The last few days have produced a flurry of speculation about Donald Trump’s mental state. The possibilities are almost endless, and depressing enough to contemplate. It’s natural to focus on such a prominent public figure who seems to be totally spinning out of control. There is also justified angst displayed over the implications of his candidacy for the political health of the nation. Having said that, however, it’s high time to probe into the state of his followers. We hear that they are angry. Surely, there’s plenty about which to be angry, but their list is most likely not my list. What disturbs me is that they seem to be incapable of realizing the disturbing nature of their idol’s psyche. Precisely what is he speaking to in their own psychological makeup? His blatant lies, ignorance, and flip flops do not seem to faze them. They seem impervious to the implications of his “positions.” What does this say of some 40% of the American electorate? We know that something like 18% of Americans disagree with Galileo’s notion of a heliocentric solar system. Perhaps more than twice that figure reject the keystone of modern biological sciences—evolution. This means that several tens of millions of people are not intellectually part of the twenty-first century. My guess is that if we could see these groups in a Venn diagram, there would be a good bit of overlap. Ultimately, this signifies that such people do not have the critical thinking tools with which to assess the reality in which they live. I do not know an immediate fix to this distressing situation. Obviously, a good place to start is to counteract such absence of critical thinking with a more rigorous educational experience. I don’t know, however, if we are up to such a long-range task. If not, we will limp forward through history with only a bare majority of the population able to understand the various forces operating on them.