions freely.
But place them within a group—a political party, an ideological movement, a theoretical school—that mirrors the dynamic of their early family, and that critical faculty shuts down. They display a “naïve submissiveness and uncritical attitude” that is completely at odds with their brilliance in other areas. They swap their intellect for infantile devotion.
This is how a philosophical giant like Martin Heidegger could dismantle centuries of traditional thought yet fall, mesmerized and uncritical, for the obvious contradictions of Hitler’s ideology. His intellect was a tool, but it was disconnected from his emotional truth—a truth that had been trained from childhood to obey and not question certain authority figures.
This is the heart of the matter. We are not rational creatures who sometimes feel; we are emotional creatures who learned to rationalize. And when the truth is painful—when it threatens to unravel our identity, our tribe, or our deeply ingrained coping mechanisms—our brilliant minds get to work building elaborate fortresses of justification. We compartmentalize to avoid facing and feeling our own painful truths, becoming emotionally blind to the dangers right in front of us.
So when you see a highly educated person endorsing the absurd, don’t just dismiss them as stupid or hypocritical. See them instead as a testament to the power of unhealed wounds. Their intellect isn’t failing them; it’s working overtime to protect a fragile inner world that never learned it was safe to question, to feel, and to break free.
The battle for our future, then, is not just a battle of facts versus misinformation. It is a battle for emotional literacy. It is a fight to help people—ourselves included—reconnect with that “true self” Alice Miller names. It is the courage to feel what we feel and see what we see, even when our powerful, clever minds beg us to look away.
