{"id":43882,"date":"2018-06-23T03:00:04","date_gmt":"2018-06-23T07:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43882"},"modified":"2018-06-22T10:25:44","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T14:25:44","slug":"word-of-the-day-kakistocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/06\/23\/word-of-the-day-kakistocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the day &#8211; <em>Kakistocracy<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/althouse.blogspot.com\/2018\/06\/in-may-un-special-rapporteur-on-extreme.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ann Althouse<\/a> does the etymological heavy lifting:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Kakistocracy&#8221; \u2014 based on the Greek for &#8220;worst&#8221; + &#8220;rule&#8221; \u2014 means &#8221; The government of a state by the worst citizens&#8221;(<em>OED<\/em>).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>1829 T. L. Peacock <strong>Misfortunes Elphin<\/strong> vi. 93 Our agrestic kakistocracy now castigates the heinous sins which were then committed with impunity [&#8220;Agrestic&#8221; = rural, rough and uncouth.]<br \/>\n1876 J. R. Lowell <strong>Lett.<\/strong> II. vii. 179 Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I see that <em>Salon<\/em> got to the OED and deployed that word and those quotes before Trump was even sworn in: &#8220;Degeneration nation: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2016\/12\/17\/degeneration-nation-it-takes-a-village-of-idiots-to-raise-a-kakistocracy-like-donald-trumps\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">It takes a village of idiots to raise a kakistocracy like Donald Trump\u2019s\/Donald Trump\u2019s government will be &#8216;for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools&#8217;<\/a>&#8221; (December 17, 2016):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/north-africa-west-asia\/amro-ali\/kakistocracy-word-we-need-to-revive\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">As Amro Ali explains in a piece calling for a revival of the term \u201ckakistrocracy\u201d<\/a> [sic] \u201cIn a world where stupidity penetrates multiple levels of government, policies and personalities; it is strange that the term coined to best describe it has actually ended up in the endangered and forgotten words books.\u201d&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaellewitt\/2016\/10\/13\/investing-in-a-kakistocracy\/#21a627d43ea0\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Forbes<\/strong> contributor Michael Lewitt<\/a> reminds us that \u201ckakistocracy\u201d should be used to describe a state or government run by the most unscrupulous or unsuitable people: \u201cCorrupt, dishonest and incompetent politicians, regulators and bureaucrats were put in charge by self-absorbed, selfish and ignorant citizens.\u201d He goes on to acknowledge that we are probably not the first society to consider our leaders as part of a kakistocracy&#8230;.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The word <strong>kakistocracy<\/strong> comes to us from Greek. <strong>Kakistos<\/strong> means \u201cworst,\u201d which is superlative of <strong>kakos<\/strong> \u2014 \u201cbad\u201d \u2014 and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/word\/kakistocracy\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">if it sounds like shit<\/a>, that\u2019s because it is.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That link on &#8220;if it sounds like shit&#8221; goes to an etymology dictionary entry for &#8220;kakistocracy&#8221;:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>&#8230;. from Greek <strong>kakistos<\/strong> &#8220;worst,&#8221; superlative of <strong>kakos<\/strong> &#8220;bad&#8221; (which perhaps is related to PIE root *<strong>kakka-<\/strong> &#8220;to defecate&#8221;) + &#8211;<strong>cracy<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In that view, the real &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/01\/11\/politics\/immigrants-shithole-countries-trump\/index.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">shithole country<\/a>.&#8221; When will the U.N. give us credit for having the most nerve and confidence to criticize those we elect and continually threaten to oust?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ann Althouse does the etymological heavy lifting: &#8220;Kakistocracy&#8221; \u2014 based on the Greek for &#8220;worst&#8221; + &#8220;rule&#8221; \u2014 means &#8221; The government of a state by the worst citizens&#8221;(OED). 1829 T. L. Peacock Misfortunes Elphin vi. 93 Our agrestic kakistocracy now castigates the heinous sins which were then committed with impunity [&#8220;Agrestic&#8221; = rural, rough [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,1526,13],"tags":[1213,400],"class_list":["post-43882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-greece","category-usa","tag-kakistocracy","tag-language"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bpM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43883,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43882\/revisions\/43883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}