A half-century-old treatise by Italian historian Carlo Cipolla held that "stupid people," when present in large numbers, form a force capable of crashing entire societies. A essay published in The New Republic argues that President Donald Trump has now proven that thesis right and become the embodiment of its ideas.

Writing in the outlet on Wednesday, writer and editor Ross Rosenfield highlighted the work of Cipolla, whom he described as a "prolific intellectual," and his argument that stupid people as a demographic within society are "much more powerful than the mafia, or the military industrial complex." Cipolla, who lived from 1922 to 2000 and taught economic history for decades at the University of California, Berkeley, first issued The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity as a short pamphlet in 1976. An English version ran in Whole Earth Review in 1987, and the essay has since been reissued as a standalone book, revived repeatedly in political commentary in the decades since.

Rosenfield cited a series of present-day developments as evidence, writing: "Today, as we witness one of the dumbest wars in history unraveling in Iran, an inept health and human services secretary working to bring back measles and polio, a Republican Party wherein only 20 percent view the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as a violent insurrection but 71 percent deny Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and an administration that refuses to properly regulate AI and crypto industries that threaten the economic well-being and safety of all, Cipolla's contention is as apt now as when he first proposed it in The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, in 1976—an era when the country, and indeed the world, was similarly roiled by sociopolitical rage and seemed on the brink of a catastrophe."

Cipolla's framework, as Rosenfield summarized it, divides people into four groups: "the helpless, whose actions harm themselves but benefit others; the intelligent, whose actions benefit themselves and others; the bandits, who enrich themselves while harming others; and the stupid, whose actions harm others while producing no benefit to themselves." That four-way split is the essay's Third Basic Law, which sorts people by whether their actions benefit or harm themselves and those around them.

In the 1976 treatise itself, Cipolla argued: "No matter how high are one's estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid; b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments."

Breaking down the historian's arguments further, Rosenfield explained that the "real danger" posed by stupid people—a danger he suggested the world is now getting a harsh taste of—comes when they attain power. In such situations, "the stupid will have at their disposal means of destruction created by the intelligent—armies, weapons systems, monetary levers, media influence—and will oversee industries often controlled or influenced by bandits, weakening the institutions designed to monitor them." Cipolla's essay closes on the same note, with its Fifth (Golden) Basic Law: "A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person."

Cipolla contended that it is the responsibility of the intelligent to keep the stupid in check. Should they fail, Rosenfield wrote, "societies head downhill fast."

The developments Rosenfield points to remain in motion rather than settled history, and he stops short of a final verdict on where they lead. "It may be too soon to know whether we're on that course in the U.S.," he concluded. "We may not know until it's far too late. But it's alarming enough that Cipolla's somewhat tongue-in-cheek theory from a half-century ago seems perfectly apt to the state of America today."