Higher education is being defunded, corporatized and transformed to mimic WalMart-esque labor relations by the Trump administration under the preposterous ill-leadership of a religious fundamentalist, Betsy DeVos. It's also, according to a recent poll, viewed by most Republicans as being "bad for America." Higher education is at odds with Trump's notion of making America great again.
This assault on higher education is accompanied by a systemic culture of lies that has descended upon America. The notion that democracy can only function with an informed public is viewed with disdain. Trump apparently rejoices in his role as a serial liar, knowing that the public is easily seduced by exhortation, emotional outbursts and sensationalism.
Americans Over-Stimulated
The corruption of the truth, education and politics is abetted by the fact that Americans have become habituated to overstimulation, a culture of immediacy and live in an ever-accelerating overflow of information and images. Experience no longer has the time to crystallize into mature and informed thought.
Popular culture as an educational force delights in spectacles of shock and violence. Defunded and stripped of their role as a public good, many institutions extending from higher education to the mainstream media are now harnessed to the demands and needs of corporations and the financial elite.
In doing so, they are snubbing reason, thoughtfulness and informed arguments.
Governance, meantime, is now replaced by the irrational Twitter bursts of an impetuous four-year-old trapped in the body of an adult.
The high priest of caustic rants, Trump's insults and bullying behaviour have become a principal force shaping his language, politics and policies. He has used language as a weapon to humiliate just about anyone who opposes him. He has publicly humiliated and insulted a disabled reporter along with members of his own cabinet, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, undermining their respective ability to do their jobs.
More recently, he has mocked Sen. Bob Corker's height, referring to him on Twitter as "Liddle Bob Corker" because the senator criticized him in announcing his resignation.
Ignorance is a terrible wound when it is self-inflicted. Trump's lies, lack of credibility, lack of knowledge and unbridled narcissism have suggested for some time that he lacks the intelligence, judgment and capacity for critical thought necessary to occupy the presidency of the United States.
But when accompanied by his childish temperament, his volatile impetuousness, his disdain for higher education and a world view that reduces everyone else to friends or enemies, loyalists or traitors, his ignorance puts lives at risk.
Governing via Wilful Ignorance?
Trump's presidency is forcing us to deal with a kind of nihilistic politics in which the search for truth and justice, moral responsibility, civic courage and an informed and thoughtful citizenry are rapidly disappearing.
Government in the United States now apparently runs on wilful ignorance as the planet heats up, pollution increases and people die.
Evidence is detached from argument. Science is a subspecies of fake news, and alternative facts are as important as the truth. As language is emptied of meaning, standards of proof disappear, verification becomes the enemy of power, and evidence is relegated to just another opinion.
Trump has sucked all of the oxygen out of democracy and has put in play a culture and mode of politics that kills empathy, wallows in cruelty and fear and mutilates democratic ideals.
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