The Province of Ignorance

Ignoramus: a person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds you know nothing about.

--Ambrose Bierce

What Donald Trump does not know about government is more-or-less equal to what he knows about how to make money. I am not sure he is a good businessman, given his record of bankruptcies and unpaid bills, but he does know how to acquire money.

What Mr. Trump does not know about being President of the United States is astounding, and it seems to be indelible. That part of his brain where "We the People" is stored is a very small place. It does not have many connections.

Although sometimes he seems to want some version of a "strong man" presidency--and that ought to scare the socks off us--it is probably more accurate to say that he sees being President as an opportunity for him to arrange things so that he can make more money. It isn't about health care, or national parks, or burning coal and heating the atmosphere, or free trade. It is about what will be good for Donald Trump, and what is good for Donald Trump is fame and fortune.

But he cannot even get that right. He thinks that he ought to be able to issue a Presidential Order, and that it will be done. Forget Congress! Forget the Constitution! Forget the Supreme Court! Just do it! He is ignorant about the processes of a democracy.

And, and the core of his voters are ignorant of how democratic governments work, too. In fact, the hard knot of Trump supporters at the core of his rallies are ignorant of what it is to govern a nation, too. They got what they wanted: an ignoramus about what government is for, and how it does things (or does not do things). Whatever else Donald Trump knows, he does not know much about governing a nation. All he recognizes is how he can gain fame and fortune.

The headlines in every morning's newspapers are amazement at what he does not know about being President.

And he doesn't seem to learn. He is invincibly ignorant.

Comments

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

SmokeSound

Search This Blog