# Rule of Idiots - Read by Eunice Wong

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chris-hedges-report-podcast-6787680/rule-of-idiots-read-by-eunice-wong
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chris-hedges-report-podcast-6787680/rule-of-idiots-read-by-eunice-wong.md
Podcast: [The Chris Hedges Report Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chris-hedges-report-podcast-6787680)
Published: 2025-06-21T19:55:42+00:00
Episode link: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/rule-of-idiots-read-by-eunice-wong
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/166484886/c52060f5118a8466cda9aa216e766948.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-chris-hedges-report-podcast-6787680/episodes/rule-of-idiots-read-by-eunice-wong
Duration seconds: 778

## Resource

This article is read by Eunice Wong , a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators . Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actor Text originally published May 26, 2025 Full text: The last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanoff, Iranian and Soviet dynasties crumbled under the stupidity of their decadent rulers who absented themselves from reality, plundered their nations and retreated into echo chambers where fact and fiction were indistinguishable. Donald Trump, and the sycophantic buffoons in his administration, are updated versions of the reigns of the Roman emperor Nero , who allocated vast state expenditures to attain magical powers; the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, who funded repeated expeditions to a mythical island of immortals to bring back a potion that would give him eternal life; and a feckless Tsarist court that sat around reading tarot cards and attending séances as Russia was decimated by a war that consumed over two million lives and revolution brewed in the streets. In “ Hitler and the Germans ,” the political philosopher Eric Voegelin dismisses the idea that Hitler — gifted in oratory and political opportunism, but poorly educated and vulgar — mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures,” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness. Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” The demagogue, who is alway…

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## Transcript

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