Trump now personifies a party that makes intolerance a priority while viewing evidence-based arguments with open disdain. This is the party that censors’ textbooks, imposes mindless pedagogies of memorization and test-taking on students (along with the Democratic Party), denies climate change has anything to do with human activity, supports creationism, and floods the mainstream media with a never-ending stream of civic illiteracy.
This is more than conceptual ignorance; it is an attack on reason itself, one that provides security for apostles of state power who, as Noam Chomsky has argued, are intent on dismantling dissent in order to “protect themselves from the scrutiny of their own populations.”
Richard Hofstadter once warned that anti-intellectualism was a strong undercurrent of American life. Not only was he right, but he would be shocked to discover that today anti-intellectualism has gone mainstream and has been not only normalized but validated by right-wing extremists governing the Republican Party, which Trump willingly embraces.
Trump’s comment: “I love the poorly educated” is not a gaffe but an honest recognition of the degree to which successful political campaigns are now dependent on an uninformed public. For Trump, bullying replaces any viable notion of dialogue, and emotion vanquishes reason, understanding, and thoughtfulness. Of course, Trump’s embrace of ignorance and his willingness to make stupidity a trademark of his identity points to a number of forces in American life. As Susan Jacoby has argued, these would include:
Fundamentalist forms of religion in current America……the abysmal level of public education…. widespread inability to distinguish between science and pseudoscience….the dumbing-down of the media and politics and the consequences of a culture of serious reading being replaced by a rapid-fire, short-attention-span-provoking, overstimulating, largely visual, information-spewing environment.
~ Henry A. Giroux
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