An interactive reading of The Economist · 5 May 2026
The peace of the world, the column warns, is being broken by dunderheads. This site turns that warning into an instrument: a measurable March of Folly Index that scores each modern failure for self-harm, for Tuchman's three tests of folly, and for how far it rhymes with Rome's most notorious emperor — then asks whether the trouble is personal, or systemic.
The argument
The peace of the world is being broken by dunderheads — leaders blind not just to common sense and decency, but to their own people's long-term interests.
The column's spine is Barbara Tuchman's 1984 study The March of Folly. Tuchman sets a high bar for "folly": a policy must have been seen as counter-productive in its own time, a feasible alternative must have existed, and — crucially — it should be the act of a group that persists beyond any one political lifetime. Single rulers can do great damage; systems do the world-changing kind.
From there the piece runs a roll-call of contemporary blunders — Ukraine, Gaza, Iran's half-built bomb — before arriving at its question about America: are Donald Trump's mistakes personal, or has the republic begun the slow slide into imperial decadence?
The closing question: Are Trump's mistakes personal — fixable in an election or two — or systemic, the incompetence of an empire sliding into decadence?
Was it seen as counter-productive at the time — not just in hindsight?
Did a feasible alternative plainly exist?
Is it the act of a group that persists past one leader?
These three tests — plus the article's "self-harm" framing and a Caligula-resonance axis — are exactly what the Folly Index above scores. The framework is Tuchman's; the scores are an editorial reading you can re-weight.
Close reading
The argument in twelve beats. Each excerpt is quoted for commentary; tap a line to unpack the reference, check the claim, and jump to where this site digs in. The full piece is at economist.com.
The column's thesis and the seed of our index's first axis — "self-harm". Folly here is specifically self-defeating: damage a leader does to their own side.
The framework
Folly, for Tuchman, is not mere error, bad luck, or wickedness but "the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests" — self-defeating governance that proceeds despite contrary evidence, driven less by malice than by self-deception. To keep the category rigorous she fences it with three tests.
The policy "must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight." Live, audible warnings — the Trojans urging the horse be burned, churchmen warning the popes of schism — had to exist while the course was being chosen.
A realistic, achievable better path had to be open at the moment of choice — not a utopian option. Folly is the rejection of that available alternative. Leaders genuinely trapped with no real choice are excluded.
The policy "should be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime." This is the test that separates institutional folly from the caprice of a single sovereign — and the hinge of the whole Trump question.
Despite Laocoön's spear and Cassandra's warning, the Trojans breached their own walls to haul the Greek horse inside. The feasible alternative — burning it — was obvious; they acted on the comforting wish that the enemy had given up.
LessonThe pure case: folly proceeds against recognised alternatives and explicit warnings. A society can author its own catastrophe by refusing to weigh contrary signs.
Across sixty years six popes indulged in venality, nepotism and warfare — culminating in Leo X's sale of indulgences that provoked Luther in 1517 — while "deaf to disaffection, blind to alternative ideas." Credible calls for reform were ignored until Christendom split.
LessonTuchman calls it "a folly of perversity": an entrenched institution, persisting across many leaders, treating reform as unthinkable and challenge as impossible. Group folly outlasting any single pontificate.
Successive British governments taxed and coerced the colonies (Stamp Act, Townshend duties, the Coercive Acts) while ignoring Burke, Chatham and colonial petitioners. Conciliation was openly argued in Parliament and rejected; Britain pursued sovereignty to the point of war and lost the colonies entirely.
LessonFolly as the obstinate defence of an abstract principle (parliamentary supremacy) against the practical interest of the state — a complacent class mistaking firmness for wisdom.
Across five administrations the US deepened commitment to an unwinnable war, rationalised by domino-theory fear and an unwillingness to admit error. Internal analyses repeatedly judged it futile; disengagement was feasible; policy escalated anyway.
LessonHer modern, fully documented archetype of group folly persisting across multiple political lifetimes: bureaucratic momentum, wooden-headed refusal to absorb evidence, prestige substituting for assessment. The hardest folly to escape is the one a government inflicts on itself by refusing to reverse a publicly committed course.
Tuchman's third test is decisive for the column's question. A phenomenon confined to one idiosyncratic ruler is not yet folly in her technical sense — it becomes systemic folly only when a group (a party, a bureaucracy, a voter coalition) adopts the self-defeating course and carries it past the originating leader. So the personal-vs-systemic question resolves into three: were contrary signs institutionally available and ignored? Were feasible alternatives rejected by a group rather than vetoed by one will? Does the counter-productive policy outlast a single term? Three yeses put it in her gravest category — Vietnam, the popes. If it dies with its author, it is personal misrule, not a march of folly.
⚠ This mapping is reconstructed from Tuchman's own stated criteria. The best-documented public application of "wooden-headedness" to Trump is Jon Meacham's 2018 essay, which frames it as a broad contemporary phenomenon rather than a labelled verdict.
Theme by theme
The column lists shared tastes — gold, marble, blood-sport, flattery, a horse. Here each is laid side by side with its ancient source, an editorial read on how tight the parallel really is, and an explicit note on where the analogy strains. A good comparison survives its own caveats.
IMAGO · the gilded image
Power displayed as gold and graven self-image.
Caligula "renamed temples in his honour, had golden statues of himself erected." Trump is "a fan of golden statues, marble monuments and cage-fighting."
Renamed temples in his own honour and had golden statues of himself erected, dressing them daily in the clothes he wore.
⚠ From hostile, post-mortem sources; the daily-dressing detail is Suetonian colour.
Inserted his own head onto statues of the gods and presented himself for worship as a living deity.
⚠ Winterling argues some "divine" gestures were calculated provocations of the Senate, not literal madness.
parallel
strength
A documented taste for gilded interiors, gold-leaf branding and monumental self-imagery in public and private settings.
The article names "golden statues" as a shared motif — image as a primary instrument of rule.
Caligula claimed literal divinity backed by state cult; Trump operates in a secular republic with courts, a free press and term limits.