Transition to Governing, 5

Bongcloud Don is playing chess. Amateurish, meme chess.

In this post:

• High-ranking appointments are not a game. Public authority is not a meme. We can’t have governing by Bongcloud.

(If you missed the previous posts: Transition to Governing 1, 2, 3, 4)

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There’s a chess opening called the “Bongcloud.” It’s ridiculous.

You move up a central pawn, and then, regardless of what your opponent does, you move your king up one square. It’s a truly awful opening. In just two moves, you’ve come close to forfeiting your chances of winning.

It’s so bad it’s become a joke in the chess community. A streamer might use it for laughs. A great player can use it to troll a bad player: Start with the Bongcloud and then try to win despite the hole that’s been dug. It’s like playing someone in basketball up to 11 and spotting them 10. It’s often called a “meme opening” because it’s an unserious, funny-ish statement or symbol.

Anyone who knows anything about chess knows how awful the Bongcloud is. Really, once you know about opening concepts, you know that the Bongcloud is unserious. It puts your king in danger, you can’t castle, you can’t move your queen or light-squared bishop, you’ve given up the middle. It’s so, so, so terrible.

This assessment isn’t my personal opinion. Literally billions of games of chess have been played, and we’ve learned that the Bongcloud is dreadful. Super-computers with mind-boggling calculating capacities confirm that the Blongcloud is as bad as it gets.

But If You Don’t Know What You’re Doing…

But if you don’t know anything about chess except the rules, you might play the Bongcloud. You could—if you lack all meaningful knowledge of chess strategy—come up with some reason to play those two moves. Now, they’d be objectively bad reasons. But before you learned anything you might think those reasons made sense.