Trump, Dismantling the American Mind

FORMER LABOR SECRETARY Robert Reich posts a few paragraphs of insightful prose on Facebook every day, and, fortunately for me, it shows up on my feed almost daily, usually first. Basically, I agree with everything he says, and he teaches me a lot. Hilariously, embarrassingly, I can't remember whether he served under Clinton or Obama. Brain freezes always thaw,thankfully. Reich wrote that Trump's using Musk as a chainsaw to slice the government to bits is not about saving money, efficiency, or reducing the size of government and making it more accountable to the people, and all that. Its about controlling, subduing, indeed, dulling and rendering ineffective the American mind. This, according to Robert Reich. He notes that a huge part of Trump's attacks on government, the firings, dismantling of programs and agencies, has to do with education and research, the arts and sciences. Upon further thought, this seems plausible. Reich points out that this is the standard tactic of tyrants; to gain greater contro of the general population by effectively "dumbing down" and instead brainwashing people with propaganda favorable to the authoritarian tyrant. Trump famously said he loves uneducated people. Its uncertain precisely how premeditated all this is; how deliberate. Trump's behavior also seems compatible with the widespread conservative contempt for science as the means of gaining knowledge. Trump not only doesn'tseem to favor using government to help educate people and romote culture and cultural awareness, he also seems to have a hostility to any government action which helps people generally, with their health, finances, anything. This too is a tendency among conservatives. An alarmingly high percentage of conservatives are opposed to Social Security and Medicare, and would like to cut or eliminate both. Fortunately, such readicals are a minority. The radical extremists are not the socialsts among us, but rather, the far right wing Christian capitalists. One of the reasons nearly half of America, about forty seven percent, are happy with what Trump and Musk have done so far, is that nealy half of America agrees with Trump's extreme, unconstitutional actions, such as ordering birthright citizenship out of existence and eliminating the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency. Crazy as all this seems to intelligent, educated liberals, to many religious conservatives, Trump is God's choice. Trump is the essence, the embodiment of all the conservative positions, including racism, WASPism, and capitalism, and from the Christian nationalist point of view, a willing vehicle towards the ultimate goal of officially establishing these United States of America as a Christian nation. Perhaps a more WASP-ish nation as well. Trump got elected with anti-immigrant conservative zenophobia. The day will come when even conservatives realize that eleven million illegal immigrants are not going to be deported, due to sheer logistics. We are once again reminded of how easy it is for human beings to overlook inconvenient things like reality, hence, the white elephants in our many rooms. Trump's vile, criminal morality vanishes. The inconvenient but unavoidable truth is that as of now, Trump's brain numbing project, deliberate or not, seems to be working. The people who oppose Trump must keep fighting back with decency, education, intelligence, science, sense, and facts, and hope and pray that the day comes when such things are once again in fashion.