Stupidity Exceeded by Perfidy
Callous cruelty emmanating from Washington
Stupidity Exceeded by Perfidy
The stock market is in free fall. Prognosticators fear the entire planet will plummet into an economic recession. Chaotic cuts in US government agencies rip and tear at health care access for Americans, food for starving Sudanese, medicines for Africans, compassion for Gazan bombing victims, and military support for Ukranians. What precipitates this landslide of menacing perils?
Is it stupidity? Is it perfidy? If both, is stupidity exceeded by perfidy?
What is stupidity again?
What is stupidity again? David Brooks at the New York Times has an answer.
“I define stupidity as behaving in a way that ignores the question: What would happen next? If somebody comes up to you and says, 'I think I’m going to take a hike in a lightning storm with a copper antenna on my head', stupidity replies, 'That sounds like a really great idea!' Stupidity is the tendency to take actions that hurt you and the people around you.” David Brooks, “The Six Principles of Stupidity,” New York Times (January 30, 2025).
The two defining elements of stupidity are (1) ignoring what will happen next and (2) hurting those around you.
Washington Awash in Stupidity
Here are some examples of stupidity.
1. The reckless imposition of tariffs, including tariffs on island countries where no humans live. What next? Tariffs will drive up inflation in America. Who gets hurt? Every American. The global economy is tipping on the edge of recession.
2. The general purge of the federal work force. What next? Ignoring the effect on vital government operations, such as eliminating jobs of those needed to process IRS income tax returns. Who gets hurt? The budget. Inadequate processing here could mean loss of revenue for Uncle Sam and an increase in the national debt.
3. The freeze of federal assistance programs. What next and who gets hurt? Some will die of measels. Veterans will be denied their due. Millions will lose social services and medical access.
4. Federally funded shut down of NIH medical research. What next? This would retard scientific progress. Who gets hurt? The international community including Americans who will be left unprotected from the coming Bird Flu pandemic and other health threats.
5. Since the inauguration January 21, 2025, one or more airplane crashes and near misses per week are occurring. As an exercise in stupdiity, DOGE is eliminating jobs at the FAA. What next? More airline disasters? Who gets hurt? Those who die. And their loved ones.
Stupidity exceeded by Perfidy in Washington
Perfidy exacerbates the level of hurt exacted by stupidity.
What is Perfidy? Perfidy is a brand of betrayal, especially within a scheme to serve the betrayer's own self-interest. Here are some near synonyms for Perfidy: betrayal, faithlessness, treason, duplicity, deceit, dishonesty, demagoguery, and knavery. In what respect is stupidity exceeded by perfidy? In perfidy, hurting others is intentional. It is no longer merely an accidental byproduct of stupidity.
What might count as examples of perfidy? We turn again to the current US Commander-In-Chief to see stupidity exceeded by Perfidy.
Watch for this sign that an act of perfidy is about to take place. Perfidy is nigh when an almost expressionless face accompanied by a calm officious voice justifies making a decision that reaps havoc on thousands or even millions of persons. Here is an example that reaps havoc on the lives of thousands of Ukranians.
1. Placing the blame for the war between Ukraine and Russia on Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Politico cites POTUS addressing Zelenskyy.
“Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it — three years. You should have never been there. You should have never started it. You should have made a deal.”
The historical fact is that Russia invaded Ukraine, not the reverse. This lie is intended to hurt Ukraine while thanking Vladimir Putin for Russian interference in U.S. elections in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Such perfidy sends volcanic political ash into the stratosphere where it will circle the globe blanketing every nation with confusion, duplicity, deceit, and mistrust.
Here is a domestic example of Perfidy, not stupidity.
2. Perfidy exceeds stupidity when lies are told that DOGE intends to balance the US budget. Because of the Republican intention to cut taxes on wealthy people along with their businesses to only 15%, DOGE ends up pillaging the middle class and the poor. To make it worse, by adding $4 trillion to the national debt, this administration plans on mugging our children and grandchildren in order to satiate the greedy appetite of today's billionaires who contributed to the election of the 47th executive branch leader. Perfidy here combines megalomania with corruption to the detriment of classic American values such as compassion and justice.
Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) observes that America is now suffering from a “poverty of empathy for our neighbor.”
Public Theology and Discourse Clarification
Might the public theologian engage in discourse clarification regarding stupidity and perfidy? Now, keep in mind that “public theology is not politics” in any direct form. But, avers Valerie Miles-Tribble, public theology “speaks and acts with full awareness of political dynamics that rend chasms in the human landscape rather than forging equitable bonds of unity. An overarching aim of public theology, therefore, is to assess theoethical implications of Empire with public relevance for all humanity” (Miles-Tribble, 2017).
What might the public theologian say about stupidity exceeded by perfidy? Try this observation. Even though stupidity and perfidy frequently come in a single package, stupidity exceeded by perfidy is spreading abject fear throughout the nation. Throughout the world. All this was forecasted in 2024 both by the Oval Office candidate himself and by his detractors. The only surprise is the rapidity and extent to which stupidity is exceeded by perfidy.
The task of our globe’s political leaders is to press all their skills into the service of the common good. “In a nutshell,” writes Paul S. Chung, “public theology (theologia publica) is concerned with the public affairs or institutions of society (res publica) to promote the common good of society” (Chung, 2022, p. 11). Can we confidently say that Washington seeks the common good? Not on your life.
What we see in Washington is leadership that jerks the world around for egocentric purposes such as keeping a single individual in the daily news and compelling the poor as well as the powerful to obsequiously crawl at the feet of the monarch just to make a “deal.” Despite lies about balancing the budget or ushering in American prosperity, the public theologian needs to point out how perhaps the entire planet will suffer from one individual’s perfidy.
Is there any hope for an American turn around? Not much. With shameless Republicans and spineless Democrats whimpering about petty distractions, no rival center of power has emerged to reorient America toward the common good.
In the ancient Hebrew Book of Judges, in times of crisis God would raise up a charismatic leader. If God so blesses America to raise up such a leader in the near future, I hope he or she will lift up a positive vision worthy of our following. It would be a vision of America as a world leader not in tariff provocation but in international cooperation. Not a nation solitary but planetary. Not in calumny, but in magnanimity. Not in malificence but in beneficence. Not in creating victimhood but in promoting common good.
Are you ready to pray for this?
Substack 3266. Stupidity Exceeded by Perfidity
National Day of Action, April 5, 2025
Substack PT 3258. Has the Rolling Coup D’etat begun?
Substack Pt 3259. Washington’s Coming Techno-Monarchy
Substack Pt 3260. Plundering Social Security
Substack PT 3262. DOGE Fires Holy Spirit
Patheos PT 3264. Do Scapegoats Purify America?
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Ted Peters is a Lutheran pastor and emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union. His single volume systematic theology, God—The World’s Future, is now in the 3rd edition. He has also authored God as Trinity plus Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society as well as Sin Boldly: Justifying Faith for Fragile and Broken Souls. In 2023 he published. The Voice of Public Theology, with ATF Press. This year he has published an edited volume, Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF) and along with Arvin Gouw an edited collection, The CRISPR Revolution in Science, Religion, and Ethics (Bloomsbury 2025). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com and Patheos blog site on Public Theology.
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References
Chung, P. (2022). Public Theology and Civil Society: Constructive Formation. Madris: EBL.
Miles-Tribble, V. (2017). Restorative justice as a public theology imperative. Review and Expositor 114:3, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0034637317721704.
Peters, T. (2023). The Voice of Public Theology. Adelaide: ATF.