https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/10/1705723/-The-Atlantic-Confirms-It-We-Are-Living-In-A-Kakistocracy
"Kakistocracy is back, and we are experiencing it firsthand in America. The unscrupulous element has come into sharp focus in recent weeks as a string of Trump Cabinet members and White House staffers have been caught spending staggering sums of taxpayer dollars to charter jets, at times to go small distances where cheap commercial transportation was readily available, at times to conveniently visit home areas or have lunch with family members. While Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was forced to resign after his serial abuse, others—including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, and Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, remain in place. There's a reason this word has been out of vogue so long. The reason is that a kakistocracy requires two things that until this point in American history have been quite rare. First you need an Executive with a blatant, wholesale disregard for the country, the welfare of its citizens and the importance of its institutions. Second (unless such a person manages to be elected by trickery), you need a constituency willing to elect such a person. To find a bloc of voters with such an abominable disregard and low opinion of themselves and their country that they would knowingly put their futures in the hands of thoroughly venal leader is a real rarity. The primary process usually winnows out such garbage. In this case, however Republican voters were already inured to Trump's personal style because he was a TV personality. So an institutional hurdle that exists for most candidates was immediately mooted. But the fact is that millions of Americans chose—with eyes wide open—to elect someone who clearly from his conduct and speeches during the campaign exemplified the absolute worst America had to offer."
