There is a common cliche that people use as a means of discussing probability and statistics that ponders how many monkeys with keyboards it would take to create the works of Shakespeare, and the answer is usually some sort of impossibly large number and an impossibly large amount of time in order to do it, demonstrative of the complexity and beauty of Shakespeare’s writings and the impossibility of coming to those things randomly without a guiding intelligence. In a slightly different context, I have idly mused in thought experiments for myself as to whether and to what extent I would vote for or support a candidate for office who was a brute animal because I would trust its backers more than the human candidate of the other party.

Unfortunately, what was for me an idle thought experiment appears to be something that is practiced by the contemporary Democratic party. If we have not (yet) reached the decadent level of the Roman empire where an emperor’s favorite horse is made a consul or a senator from Pennsylvania we do appear to be pushing the envelope that candidates who are obvious nonentities incapable of forming coherent sentences or communicating even effective small talk are to be voted into positions of power because we trust their backers more than “the other guys” who are compared to loathsome maggots as if this was an accurate description of character and intelligence. The fact that a substantial body of the electorate is willing to vote for candidates for these offices who can in no way perform the duties of those offices because of fear that the other side is even worse is a highly worrisome prospect, because it suggests that partisanship has moved to pretty dangerous levels.

I do not pretend to have no particular political views or perspectives, and if my own political worldview is outside of the Overton Window, I at least try to make sure that it corresponds to the biblical worldview of law and morality and authority. It is troubling to me that people whose worldviews are generally mistaken, whose view of their own morality is colored highly by self-deception and self-blindness, are so convinced of the superiority of their ways that they would prefer complete incompetents in office because they would support the “right” policies, which only bring ruin and destruction upon all of us. Such realities darken considerably my view of the people who are willing to not only engage in thought experiments about such foolishness but to actually put them into practice and try to use the coercive power of government to force their own wicked ways upon the rest of us.

The damage that is done to the body politic in such situations is immense. It lowers the prestige of offices when the people who hold them are so obviously incapable of holding the offices and performing the duties of office that one cannot but be confronted by the cognitive gaps that exist between the duties of office and the capabilities of the poor suffering officeholders who deserve a nice rest home where someone can clean their spittle and give them some extra ice cream when they learn a new word. But it also lowers the peace that can exist between citizens who support such people in office and those who see it as a horror and a disgrace to any republic to be governed thusly.