“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”
—H.G. Wells
The Trump supporters I have met over the last three years have been fairly consistent in their mantra of why they like him i.e. he speaks his mind; he’s shaking things up, he’s not a politician.
I try to politely point out just a few of his glaring lies & inconsistencies between what he’s said & what he does. But the second they hear a criticism of their leader, they go into shutdown mode & I may as well be talking to his beloved wall.
It’s so glaringly obvious that his followers have completely shut down their minds to any criticism of Trump & it worries me that such a huge percentage of the American public can be so willfully blind & ignorant. Why? Because this is a tell-tale sign of being in a cult not a democracy.
The speaker in the next video wrote a book titled; “Holocaust Denial” which I bought. In it she says that roughly a third of the American public don’t believe the Holocaust happened. I can’t help but wonder how many of Trump’s believers are in this segment of our country? And my guess that a large proportion of these people are also climate deniers?
We are now facing a pandemic that has been spreading for over two months & Trump is fighting the experts’ advice on how to best contain it. The imbecile even had the gall to call it a hoax. Yep, a grand hoax like that other grand hoax, Global Warming. And I am flabbergasted at Trump fans who must clearly believe his daily pronouncements of his expertise in everything, including how to deal with this virus.
I have a question for those of you in the dark i.e. if he’s truly such a brilliant expert in such a wide variety of professions, why did he threaten to sue any of the schools he’s attended if they dared to release his grades? And how does he inform himself? His own staff have told us repeatedly that he won’t attend the daily briefings that every president has since the process was established. They also inform us that he wants every issue that’s put before him to be summarized in a single page with pictures. And he watches hours of T.V. daily, FOX & Friends in particular.
Another aspect of Trump’s behavior & personality that troubles me is his obsession with Twitter. His ego & self-image must be very low because a healthy & balanced individual, especially an adult who is in his 70s wouldn’t spend such an inordinate amount of time Tweeting. No, this kind of behavior is common amongst teenage girls who feel slighted by some gossip. Yet this behavior doesn’t seem to bother Trump cult members one bit?
As for his “speaking his mind,” big deal! Even a raving lunatic speaks his mind! And as for “shaking things up,” yeah, he’s done a top rate job in that department. In fact, he’s got most of the world shaking in their boots out of fear what this ludicrous lunatic is going to do next? He is very fond of some of the world’s most despicable dictators & he continues to insult & offend national leaders who were our allies in the past. Are these Trump devotee’s idea of defending democracy & being a patriotic American?
People go ape-shit over someone desecrating our flag but Trump insulted Senator John McCain saying; “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t…” And this coming from a spoiled rich-brat whose daddy paid a doctor to write a report claiming Donny boy had bone-spurs?
And here’s an inconvenient truth for you Trump lovers;
Trump spent the first few months of 2016 claiming he sent nearly $6 million to veterans’ groups nationwide, but Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold couldn’t find any evidence of any donations.
I’m confident that with a little bit of digging, you could find many more contradictions with what your master has claimed & the facts regarding each of those claims.
To return to the central thesis of this essay, deadly ignorance, anti-intellectualism has a long & infamous history. But in Trump world, anti-intellectualism has risen to glorious heights never reached before. Trump acolytes love mocking intellectuals & being stupid is popular. And I sometimes feel like I’m in some lost episode of the Twilight Zone?
The classic book on the subject of anti-intellectualism was written by Richard Hofstadter in 1963; Anti-intellectualism in American Life. I read this book twice because it served as the skeleton for the book I wrote on the subject. And unlike Trump, I can back-up this claim with the physical book & the copious notes I made in the blank pages.
In Trump Land, he only has to claim something & it’s a de facto truth. This of course is far easier to get away with when your admirers have lost any semblance of critical or analytical thinking skills, if they ever had them at all? And in a nation where the average attention span is less than that of a goldfish, well, you get my meaning I’m sure.
Mind you, I’m not saying that Trump is the cause of our national stupidity but he has sure capitalized on it. And “social media” has played a significant role in this depressing nightmare as well. You see, people actually believe they’re communicating & socializing when they send emojis back & forth and can only manage a sentence fragment every great now & then.
Yeah, I can hear the criticisms of my essay already i.e. too much of a downer; too depressing, etc. because we’ve become a country whose national credo is Hear no evil, See no evil, & Speak no evil! Bury your head in the sand & meditate. Don’t Worry, Be Happy! The New Age gurus counsel us to be calm, do yoga, watch what you eat & all will be well. In my opinion, this isn’t too far removed from telling a guy sitting in a house on fire, don’t worry, the fire is only a mirage.
The culmination of apathy & ignorance and the nonsensical nirvana of the beautiful people has brought us this moron in the White House, not only a serious threat to America’s survival but that of world as well.
Furthermore, Trump’s appointment of Betsy De Vos as Secretary of Education reveals what I believe to be one of the key agenda items on the 1%’s To Do List i.e. ensure that the public remains as ignorant as possible. Why, you may ask? It’s really quite simple & authoritarians have been following this guiding principle for decades if not centuries i.e. keep the citizens as uninformed as possible & they’re a lot easier to manipulate & you can control them & rob them blind.
Do you think I’m just repeating some asinine Alex Jones conspiracy theory? Then why is it that every time an authoritarian or a dictator wages a coup against their government, one of the first things they do is shut down the universities and the media?
I happen to be a somewhat unique American from the working class who fell in love with learning from the first grade on. Excuse me if I come across as just another braggart like the humble Donald but it’s relevant at this point.
I was told that I was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level when I was in the sixth grade. I didn’t think anything of it until I was in my early 20s & began to see how the public education system had fucked so many of us from the working class & the middle class to a slightly lesser degree.
Moreover, in my adult working life, I worked in the educational profession for approximately 20 years. I’ve served as a teaching assistant, a substitute teacher, an adult education teacher, etc. I tell you this because I want you to know where I’m coming from when I say that education & learning has been my life, my passion, & my saving grace (not meaning to sound religious).
“Approximately 32 million adults in America are considered to be illiterate; about 14% of the entire adult population cannot read.” https://www.creditdonkey.com/illiteracy-in-america.html
So, as I witness America’s slow decline into a sort of cultural & mental barbarism, it strikes close to my heart. And it’s the only explanation that I can come up with as to why such a megalomaniac with no empathy, a true mental midget, became our president?
When Trump was appointed president, not unlike George W. Bush to some extent, and the spineless D.N.C. were dumbfounded and have remained in denial as to their responsibility in the matter to this very day, my spirit grew dark. The tactical racist that Trump is, knew he’d stumbled upon the keys to the kingdom by scapegoating the most vulnerable amongst us. Yep! Give all those who have been consistently fucked by the 1% someone to blame & they won’t come after the obscenely wealthy who are the true architects of our destruction.
And as Gomer Pyle, that funny, ignorant country boy from the popular sitcom in the 1960s liked to say; “Sur-prise, Sur-prise, Sur-prise,” the two trillion dollar “bail-out” to save the economy is just another con-job with a con-artist, Trump, as circus master. Yeah, we’re reassured once again that there will be oversight to prevent abuses but like the 2008 bail-out, no oversight, no one held accountable & the rich just got richer while the rest of us suffered & have continued to suffer since.
But, you argue, Donald is our champion! He promised us he’d “drain the swamp” in Washington D.C. Yeah right! The only thing he’s drained is the federal treasury. And his only “accomplishment” is giving yet another mind-boggling “tax-break” i.e. giveaway to the filthy rich.
You might care to note that a large factor in the “recession of 2008” was due to the fact of the deregulation of the banks & the financial sector of our economy that is now the largest part of our economy even though they don’t produce anything, they just manipulate numbers & keep sucking up the national wealth as we work two or three jobs trying to keep our heads above water.
Yet, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan has been a busy boy deregulating everything he can get his tiny hands on. And who’s in charge of this phenomenal boondoggle i.e. the $2 trillion bail-out (which I’m positive will come to fruition)? Yep, Steve Mnuchin, the ‘Foreclosure King’ of California who along with his partners in crime, in the chaos & fear of the world-wide economic collapse of 2008, bought California’s Indy Mac bank & then foreclosed on over 36,000 homeowners including active duty military personnel. How’s that for an example of Trump’s patriotism?
“…rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/steven-mnuchin-foreclosure-king-of-america_b_5a020bf6e4b06ff32c93f55f (this is from an article by Nomi Prins, a brilliant & courageous young woman who was high up on the chain of power at Goldman Sachs whose former & future employees make up the overwhelming majority of staff of the U.S. Federal Treasury, coincidentally)
Yep, the head of our Treasury Department & with his infamous record of crime, is now going to be in charge of this $2 trillion-dollar gift from King Midas to the usual suspects. Doesn’t that just warm your heart? Talk about putting the fox in charge of the hen-house? Just how stupid can we be?
And when Trump was asked, I believe it was yesterday? Who’s going to be in charge of oversight on this $2 trillion bail-out, “I am.” Oh, sometimes I just have to laugh or I’d cry at how gullible Trump’s disciples are.
In a nutshell my friends, Trump “won” because the Democratic Party abandoned & betrayed the working class decades ago.
If only Trump’s addicts could for a few minutes do a search of his illustrious business history, they’d soon see that his “business empire” has been built on a foundation of lies, graft, corruption, & the backing of city councilmen, the New York mafia, & then the Russian mafia, etc.
I know, wishful thinking on my part? One can only dream. But Jesus Fuckin’ Christ! What is it going to take for Trump’s Walking Dead to regain consciousness? How many of them & us have to die suffering miserably because the arrogant & ignorant child refused to accept aid from the World Health Organization and ….
The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
Trump’s consistent ignoring of the medical expert’s advice, his dismissal of science in general & his alternate facts which was proclaimed by his chief spinner of truth & fiction, Kellyanne Conway, is bad enough but his flagrant & consistent pronouncements which totally contradict the advice & warnings of our nation’s top medical advisers poses a very real Clear & Present Danger to America!
This world class moron’s boast a few years ago of being able to shoot someone standing in the middle of fifth avenue in New York City and it not mattering to his lemmings (my adjective), was perhaps a Freudian Slip on the part of the dumb-fuck supposedly in charge with his fat-ass sitting behind that once honored desk?
If you happen to recall the infamous story of the Roman Empire’s Emperor Nero, who sat and played the fiddle as Rome burned, could Trump be our Nero? Will he be sitting on his golden throne i.e. his gold-plated toilet sending out Tweets with one hand while holding a Big Mac with the other?
Trump is the “leader of the Free World” who asked;
Donald Trump ‘asked why US couldn’t use nuclear weapons if he becomes president’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/03/donald-trump-asked-why-us-cant-use-nuclear-weapons-if-he-
And perhaps most importantly, this charlatan in “charge,” is pushing us full-steam ahead towards that ledge overlooking the abyss?
“He is locking in permanent, irreversible damage to our environment through his irresponsible environmental policies, including his efforts to block progress on climate change,” said Dr. Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and the director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. “Once we go beyond key tipping points — the melting of the major ice sheets — there is no going back.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/04/politics/trump-climate-change-policy-rollbacks/index.html
Yep! this is the kind of essay that an atypical citizen i.e. one fond of reading & thinking, writes. And I hope my essay disturbs you!
Dismissing this cretin in the White House as an anomaly is a luxury we can’t afford. We are in a high-stakes poker game with the future of humanity in the balance. You may recall Trump’s several failures as a casino owner, are you willing to gamble your children’s and your grandchildren’s futures on this loser?
—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR March 25, 2020</h1>
Addendum
Think about it, Trump is so colossally stupid & selfish that he’s unnecessarily putting all Americans at risk of getting the coronavirus because he wants to be reelected. Furthermore, every single Republican in the Senate who cowardly wouldn’t vote for Trump’s impeachment has the blood of all those Americans who die from this pandemic, on their hands. Is this what Trump means by “Making America Great Again?” Well, as I said, What you don’t know can kill you!