Harold and George Destroy the World

Infantilization of Politics and Power

• Many tie the essay’s “everyone is twelve” frame to current politics, especially US leadership and global authoritarian-populist trends.
• Observations of toddlers fighting over toys are compared to resource conflicts between states.
• Several argue there are “no grownups” in charge; others note some adults do try to layer restraint over childish impulses.
• Some see recent US behavior (Dept. of War branding, war rhetoric) as “Nero/Caligula” decline; others caution that civilizations have always had ups and downs.

Narcissism and Adult Psychology

• Commenters describe people who cannot admit being wrong, linking this to narcissistic personality patterns rooted in shame and rigid thinking.
• There is discussion of “overt,” “covert,” “malignant,” and “communal” narcissism, and how such traits become dangerous when paired with power and digital amplification.
• Some express compassion for narcissists as “broken,” while still seeing them as unfit for authority.

Media, Movies, and Cultural “Dumbing Down”

• Multiple threads compare “childish” blockbusters to more complex films, debating whether modern media is shallower than pre-2015 work.
• Some argue current movies and popular music are over-processed, risk-averse, and focus-grouped, losing subtlety and “care.”
• Others counter that survivor bias makes old media seem better, and that excellent, thought-provoking work still exists but is harder to discover amid volume and fragmentation.
• Specific films are defended or dismissed as either genuinely thoughtful or merely stylish “slop”; there is no consensus.

Education, Intelligence, and Idiocracy

• The film “Idiocracy” is used to discuss perceived educational decline, reliance on technology as a “cognitive crutch,” and cultural devaluation of learning.
• A long subthread debates IQ: heritability, test bias, predictive power, and whether talking about “stupid people breeding too much” is eugenic or just descriptive. Views are sharply divided.
• Several argue modern education overemphasizes or underemphasizes memorization; some praise spaced repetition and factual recall as foundational to real critical thinking.

Department of War / Defense and Foreign Policy

• The renaming of the Department of Defense to “Department of War,” plus new coin imagery, is read by many as juvenile chest‑beating and branding rather than substantive policy change.
• Others say “War” is more honest given US history of interventions, while critics stress that post‑WWII “Defense” naming at least gestured toward ideals of restraint.
• There is disagreement over whether recent moves (e.g., war with Iran) mark the “beginning of the end” of US hegemony or are another regional conflict in a longer arc.