NEWS & POLITICS
The Rule of Midwits
A set of decentralized, ideologically driven selection mechanisms is propelling the decay and collapse of
American institutions
BY BRIAN CHAU
ANUARY 19, 2022
While Republican intellectuals are finally facing the problems created by the Democratic Party’s institutional
capture of colleges, the HR bureaucracy, and public education, the Democratic campaign to defend these
redoubts is proving remarkably unpopular with the electorate. Take the recent Virginia governor's race
between Republican Glenn Youngkin and Democrat Terry McAuliffe. The Youngkin campaign could be
summed up by an attack ad that simply quoted McAuliffe: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what
to teach.” Consequent polls found overwhelming support for Youngkin among parents of K-12 students, up to
an estimated 17-point gap. Youngkin won.
With administrators seemingly so unpopular with the public, one might wonder why Democrats are so eager
to defend them. The reason appears to be little more than a dogma, a crude mimicry of the Reagan Republican
emphasis on free markets. Instead of the free-marketeer, the Democrats’ figure of affection is the bureaucrat,
pring coneetonrowslestle-stnte ‘athe middle manager, the good-old insider who knows how an institution works and is tied everlastingly to it.
The threat of greater democratic participation in setting school curricula or determining COVID measures
leads Democrats to cry “authoritarianism, “fascism,” and “coup,” just as reflexively as Reaganites once called
the public provision of services “socialist” The New York Times captured this well when it portrayed laws
establishing some degree of parental control over public school curricula as “a War on Democracy.”
The key term for understanding the ferocity of the Democratic attachment to mid-level managers is “midwit?
A midwit is typically described as someone with an IQ score between 85 and 115; more colloquially, it
describes a person with slightly above-average ability in any domain—someone who is able to pass basic
qualifications and overcome standard hurdles but who is in no way exceptional. For a dominant political party,
this is an obvious constituency and exactly the type of person you want on your side. While midwits often are
preferable to dimwits for obvious reasons, they're also preferable to an elite (those with exceptional abilities
but who may not wield power) that might one day decide to overturn existing structures and ways of doing
things.
While competition for authority might, in some contexts, be well worth the value that a member of the elite
contributes, this is rarely the case in incumbent political institutions, most of which depend for their survival
on restricting intellectual input. Even if incumbent institutions could attract elites initially elites would
eventually abandon them, either to work in institutions less burdened by historical constraints or else in fields
that are dominated more by objective rather than subjective measures of skill and accomplishment.
To understand this phenomenon better, it helps to look at a chart of college majors ranked by average 1Q.
1Q is also not an all-encompassing measure, but a reasonably predictive, best-for-now heuristic without many
alternatives. This chart also provides averages only: There are of course geniuses in early childhood education
and dimwits in economics. But some fields, on average, clearly skew toward midwits.
pring coneetonrowslestle-stnte aaThese degree breakdowns can also be projected forward into the labor market: Software engineering jobs
frequently require computer science or mathematics degrees, doctors require medical degrees, and so on.
But what really give teeth to this observation are the selection systems that dominate particular fields,
explicitly filtering out candidates from both the top and bottom of the IQ scale. Job qualifications typically
filter out candidates from the bottom, while restricting opportunities for free, creative, lucrative, and
independent work filters out those from the top.
Software companies, for example, have a high demand for elite labor and compensate accordingly. They
explicitly brand themselves as solving difficult problems in fast-paced environments staffed by “A-plaver”
colleagues, engage actively to recruit top talent from top universities, and subject applicants to difficult
technical tests. Naturally, they tend to attract people who studied computer science, natural sciences, and
mathematics, or even just iconoclasts who have both the ability and ambition to solve abstract and highly
technical problems,
In each subgroup of the political class—candidates for office, staffers, activists, journalists—the primary
selection mechanism is not technical competence but strict ideological conformity, as itis in the
aforementioned incumbent institutions: It takes some basic degree of ability to learn the mantras, avoid
missteps, and punish dissenters. Thus was the data scientist David Shor fired from his progressive analytics
firm for sharing peer-reviewed research demonstrating that violent protests have a history of hurting
progressive electoral prospects; and when the University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot was invited to
give a lecture at MIT on climate change, his lecture was canceled because of his opinions on affirmative action.
Restrictions on freedom of conscience can be a sticking point even if they don’t result in getting sacked or
canceled, as demonstrated by the trajectory of liberal dissenters like Bari Weiss, Peter Boghossian, and Zaid
Jilani. That their message has drawn large, sympathetic audiences is a significant development.
pring coneetonrowslestle-stnte(On the empirical side, while there don’t appear to be direct measures of, for example, the average IQ among
granular ideological factions, we do have some indirect evidence. Significantly, the professional fields that are
most politically touchy, and which are also (uncoincidentally) left leaning, fall neatly into the midwit range:
journalism (communications), education, social science, business administration and management, and public
administration.
This is not a new phenomenon. The historical analogs for this effect are often referred to as“Lysenkoism,”
named after the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko. Rejecting well-evidenced genetic findings, Lysenko made
absurd, demonstrably false claims about farming, including the hypothesis that exposing crops to poor
conditions would increase future yields because “future generations of crops would remember these
environmental cues,” and nearby seeds would not cause resource scarcity because “plants from the same ‘class’
never compete with one another.”
Lysenko is the standard bearer for pseudoscience driven by confirmation bias. But his false claims were not at
all random or founded in ignorance: Each of his lies formed part of a coherent argument for communist
assumptions. He denied that genes exist on the basis that believing they do could prove a “barrier to progress.”
He dismissed contrary evidence presented by Western scientists as “tools of imperialist oppressors”
‘There is no shortage of this phenomenon in contemporary times. Think of the denial of diversity in human
intelligence, of physical differences based on biological sex, of standardized testing as race-neutral, and of the
empirical data behind the efficacy of corporate diversity training and measures to combat the “gender pay gap’
With the benefit of hindsight, itis widely known how Lysenkoism ended: The implementation of his
“research” in reality helped facilitate the starvation of tens of ns of people from Ukraine to China
through manmade famines.
pring coneetonrowslestle-stnteseu, a8 Thefts at agra
Of course, not all Democrats hold Lysenkoist beliefs, just as not all Republicans are anti-vaccine or deny the
existence of anthropogenic climate change. But the salience of these belief across U.S. political, corporate,
nonprofit, journalistic, and academic institutions demonstrates that ideologically convenient Lysenkoism
persists on both sides of the aisle. The main difference between liberals and conservatives, as the political
scientist Richard Hanania points out, is organization. As Hanania says:
There are two ways to lie in politics. Let’s say Side A wants to spend more on government, and Side B wants
to spend less. Side A might exaggerate the benefits of investing in poor communities, and Side B might tell a
story about how tax cuts for the rich will pay for themselves. This can be called directional lying, with each
side trying to convince you of something, and this is how politics pretty much worked until the last few
years.
Republicans, because they are tribal and not ideological, do not punish their politicians for non-directional
lying, or simply making things up ...'Trump mostly governed like a typical Republican, and his
administration pushed for things like less spending on entitlements. Republicans meanwhil
running ads accusing Democrats of wanting to cut Medicare.
have been
Liberals say really false things like “men can get pregnant,’ “police are killing large numbers of
black men,” and “poor people are more likely to be fat because of food deserts.” Yet these are lies (or more
usually, kinds of self-delusion) that you would expect from people who've adopted crazy ideological
commitments.
nnocent
pring coneetonrowslestle-stnteAn existing model of institutional power describes institutional decisions as arising from conflicts between
factions. Recruiting, HR policy, and governance are not just procedures for choosing the best person for the
job or promotion; they are means of choosing the person who would most benefit the faction making the
choice. In other words, it’s politics all the way down.
With this in mind, midwits and the ideological conformity they favor can spread through incumbent
institutions fairly easily even without any organized effort. How? First, incumbent institutions
disproportionately select for midwits; second, ideologically conformist midwits select for others of the same
ideology, which can be done through hiring decisions, HR law, or employee activism; third, the selection
process is amplified further by incentives—because ideological conformity benefits midwits, they change
procedures to elevate themselves over their less conformist but more productive colleagues; fourth, the
increase in ideological conformity skews selection further toward midwits.
‘This cycle helps explain why incumbent institutions become stagnant or decline, and eventually become
incapable of doing what they were created to do.
‘The vast majority of these processes do not require Machiavellian planning, but they are responsible for
consequences that benefit no one. Take the attacks on advanced classes and specialized programs in primary
and high school education occurring in blue areas like New York City, California, Boston, and Oregon. In
service of the ideology that demands equality of outcomes between demographic groups, self-proclaimed
progressives are seeking to eliminate redistributive, public sector education programs that have been shown in
New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere to benefit primarily poor students and immigrants.
Unlike what some prominent conservatives seem to think, this doesn’t really represent “a plan to take over
America.” Instead, it’s mostly a case of incentives aligning for midwits to act according to their own emotional
pring coneetonrowslestle-stnte eaand political biases, which also happens to advantage their political benefactors.
“Left-wing ideology and incumbent institutions have become
almost synonymous, just as Democratic politicians and media
figures have become closely associated with ideas like
‘bureaucracy’ and ‘stagnation.’”
Share 71
This model helps explain how left-wing ideology and incumbent institutions have become almost
synonymous, just as Democratic politicians and media figures have become closely associated with ideas like
“bureaucracy” and “stagnation.” And in a sanitized political bubble like this one, there is very little need to
engage in formal democracy. Sure, there are primaries and elections every couple of years, but these tend to
make up a fraction of a bureaucrat, professor, NGO staffer, think-tanker, or journalist's time. Instead, their
engagements with “democracy” are mostly relational—filling out paperwork, putting arguments in writing,
arranging meetings, and so on. Their idea of democracy is shaped not by the democratic process itself (ie.,
public deliberation), but by feedback from bureaucracy, an often artificial and unnecessary appendage of
democracy. Consequently, when movements push policy that circumvents this appendage, they are actually
printing coneetonrowanidstletmute 1completely right to perceive it as an existential threat to their way of life. This mentality, more than “wokism,”
“neoliberalism,” or any other ism, cost Terry McAuliffe his chance at reclaiming the governor's mansion.
On the Republican side, this theory helps explain why most of their attempts to address institutional
disadvantages are failing. It’s actually much easier to reverse the consequences of an organized plan than to
reverse an emergent process: Simply remove the leaders from power and wield political force. So far, that’s
exactly what Republicans have been trying to do.
Republicans put both Donald Trump and Glenn Youngkin into office. They've passed broad anti-critical race
theory (CRT) laws, threatened to break up Big Tech companies, and have even proposed legislation to make it
easier. But as Marshall Kosloff put it, “If you broke up Amazon into six different companies, AT&T stock from
the 1980s, all six of those companies would also not serve Parler... It's just the fact that a certain part of the
country that is realigning away from their political belief’s has control over these institutions.” Similar
arguments can easily be made for other Republican ideas. Even if anti-CRT laws are passed, left-wingers who
would have taught it have plenty of other ideologies to choose from, which they can use to educate students the
way they want.
So: Are Republican elites just stupid? Well, no. Firstly, elites—whether Democrat or Republican—can easily
shelter themselves. Anyone in at least the upper middle class, with an average income around $200,000 per
year, can pay for private schools or whatever other pathways lead away from the problems caused by the rise of,
midwits. More importantly, the United States is a two-party system, which means that Republican coalitions
enjoy the inverse of what Democratic coalitions get. This is the one exception to the idea that midwits are
always preferable to dimwits in a political movement. As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote in
reaction to Hanania’s argument:
pring coneetonrowslestle-stnte roOne arguable takeaway from this analysis is that being an intellectual attached [to] the GOP is a really
depressing business *unless* your faction can seize control of a GOP WH, in which case you'll face
relatively few constraints on action from your base.
‘The most important takeaway from this model might be that the American status quo is not really in all that
‘much danger; itis actually incredibly stable. This doesn’t mean that polarization won't increase, or that elected
offices won't continue flipping back and forth. What it implies is that the incentives and institutions that
caused this cycle of institutional decline and failure will continue to self-perpetuate, despite the efforts of third
parties and intellectual movements, whether elitist or populist, to take over. This cycle will perpetuate itself
because it is driven by an incredibly resistant set of decentralized incentives that incorporate built-in reactions
to the most common challenges. The common mistake of the “anti-woke,’ “depolarization,” and “never-Trump”
factions is in underestimating the phenomena they claim to oppose.
Brian Chau (aka Cactus Chu) is @ writer and publishes the pseudonymous newsletter Meta Politics.
DEMOCRATS
pring coneetonrowslestle-stnte oa