By Stephen Schrichfield
A recent Oval Office photo of President Trump posing at the resolute desk surrounded by Sarah Palin, Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent made something very apparent to me: The Trump administration has an obsession with attempting to make ignorance the norm. Last week, Palin told CNN, “So, yes, I invited my buddies Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, some bold, courageous, All-American dudes who I knew would have good conversation with the president and get to express a lot of good, middle-class, work-ethic-type issues and policy proposals that they could all relate to, and that’s exactly what happened at the dinner.”
That Palin even mentioned middle-class issues being discussed at the dinner is almost comical. Take for instance the always pandering, burned-out musician Kid Rock, who has a net worth of around $80 million, according to Business Insider. He has no viable current connection to the middle-class. On top of this, don’t forget “All-American dude” Ted Nugent who wrote the song “Jailbait,” which entails Nugent lusting for a 13-year-old girl, and of course, Palin, a woman who has somehow continued to weasel her way into the public eye during slow news days.
Meetings like these make it clear that the Trump administration seems to be aiming for the lowest common denominator and is dead-set on maintaining some sort of negative sentiment toward intellectualism and fact.
The root of this ignorance is top-down, starting with the president. The president often takes to his favorite social-media platform to spew lies to the American people and does not discriminate toward the subject of his nonsensical rants. Everything from peddling conspiracy theories about paid protesters to claims of voter fraud in California, his Twitter rants are the antithesis of evidence-based conclusions. Unfortunately, some of Trump’s claims hold more damning than others.
Trump infamously tweeted climate change to be a hoax in November 2012, which sparked outrage in scientists and fact-based believers all over the world. On April 22, a reported thousands of supporters from the scientific community came out to participate in the March for Science, which was created to protest Trump’s budget cuts for scientific research and the recent rolling back of Obama-era climate policies. While thousands of Americans marched for evidence-based research, Scott Pruitt, who heads the EPA, listed climate change as not a priority.
This is not an ideological attack on conservatives, or a partisan smear, but a wake-up call to all Americans to denounce Trump’s frequent attacks on the truth. This goes deeper than left or right, donkey or elephant. This is about valuing those with insightful opinions (not Nugent and gang), and operating in an evidence-based mindset.
Why can’t our nation’s leader accept fact and a yearning to learn? Instead of inviting empty-headed halfwits to dinner, why not make room for Nobel Prize winners and the great minds of our era? Americans deserve better. Trump seems fearful of listening to intelligent individuals or learning new concepts. His constant attempt to push ignorance in the face of Americans is frankly insulting. As a nation, we can’t let the dumbing down of society happen. We are a proud people who have made leaps and bounds in the arena of science, technology, and the arts. Independent thinkers must continue to resist dangerous policies made toward society and hold learning as imperative at any level.
