By: C. William Hanson Jr.

“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

“There are few things more dangerous than a mixture of power, arrogance and incompetence.” ~ Bob Herbert (former op-ed columnist for The New York Times, television personality, recipient of awards for distinguished journalism, and author of  

Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America)

Happy April Fools Day! Today we review the folly of numerous fools during the past month. Let’s begin close to my home in New England.  An indisputably great cultural treasure here has long been the Boston Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1881. The orchestra has enjoyed a number of world renowned principal conductors including Serge Koussevitzky, Charles Munch, Erich Leinsdorf, Seiji Ozawa, and to this partial list many would add the current conductor, Andris Nelsons. 

Nelsons conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra

This month Chad Smith, who moved here four years from Los Angeles in order to take over as the orchestra’s CEO, and Barbara Hostetter, who is  the chair of the Board of Trustees, shocked the musical world; they and the Board terminated the Orchestra’s contract with Nelsons. An  announcement stated,

“The decision to not renew his contract was made by the BSO’s Board of Trustees because, beyond our shared desire to ensure our orchestra continues to perform at the highest levels, the BSO and Andris Nelsons were not aligned on future vision.”

Boston is blessed to have an in-depth online journal, The Boston Musical Intelligencer, for classical music in Greater Boston, featuring expert reviews from musicians and academics. We quote from an article in this journal,

 ‘The tempest about the decision not to renew Andris Nelsons’s appointment as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra has become a full-blown hurricane. Its musicians and staff, as well as subscribers and attendees, have been publicly expressing dismay not only at the decision, but also at the way it was announced.’

“The letter from the BSO Board emailed to its supporters on March 20^th, ‘An update from the BSO,’ did little to address the concert-going community’s concerns.  First, it mentioned that ‘Over the past several weeks, many have understandably asked questions about the BSO’s direction….’ We ask, who were among those “many”? Or not among them? How unfortunate that, before committing itself to a decision that is causing so much dissension, the “many” had not included its musicians and supporters.  A well-constructed survey of both groups would not only have been in order, but if heeded, would have lent credence to the approach the board eventually took”
(Norton, Bettina A. “BSO Board Barking up the Wrong Tree.” The Boston Musical Intelligencer, 24 Mar. 2026)

In our view also, Smith, Hostetter,  and the Board displayed an astonishing degree of incompetence in the way they went about their action. They  managed to provoke outrage in the musical world extending far beyond New England.  For instance, the musicians of the Berliner Philharmoniker wrote as follows:

The Board and its leadership may have had  some sound reasons for wishing to replace Nelsons.  We share much disappointment that, unlike the great conductors we mentioned previously, Nelsons never made Boston his home. Instead he remained based in Europe, where he has simultaneously been serving  as Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.  Moreover the Board has expressed concern about sagging ticket sales.  In my view the Orchestra has deficiencies in its marketing and administrative operations. My own personal experience has shown me that the handling of tickets in the BSO box office has reached an astronomical level of incompetence.  Also once in order to obtain a Symphony Hall hearing device I was asked to provide an ID card to be returned to me upon my return of device; when after the concert I returned the device, they searched and could not find the card they had taken from me. In other words, my own personal experience supports the assertion that administrative incompetence might be a worthy focus for Smith’s attention.  In any case, the Intelligencer poses an apt question for Board, “how does replacing one of the world’s pre-eminent Maestros, with what will most assuredly be a second or third tier conductor after this treatment of Andris, suddenly boost the sales losses you claim for the past decades?” 

Concerns more broadly consequential involve folly in Trumpworld; our 47th President and his incompetent cronies have this month been engaging us Americans in spectacular blunders. As the month began the President’s intention to acquire Greenland continued to poison relations with erstwhile ally Denmark. There voters went to the polls on March 24th in a general election, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen seeking a third term. Frederiksen called the election in February,  going to the country several months before a required date in hopes that her resolute image in the crisis over Greenland would reap dividends at the ballot box. Danish voters again gave Frederiksen’s party the most votes; the Green Left party, which most energetically rejects Trump and his proposals, surged to second place, while the main right-wing Liberal party Venstre had its worst showing for a century with just 10.1% of the votes. A clear and entertaining  analysis, elucidating the full incompetence of Trump’s pronouncements about Greenland, comes from Danish analyst Anders Puck Nielsen:

March also saw the first firing of a Trump cabinet officer, namely Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, formerly Governor of South Dakota, who has been described as “the ultimate badass cowgirl” (Rodrick, Stephen. “Kristi Noem Has Always Been an Incompetent Narcissist. No One Cared.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 17 Mar. 2026).

She was fired for incompetence. We might wish that a decision to hire her had depended upon a review of her record. This would have shown that South Dakota was in the top 10 for deaths per capita during the pandemic, largely because of Noem’s hands-off policies, allowing water parks in Rapid City, crowded bars, and large public events to proceed in 2020 without precautions. For example, in 2020 the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, the largest annual motorcycle rally in the world, turned into a big time superspreader event. In addition, Governor Noem called upon the National Guard to suppress political rallies which called for protection of civil rights for native Americans, regardless whether the demonstrators had in advance obtained police authorization to proceed. As Secretary of Homeland Security, she obtained quite a bit of media coverage for her baseless assertions that ICE victims were domestic terrorists.  Her tenure was so incompetent that in recent Senate hearings even Republican Senators called for her resignation:

Lastly, in our review of Trump administration incompetence this month, it seems somehow obligatory to address the catastrophic blunder of military strikes against Iran. As we go to press, the results of this blunder evolve on a day by day basis, so that for a monthly publication such as ours to attempt  a conclusive analysis would prove to be futile.

We believe that determination to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons, the motivation for the attacks on Iran last June, makes good sense. Regimes in other countries with nuclear weapons such as Russia and even North Korea appear rational enough to refrain from launching nuclear strikes which would bring them catastrophic retaliation. Extremist Islamic regimes seem in this regard less reliable. Even in the current conflict with the USA, Iran’s leadership appears somewhat indifferent to the risk of the increasingly vindictive destruction which a ruthless and unpredictable American President might inflict. In the following interview by Fareed Zakaria, the current Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) provides a brief assessment of Iran’s potential for rapidly developing nuclear weapons even after the joint U.S.-Israeli attack last June on three Iranian nuclear facilities. Also Fareed provides a review of Trump’s objectives and handling of the combat he and Netanyahu initiated one month ago on February 28th. This time not destruction of Iran’s nuclear capabilities but other shifting objectives seem to have dominated, with dubious objectives such as using military force to impose regime change.

When Trump in February launched the attack on Iran, most Democrats and some Republicans shared a view concisely put by Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, “The American people are once again dragged into a war they did not want by a president who does not care about the long-term consequences of his actions. This war is unlawful. It is unnecessary. And it will be catastrophic.”

Iran has embraced policies detrimental to Ukraine. These have included providing Russia with military drones and now, with ongoing attacks by military of the USA and Israel, blocking the Strait of Hormuz, an act which has sent prices soaring, benefitting Russia as an oil producer, and thereby helping to fund Russian aggression. As 2026 began and Iran, desperate for Western currency,  was welcoming visitors like us, we planned to provide you with some reports from a visit to Tehran. While these on-location reports must now be deferred, we shall in future issues continue to investigate and to analyze Iranian culture and behavior.  Please stay tuned, and please tell us if you wish us to continue to curate and to share streamings such as those we provide in the issue by Fareed Zakaria and Anders Puck Nielsen.

Reader Comment:

I’ve just read your latest article on Hanson Gazette, and I loved it.

I’d like to add 2 more details to the crash course about the election system

The entry threshold of party lists is 5% in the standard case, but it’s 10% if the list was assembled by an alliance of 2 parties, and 15% if 3 or more parties

Without the surplus votes – so it must be achieved through pure primary list votes

And the other involves the entry criteria to assemble a list: a list can only be set up by a party (or alliance) that managed to nominate candidates in at least 71 individual constituencies.

This rule was most probably introduced to increase the number of individual candidates, to fragment the votes of non-fidesz voters in constituencies

This strategy was prevalent in another way in the previous elections: the infamous fake party candidates — previously nonexistent and unknown formations nominating people in constituencies. Sometimes even intentionally people with names resembling a prominent local opposition candidate

It was extensively investigated by journalists, and in multiple cases it became evident that either Fidesz funded them through back channels, or Fidesz activists collected the nomination signatures for them.

-Gábor