Trump, Crushing Anything Intelligent

TRUMP'S EXECUTIVE ORDER eliminating government funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcast System is entirely unsurprising, and most likely illegal. The courts will determine that. Congress created 'em, only Congress can defund them. Evidently only a tiny fraction of NPR funding comes from the government, and it will not be profoundly affected. It seems quite likely that both will remain up and running through this entire ordeal as the court system stymies the Trump agenda, and either Trump eliminates the courts as a virtual dictator, or, democracy is restored in America. Stay tuned. PBS and NPR are extremely popular, primarily among educated people and progressives. And yes, generally, progressives are better educated formally than conservatives, and more intelligent, so surveys say. Trump's rationale for his action is that NPR and PBS are both heavily biased towards the progressive view, in particular, towards what the conservatives call the "woke" point of view. The term "woke" may have been invented by progressive blacks, but has seemingly been so thoroughly embraced by conservatives that they are primarily responsible for propagating it. To most folks it simply means awareness and acknowledgement of enduring system racism in the United States, to conservatives it means being a far left wing extremist radical as if anything could be anywhere near as "radical" as contemporary mainstream conservatism. Neither NPR on radio nor PBS on television has ever told a lie, or made a factual misstatement without correcting it. What they put on the air is only verified fact, scientifically based. They both are national treasures, educating and inspiring millions of Americans. That Trump and/or his people consider it "woke propaganda" is laughable. Anything which is not far right wing extremist blather is to them woke propaganda, or liberal extremism. Anything. Both NPR and PBS are intelligent, educational,and, in sort media of the highest quality, and thus, of course, antithetical to all things currently conservative, which eschews truth and reality in favor of conspiracy theories. The Orwellian notion that what Trump is up to is the deliberate "dumbing down" of the general population as a means of imposing his will with as litle reasoned resistance as possible begins to seem ever more plausible. Trump, MAGA, the G.O.P., and white evangelical conservative America all have the same cultural agenda, and to contemplate it causes shock and horror among the culturally literate, and approval only from narrowminded far right wing dilettantes. Libraries full of patriotic hagiography and Christian "literature". Censorship run rampant, with book bans and even burnings. The Kennedy Center performing only patriotic gibberish. Educators at all levels selected for employment on the basis of their meeting certain basic conservative ideals, such as complete and utter conformity to conservative values, including rejection of all things woke. Denial of systemic racism, religious diversity, climate change, and alternative sexual and gender orientations are all pillars of contemporary conservatism, and Trump and MAGA happily, vigorously seek to enforce obedience. The Republicans in Congress appear quite content to abrogate their responsibility for law making, and to happily delegate it to Trump, as his supporters for the most part utter not a peep of protest against an authoritarian fascist governing by executive decree. Trump told us that he runs the United States and that he runs the world, and we who beg to differ must see to it that he does not and never does any such thing, no matter how fervantly or violently his adoring cult seeks to enable and make it so.