Our Kakistocracy

A few days ago, at a press event in Venice, Italy on September 2, actor and activist George Clooney offered some biting remarks on the present US government.  Unfortunately, they weren’t biting enough.

Amidst some talk about climate change and the lack of American governmental action (Venice is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels), Clooney said this:

There’s a great word, kakistocracy, which is a country run by the least qualified people. I think maybe we have a kakistocracy right now, but we’ll get through it.

Let me dissect this thought briefly. Clooney is being unusually intellectual here, in citing a term that was surely new to all who heard it: kakistocracy. It derives from the Greek word kakos, meaning ‘evil’ or ‘bad.’ We have only a handful of English words related to kakos, such as ‘cacophony’ (bad sounds) and ‘cacotopia’ (a bad place, opposite of utopia). But such examples are rare.

The superlative form of kakos is kakistos—‘the worst.’ With respect to governmental or ruling systems, Clooney’s word ‘kakistocracy’ (= kakos + kratos, ‘to rule’), is literally ‘rule by the worst.’ So it is not simply unqualified but perhaps well-meaning people, as Clooney wrongly suggests, but rather the literally worst people—the least intelligent, the least moral, the least virtuous, the cruelest and most vicious.

The very idea that the worst people might somehow come to rule a nation or a city-state is found in Plato. In his Republic, he famously elaborates on the dangerous process of political decay. Nations that are fortunate enough to be governed, not by the worst but by the best, are aristocracies (from ‘aristos,’ the best). Unless the leaders take great care, an aristocracy can devolve into a timocracy (rule by the honor-seekers), then to an oligarchy (rule by the rich few), then to a democracy (rule by the masses), and then finally to a tyranny (rule by a tyrant). I note here that, on Plato’s view, democracy is the second-worst system of government—hardly something to be protected and defended at all costs, as we do today.

The tyrant, who arises from the failings of democracy, is a true despot in the worst sense of the word. He is, says Plato, like an ‘anti-doctor,’ that is, one who cultivates sickness and suffering rather than health. A doctor purges the worst bits of disease and infection from the body; the tyrant also inflicts a purge, but of the opposite kind: “doctors draw off the worst [parts] and leave the best, but the tyrant does just the opposite” (567c)—that is, purges the best and leaves the worst. The tyrant “associates primarily with flatterers who are ready to obey him in everything” (575e)—sound familiar? Such a fellow—at once “untrustworthy” and “as unjust as anyone can be”—is rightly called “the worst type of man” (576b). “His waking life is like a nightmare,” adds Plato.

A tyranny, then, devolving from democracy, is indeed “rule by the worst.” Plato does not use the word ‘kakistocracy,’ but the meaning is the same: Rule, not merely by the unqualified, not simply by ‘the bad,’ but by the worst.

And by “the worst,” Clooney is obviously referring to Trump and the people in his administration. One can certainly make a fair case for this, given Trump’s many fiascoes both at home and abroad. That case is obvious and I won’t belabor it here.

But Clooney is largely mistaken if he thinks Trump and his stooges are really in charge. The real leaders, the real wire-pullers, are those who fund Trump, fund his allies, and fund most of those in Congress: the rich and powerful Jews who constitute the American Jewish Lobby. Trump notoriously received some $100 million from the Israeli-born dual citizen Jewess Miriam Adelson in 2024, but he also got substantial, multi-million-dollar contributions from Bill Ackman, Jacob Helberg, Ron Lauder, Marc Rowan, Jan Koum, Isaac Perlmutter, Bernie Marcus (before he died in late 2024), and current “Mid-East envoy” Steve Witkoff. Trump’s administration is predictably staffed with many Jews in key positions, including Witkoff, Lauder, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Howard Lutnick, Stephen Miller, Lee Zeldin, Boris Epshteyn, David Sacks, Stephen Feinberg, and Will Scharf, among others.

Then we have Jews and Jewish influence in Congress. At the moment, there are some 35 Jews in Congress—10 in the Senate and 25 in the House. At 10% of the Senate, Jews are overrepresented by a factor of five, given their roughly 2% standing in the US population. If Jews were proportionately represented in Congress, there would perhaps be 10 serving there, rather than 35.

Be that as it may, there are still 500 non-Jews in Congress. And yet, somehow, Congress routinely votes in favor of Jewish and Israeli interests by large majorities. For example: this year, 58% of the House voted to block federal funding to universities that support commercial boycotts of Israel; 75% of the House voted to block Thomas Massie’s amendment to stop aid to Israel; a 2024 vote of $26 billion in aid to Israel to fund their Gaza genocide passed 79% in the Senate and 86% in the House; the 2024 “Antisemitism Awareness Act” was passed by 78% of the House; in 2023, HRes 888 “affirming Israel’s right to exist” was passed 412 to 1 (99.7%); and the 2023 HRes 1125, which condemned “Holocaust denial” among other things, passed 420 to 1 (99.8%).

Thus, we see large numbers of non-Jewish congresspersons voting in support of Jews and Israel—which happens either because (a) they are Christian Zionists, or (b) they receive a large proportion of their campaign funding from Jewish sources. Either way, they are controlled by Jews or Jewish interests. It has long been noted that Republicans receive at least 25%, and Democrats at least 50%, of their funding from Jewish or pro-Israel sources. This is astonishing, given that there are some 13,000 special interest lobbies in Washington; for one lobby to provide 50% of all funding is simply amazing. But it certainly explains congressional votes that are 70%, 80%, or 90% in favor of Jewish interests.

All this, then, to say that the real power in government today is not Trump and his team of screwballs but rather the Jewish Lobby collectively, which dictates policy to Trump and how to vote to members of Congress. This is by now so well-attested and so indisputable that it is hardly controversial. And yet, few can speak such truth.

If—as I believe—Clooney is correct and we are living in a kakistocracy, it is because “the worst” can be equated to “the Jews.” This is the obvious and logical conclusion. Clooney won’t say this, of course, because his very wealth and fame are due to this same Jewish Lobby that produces his motion pictures and promotes him in the media—the same lobby that runs Washington. Clooney foolishly believes that getting a different set of Jewish lackeys in power—namely, the Democrats—will make things better. Better for him, perhaps, but equally as bad for average Americans and for the world. //

The rest of us must pay the price, and therefore it is we who must act. When you are ruled by the worst, begging, pleading, or new elections won’t help. The only solution is to throw them out—out of power, out of their wealth which buys that power, and ultimately out of the nation that they have corrupted to the core.

The ancient Greeks understood this. They devised a similar pragmatic solution to their corrupt tyrants: ostracism. By a vote of the common people, ordinary folks could issue a demand to banish a specific corrupt tyrant from Greece for a period of 10 years. Any attempt to return would be met with threats of death.

Let us take their lesson to heart. Let us vote to banish all leading members of the Jewish Lobby for just ten years. Give Americans just a 10-year break from stifling Jewish control, and let us see how we fare in the meantime. If we are worse off for it, we will welcome them back; if better, then we will know that we have made the right decision, and we will praise the ancient Greeks once again for their insight, their wisdom, and their moral courage.

David Skrbina, PhD, is a former professor of philosophy from the University of Michigan, Dearborn. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including The Jesus Hoax (2^nd ed., 2024), The Metaphysics of Technology (Routledge, 2015), and Panpsychism in the West (MIT Press, 2017).