As much as I detest Donald Trump, think he's a lying, cheating, bigoted demagogue, he is not the worst of our problems. In fact, he isn't the main problem. There is something far worse happening in America right now than Donald Trump.
It's the mass ignorance of the population and just enough gullibility to enable Trump to happen. Donald could keel over and die tomorrow, and we still have enough people who are detached from reality that could put us in peril again with another crazy lunatic who appeals to their fears and exploits their simple minds.
I mean, this is not just among the poorly educated white working class either. NBA star Kyrie Irving said in a podcast this week that the earth is flat. And he was dead serious. The education of the masses is so lacking that this can happen.
The irony is that never in the history of the world has more information been at the disposal of the masses. With smartphones, tablets, Google, and all the social media sites, most knowledge ever gathered by humanity is there to learn. Wikipedia has easy navigation tools to find basic facts on people, places, and things.
Yet here we are.
A country that the rest of the world is looking at with dismay and horror right now. We are being laughed at. We are an embarrassment. We are making the world nervous. And scared, which they should be.
Donald Trump is the symptom of a greater disease. A mirror reflecting our political culture that has gone to hell in a hand basket. We are the stupid country, and are gonna go down in flames. Trump is merely the vessel chosen by overly religious Christians, xenophobes, people who have never travelled out of their states, much less the country. The disease could become terminal for this nation.
Unless we intervene. Somehow, some way, we have to talk to these vapid citizens who are leading us to ruin. Somehow, we have to break bread with them, befriend them, reason with them, be diplomatic with them. Even though their ignorance and hatred are infuriating to us, it does us no good to insult them or call them names. Each of us encounters these people regularly, unless we are isolated.
We need to talk to them more rather than shelter ourselves off from them, and this is actually more important than talking to each other on DKos or wherever. We need to start winning some hearts and minds. We need to, as Bill Clinton used to say, feel their pain.
We need to deprogram them a little at a time. They are like zombie alcoholics who require intervention. They don't know they've been brainwashed and subjected for years to disinformation and misinformation. On Fox News. On Breitbart. By Rush Limbaugh. On right wing websites. They are not only poorly educated and voting against their best interests. They don't believe it! Or realize it.
Its not that they are bad people. Some are bad, hateful, bigots. Mostly, though, they are just devoid of accurate information and their minds have been polluted. With dogma of all sorts from their evangelical churches, to their likeminded friends they hang out with, to the media they consume.
It’s why they believe Trump when he calls mainstream news media "fake news” and “the enemy of the people”. They never learned to think critically. And they listen to propaganda they believe is the truth. Yes, it's how Germany fell under the spell of Nazi’s. It’s also how China had its Cultural Revolution. Or any country succumbed to authoritarians and totalitarian rule.
Mass ignorance allows people to be easily led. Easily governed. They become ruled, and subjects of the ruler they fall for, hook, line, and sinker.
And this is always why dictators rise to power. This, and economic stress felt by people, are all that's needed to have a country go down this ugly path.
Unless we actively prevent it. Not just by protesting. Not just by activism and getting better election results. We have to talk to these people and do our part to open their minds, one at a time, to news ideas. And we have to do it nicely. It is the only way they will listen.
To me, this is what grassroots politics is really all about. It starts with education, knowledge passed along with a smile. Getting others to open up to us and have a dialogue. If all of us focus on this task, we will have a tailwind, come 2018 and 2020.
