Image: The Idiot cover
Fyodor Dosteyevsky didn’t define idiot the way that we do. An idiot isn’t someone without common sense. It’s not someone who can’t point out Germany on a map, or tell you the quadratic formula. It’s not even someone that believes a word from Alex Jones. Idiots aren’t stupid people; they’re naive. Dostoyevsky thinks that those who trust their peers, who have faith in societal institutions– those are the real idiots.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1698 novel The Idiot makes the moving revelation that this is a world of sinners in which the ‘saint’ is doomed either to ostracism or ridicule. Its titular hero is one of the most memorable characters in Russian literature. The empathetic, narrow-minded, and childlike Prince Myshkin strives with heartbreaking and ultimately tragic persistence to promote charity, understanding, and godliness among the tortured transgressors with whom he comes into contact. The magnificence of his failure serves only to emphasize the significance of his role as spokesman for the ideas by which the author hoped to save the Russia of his day: ideas of compassion and Christianity. While Myshkin is torn between morality and momentum, everyone else profits.
So who is the idiot of American politics? Two options come to mind– the dyed-in-the-wool faithful Democrats, and the more radical anti-establishment leftists. We’ll examine both.
One can argue that the idiot is the liberal Democratic voter. The dutiful citizen, watching the news and casting his ballot. The grassroots organizer with campaign pins. The activist handing out pamphlets about Project 2025. The nonprofit staffer coordinating public transportation for low-income communities to get to voting locations. The idealists, the do-gooders, the median from the statistics, the creator of Instagram infographics.
These people do their civic duty and proudly wear their “I Voted” sticker on Election Day. They believe that their efforts are going to better America. Meanwhile rights for queer and trans citizens, for reproductive healthcare, and for education are being stripped away from millions of Americans, while the public debt grows and medical emergencies lead to bankruptcy.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Prince Myshkin chases Natasya Fillapovna around Russia while she leaves him at the altar, believing that his love and faith in her will lead to a happy ending. The parallels between the efforts of the liberal democratic voter and Prince Myshkin are uncanny.
Voters aren’t happy with the American electoral system, yet we dutifully participate in it. Neither political party is popular with the public– four in ten Americans (41%) have favorable views of the Democratic party, with less (37%) having favorable views of the Republican party. In September, Republicans blocked legislation in the Senate that would make it a right for women to access in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments, even though their constituents widely support IVF treatments. Meanwhile, Democrats who held the White House and Congress for a majority of Joe Biden’s first term failed to pass key legislation, including abortion protection at the federal level. And Americans are about fed up with this lack of progress.
Image: Sen. Cory Booker, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, speaks about the need to protect rights to in vitro fertilization (IVF), before the Senate votes on the issue.
Which is why several groups, often online, but persistently vocal, advocate for the abstention of voting in 2024 entirely, using the guise of “no good options” to avoid civic responsibility. They claim that since meaningful change has not yet happened within the current political institutions, it will not happen. To be clear– these people don’t want power. They want to endlessly critique power. They’re more interested in building an online community of discontent than actual advocacy work, endlessly reiterating well-earned and valid frustration, but not willing to work within the system to change it.
Are they the idiots of American politics? Maybe taking another look at Dostoyevsky’s Prince Myshkin will help decide.
Myshkin tends to give sympathy to whichever victim happens to be in the room with him at the moment, without engaging or giving any active help. Classicists are eager to call this his “innocence” and to use it as proof that he is a ‘better person’ than his peers, who have personal motives and agendas. But what if he is not an empathetic, naive ‘idiot’? If that thought pattern is abandoned, his oscillation comes across as weakness. He’s hypocritic, opportunistic, and fears conflict. One could say the same of anti-voters.
If we continue with that train of thought, that Myshkin’s ‘innocence’ is no more than cluelessness, other flaws come to light. Critics deem Myshkin’s behavior Christian meekness, but it could also be viewed as condescension. He is incredibly one-dimensional in his value system, fearing change and genuine human interaction. To compensate for his fears, he looks down on ‘weak’ people, forgiving and pitying them from his lofty stance. But what right has he to ‘forgive’ his peers for engaging in moral and interpersonal conflicts? We can’t forget that Dostoyevsky truly saw Myshkin as a Christlike figure, and was so committed to orthodox Christian dogma to the point of writing in an 1854 letter:
Reflecting back on the anti-establishment movement, one has to wonder if they would take the same stance as Dostoyevsky. Would they side with an establishment that actively promoted their values, or find something new to criticize? Would they constantly move the goal-post?
Dostoyevsky, the brilliant realist writer, writes a story containing the truth of Russian social life as he has observed it, and his Christ is moping through the plot, dispensing pity rather than offering solutions. He is passive, incapable of one single proactive, conscientious good deed. The ease of his non-action runs parallel to the security of political pessimism.
Myshkin, the dutiful liberal Democrats, and the anti-voters all share one thing in common: they have good intentions. They believe that their actions (or lack thereof) is going toward a better future for themselves and their peers. But who actually drives change in The Idiot, and in America?
The plot of The Idiot follows Prince Myshkin, but it isn’t necessarily driven by him. The actions and opinions he does take are ill thought out and with disastrous consequences, from choosing to chase the tempestuous Natasya Fillapovna to promising part of his unearned inheritance to a self-proclaimed illegitimate son of his benefactor. In doing so, the memorable side characters such as ambitious Ganya and stubborn Agalia work toward actual goals, albeit with not much more success than Myshkin himself.
Similarly, in American politics, change is rarely driven by either the median voter or the radical X user. The dutiful Democrats cast their ballots and repost news stories on their social media while remaining in largely the same place they were four years ago. Online communities of leftists and centrists alike denounce both election candidates, unwilling to “lower” themselves to vote for either, and dooming us to repeat the mistakes of the 2016 election, when progressive groups discouraged voting while right-wing influencers mobilized their base. Is either group moving the country forward?
The truth might be that everyone is the idiot. Maybe everyone is naive. Maybe the only non-idiot of American politics are the shrewd, the calculating, the men behind the curtains. Those who profit from policy. The Idiot ends with (spoilers) Natasya Fillapovna dead at Rogozhin’s knife, all of Myshkin’s compassion and condescension for nothing. He ends up exactly where he started, out of his mind in a Swiss sanatorium, mad with the revelation that if he wants to make a difference, he must confront a world that prioritizes manipulation over morality. The question remains: can ‘good intentions’ ever triumph in a landscape dominated by shrewd opportunism, or are we all destined to play the role of the 'idiot' in a game we cannot hope to win?
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