Define "ignorance"

 

The Johnny Appleseed of ignorance.

“Ignorance is death” — could there be a better description of U.S. President Donald Trump?

Ignorance is Trump’s stock and trade, his life’s mission. He luxuriates in it and wears it as a crown. As a lover of ignorance, he surrounds himself with fellow travelers. He picked a Fox News blowhard as Secretary of Defense, an anti-vaxxer nutcase as his Secretary of Health and Human Services, and a totally unqualified sycophant as Director of National Intelligence. In short, some of the government’s top officials charged with the health and defense of the American people are totally unqualified.

As they say, what could go wrong?

At the same time, Trump empowered Elon Musk and his band of spoiled children to begin mass terminations of federal employees.

Moving at the speed of light, using both terminations and pressured early retirements, they forced people out by the thousands, often without the slightest idea of what job they did or what disruptions their departures might cause. And surprise — almost immediately agencies started asking some of these terminated, but indispensable, civil servants to return to their jobs.

As much as Trump's ignorance in running the government has harmed this country, the worst part isn’t his own incompetence at governing. It is the way he has managed, with the help of the far-right machine, to reengineer the thinking of millions of people to view ignorance as a virtue.

Under this “through the looking glass” view of the world, shooting from the hip is better than expertise and careful reflection. And this extends to the belief that one’s own gut feeling on scientific subjects, such as global warming and vaccinations, is more reliable than multiple studies produced under the scientific method.

Trump is the Johnny Appleseed of ignorance. It sprouts wherever he goes.

And this ignorance has proven to be deadly. The best-known example, of course, has been his response to the COVID-19 pandemic during its earlier, more deadly, phase. From the beginning, Trump did everything he could to minimize# the danger and spread conspiracy theories. He advocated quack remedies, discouraged mask wearing, and undermined scientific evidence. According to a study in The Lancet, Trumps actions during the early years of the pandemic caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths...

For many of these victims, trusting Trump was their last mistake…

—Steven Day

 

Steven Day, Esq practices law in Wichita, KS and is a contributing writer at Common Dreams.  He is the author of the novel The Patriot's Grill.

 

"It is 2099 and America has been controlled by a brutal dictatorship for 70 years. Democracy isn’t just dead; it’s been erased from history. For Joe Carlton, bartender at The Patriot’s Grill, concepts of self-government and individual liberty are unimaginable. But then an old man, with an unbelievable story, wanders into the Grill and everything changes — for Joe and for the nation."

"IGNORANCE?"

 

Not a synonym for "stupid," notwithstanding its common use as an epithet implying that. In Donald Trump's case, the phrase "willful ignorance" comes straight to mind, connoting a too-much-trouble indifference to acquisition and retention of knowledge—Donald the Fabulist (see On Bullshit).

 

 

The shameless Trumpian fabulism has been on full display this week.

 

A relevant prior post, The Death of Truth. 

 

January 20th, 2017, The Presidential Oaf of Office. 

 

UPDATE

 

Shall we rewind the video a decade?

 

"Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world-it's true!- but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number-that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune-you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged-but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right-who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—-now it used to be three, now it's four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us."

The OAF of Office...