Category Archives: The Sleep of Reason

Conflict Entrepreneurs”

Extremism, Left-wing Extremism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism, The Sleep of Reason

 

A lot of people in America, and elsewhere, are going crazy over the shooting of Charlie Kirk. The killing of Charlie Kirk because the killer disagreed with him was completely despicable. At the same time, from what little I have learned about Kirk, in my he is not saint.  But he has generated a lot of controversy, and because he is now dead, a lot of hero worship.

 

The Utah governor, in talking about Kirk referred to “conflict entrepreneurs” that drown out the voice of the moderates, whose voices represent the majority. Most people don’t want to go to the far left or far right, as they see it. They want the temperatures to go down on debate, but they are stymied by these entrepreneurs. The social media algo rhythms amplify the voices of the extremists. There is no economic benefit to the social media corporations to look at the moderate’s views when people are so attracted to the views of the extremists. Social media rewards the views of the extremes because that is what engages the attention of people, so the social media gives people what they want, not what they need.

 

As CNN’s David Irvine said, “there is a market for crazy in America.” That is a bitter understatement  I think he is bang on right. There is no market for reasonable. There is no market for sane. At least, not in social media.

 

A lot of people are ignorant about political violence against the right.  A lot people are ignorant about political violence on the left. In both cases because their sources of news are very limited. A result there is plenty of ignorance to go around. As Alyssa Griffin, a conservative CNN commentator, said, “They are getting information from these rage entrepreneurs and are not getting the cold hard facts.” That applies to many people.

 

And that is unfortunate for all of us. We all suffer the consequences of ignorance.

Scientific Refugees

The Sleep of Reason, The War on Smart

 

I recently posted about the cuts of the Trump administration to the National Institute of Heal (‘NIH’) and the National Science Foundation which it funds. In that  post I mentioned how bad this was for the health of the world.  Now I want to point out another uncomfortable result.

 

As a result of the cutbacks entire labs have already been shut down and many more are on the way. And with them goes all that incredible scientific research which will go unfunded. Many scientific grants have already been rescinded and many more will soon face the same fate. Scientists on the ground or in labs are already being shut down.

 

According to Dr. Leana Wen, some of them have been shut down for highly dubious grounds. For example, if their research contains Trump-despised keywords such as “gender” or “health equity” or “coronavirus” or “vaccines” or “HIV,” they were the first ones on the chopping block. At the same time billions in funds to American universities, once widely recognized as the best in the world have been frozen. Many universities have had to slim down their budgets. As a result, there are hiring freezes at these universities with funding to graduate students and post-doc that are also frozen. As Wen said,

 

“there are already really significant impacts on American scientists and also on young scientists, many of whom are now saying, well, they don’t know if they want to stay in the sciences because they don’t know if a future for them here.”

 

 

As a result, places like Europe, China, and even Canada are aggressively trying to recruit American scientists. Wen said,

 

“My own anecdotal evidence is that China has been laying out the red carpet for all the graduate students being kicked out of America…I think the brain drain is real.”

 

Imagine that. For decades the United States has poached scientists from around the world. Now they are being poached! It is clear that this will lead to the end of American supremacy in science.

 

As Dr. Wen said,

 

“The European Union is investing 600 million euros to recruit American scientists. The French parliament has a bill to establish a new category for scientific refugees from the US. And I just have to say, this is really unimaginable.

 

And those scientists will help countries like China to develop the best technology, including military technology. This could herald the end of American dominance.

 

Trump is Making America Stupid Again, and it could pay a hefty price for that.

 

In the world of dumb, Donald Trump is king!

 

America Can’t be Great if America is Stupid

Death of Truth, reason, The Sleep of Reason, The War on Smart

 

America has been the center of knowledge and thinking and frankly, brains, for a long time. What Americans have done is astonishing and ought to be celebrated.  But what it is now doing is cause for deep concern. America seems bent on destroying what it has built up and has no one to blame but itself.

 

Frank Bruni is a columnist for the New York Times and a professor at an elite University, namely, Duke University. Now in some circles that is about equivalent to saying Bruni is a child molester. What could be worse?

 

That is how the Trumpsters feel about such a person. They don’t like smart. They prefer dumb. Bruni pointed out that,

 

“But Trump doesn’t seem to get that. Doesn’t want to get that. Gets only that the wonky and effete denizens of the world of ideas aren’t his people, aren’t guaranteed supporters, don’t lavishly praise him and sometimes dare to disparage him. They need their comeuppance, no matter how much damage it does to everyone else.”

 

 

Bruni justifiably criticizes Trump for that, but he seems to think this is all Trump’s fault. The sad fact is the happy Trumpsters by and large feel the same about such smarts as Trump does.

 

Bruni pointed out validly that for decades, at least 60 years if not more, America has been known around the world for the quality of its universities. They are not perfect, they at times slip into anti-semitism, though not as often or as consistently as Trump claims nor his supporters. American universities have been a driving force in the steep rise in quality of economic life during this time. And that has given The US an incredible global economic advantage over its rivals. As Bruni said,

 

“Among our most significant competitive advantages are our scientists, our laboratories, our system of higher education. They’re a kind of superpower, their output an engine of our wealth — of frontier-expanding technology, medical breakthroughs and production innovations that enrich companies as they improve lives.”

 

No one should try to claim that they can’t be improved, but frankly to defund our scientists and universities is about as stupid as defunding the police would be.

 

The most important thing is not to cherish ignorance. Both the left and the right can do better.

The only thing we have that resembles a super power is our smarts.

As Frank Bruni said: “America can’t be great if America is stupid.”

 

Arrogant Ignorance

Death of Truth, Moral Humility, The Sleep of Reason

 

Andy Borowitz has written a book with a very interesting title: Profiles in Ignorance: How American politicians got Dumb and Dumber. With a title like that it is hardly surprising that the author is pretty arrogant. Horowitz has looked at how Americans have embraced anti-intellectualism. He thinks it is so bad the nation is in danger. He was interviewed by Walter Isaacson on Amanpour & Co. to discuss the subject broadly.

 

Borowitz said he could have gone back to the birth of the nation to show how this developed, but he held back and basically started with Ronald Reagan. That is as good a place as any.

 

Isaacson focused on the last 50 years of ignorance: ridicule, acceptance, and celebration. According to Borowitz Ronald Reagan really kicked off the ridicule phase. Until Reagan in the ridicule stage, politicians had to pretend to be smart. Reagan was good on TV. That was why some California millionaires recruited him to run for Governor. However, as Horowitz said, “…he did not know anything; he knew very, very little.” That did not matter to the millionaires. They wanted to sell the sizzle if they could not sell the steak. They liked what they saw.  Reagan sizzled.

 

As Horowitz said, “they had to pump him full of information. It seemed like he knew stuff and he won the election by a million votes. That really got the whole party started.”

 

Walter Isaacson challenged Borowitz on this claim. He asked him to say who was smarter Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan? After all, Reagan won the election. Did that not make him smarter? Borowitz said clearly Jimmy Carter was smarter, which of course, millions of American conservatives would never accept. Horowitz acknowledged that he was not a neurologist so was not qualified really to give that opinion, but of course, he was not shy about making it. He added this,  “And that is usually reflected in how much you read.”

 

According to Horowitz Jimmy Carter read a ton.

 

Ronald Reagan did not open a single book in college. That is deliberate ignorance. When his Chief of Staff James Baker prepared a briefing book for a big economic summit, he didn’t touch that and  then James Baker said, “Why didn’t you read that last night?” Reagan replied. “Well Jim the Sound of Music” was on TV.”

 

He was not ashamed of that. He just was not very curious about economics or policy. He was interested in how he sounded on TV. That is what mattered. That might have been smart. At least politically smart.

 

Again, Isaacson pushed back, and said Ronald Reagan was a very successful president even though he didn’t read much. And his adoring fans did not care that he read so little.  He was able to get done what he wanted to get done. Often Carter did not. In fact, according to Isaacson “Jimmy Carter was remarkably unsuccessful.”

Horowitz did not think Reagan was a very successful president. But he did get his agenda through. According, to Horowitz “that agenda was very redolent of his own ignorance.” He let the AIDs crisis spiral out of control because he was very unaware of what Aids was. As well, he really created homelessness in this country, according to Horowitz. He told David Brinkley, “the homeless just want to live outside.” That sound very doubtful to me.

Reagan was much better on TV than Jimmie Carter. He will be able to get an agenda through but his agenda was hopelessly inadequate. “That is why it would help, according to Horowitz, if he actually read a book.”

To this Isaacson posed an alternative  book, written by David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.  These were those guys that John F. Kennedy relied to get his agenda done. You don’t’ get smarter than those guys but they were disastrous when in power and drew America into the swamp of Vietnam.  There was not much good about that.

To this Horowitz said, “Well smart people make mistakes.” Very true but is that enough?  Horowitz said Carter was an elitist who wanted people in power to be smarter than he was. According to Horowitz the guys who have been allergic enough to learning and who refused to read a briefing book and refused to read a book of any kind got us into a lot of trouble. They got us into things like the War in Iraq one of the biggest boondoggles in our history. At the same time, they ignored things like Aids and the Coronavirus. “Yes smart people make mistakes, but …I would still rather put my money on the guy who has read a book” he said.

 

Some are very smart and have very bad judgment like Hillary Clinton. George W. Bush didn’t read the presidential briefing book that said Bin Laden was determined to strike in the US. And the US paid a very heavy price for that ignorance. Ignorance can be very costly, particularly when wedded to power.

 

Horowitz said that FDR was not that smart. He graduated with Cs in High school. But when he had to deal with a big problem like the Dust Bowl which the country had never seen before, FDR was smart enough to surround himself with experts who were smart. He wasn’t like Donald Trump who pretended that he was smarter than everyone else when he clearly wasn’t. “Arrogant ignorance” is a terrible disaster. This is what Trump exemplified he said. Horowitz said “that FDR was an example of a person who had intellectual humility.” That is a sign of being smart and it is something Trump definitely does have. I agree that this is very important. More leaders should have humility.

 

Now when I listened to Horowitz, I could not see him as modest or humble. Far from it in fact. So he does not qualify as smart.

 

When people think they are the best and the brightest and they don’t have anything more to learn that is very dangerous. As Horowitz said, “Smart people sometimes fall into that trap.”

 

According to Horowitz, with the arrival of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin we moved into the age of acceptance. Bush learned that accepting his ignorance was actually a political advantage. He bombed early in his career when he was unable to name some foreign leaders to a radio host, exposing his serious ignorance. His advisor came out and said “we are electing the president of the United States not a Jeopardy contestant”.

 

This led to an era where political candidates said I don’t know very much but I am like you. We have come to the place where political leaders who profess to be smart have a big disadvantage. Many people don’t like that. This is also dangerous.  Ignorance should never be glorified. Too many people do that now.

 

Who would you rather have a bee with. Al Gore a pointy headed intellectual or George W. Bush?  To most people in America the answer was clear. Sarah Palin moved us into the celebration phase.  As Horowitz said, “She really embraces the fact that she did not know many  things. She replaced facts with non-facts.” Embracing ignorance is very dangerous.  That to me seems to be our current status.

 

As Horowitz said, “With the celebration phase which we are now sadly in, ignorance now has become such an asset that it is preferable to people being well-informed.”  Americans like ignorance. It’s not just Trump. Many Americans agree with him on this point.

 

As Horowitz said, “Donald Trump has never read, he doesn’t know very much, so he combines ignorance with arrogance that he thinks he knows more than the generals and scientists and every expert. Marjorie Taylor-Green also comes very naturally to this phase. She is extremely ill-informed, and she thinks that a Petri dish is a peach tree dish and that Hawley, or a Ted Cruz, or Ron de Santis who have the finest education that money can buy in America but are wilfully trying to sound dummer than they are. That sort of spectacle is so regrettable. We looked up to people who we used it to look up to people who were smart, to experts.

 

This of course brings us to the ultimate question. What can we do about it?  Horowitz suggested we stop watching so much cable TV That is sound advice. Don’t spend so much time on Twitter. And we have to start getting active in our democracy. Stop always nationalizing our problems. We get obsessed with the national elections, but the other elections are very important. We have to start working locally where democracy really is at its best. As Horowitz said,

 

“In a town meeting you really can’t be jerk, because you might meet that person next week. I have to curb my natural tendency to be caustic and contemptuous and I have to be civil instead. I think that is the answer. We have had trickle down ignorance in our country where our leaders have said ignorant things. And we as a population have grown more ignorant because of that.”

 

The most important thing is not to cherish ignorance.

Sacred Ignorance 

Death of Truth, The Sleep of Reason, The War on Smart

 

For a couple of years now I have listening to a series of podcasts from Scene on Radio out of Duke University. It is developed by John Biewen. I found them very interesting. One of my favorite podcast series

 

In 2025 that series included a fascinating episode  on Making Ignorance Sacred Again.  That title came from a piece written by James Baldwin, a fount of wisdom in my opinion, in 1959 when he wrote that stunning line: “Americans suffer from an ignorance that is not only colossal, but sacred.” To me that summed up Donald Trump and his movement. That is what they want to do. They want to destroy truth, knowledge, and wisdom. They like dumb. They find dumb congenial. Or as Carl Sagan said, they celebrate ignorance.

 

This also calls to mind a statement by another brilliant writer, Milan Kundera, from his book, from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, where he said “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” .

 

If you want to be an autocrat you must control not only the future but the past. You have to wreck history. As John Biewen said,

 

“It seems if you’re trying for an autocratic takeover, you want to control just about everything. You want power over the administrative state and everyone in it, including agencies that are meant to be independent. You’ll try to neuter or commandeer the legislature, the courts, the big law firms. You’ll seek to control the news media and the universities. If you can, you’re going to take charge of the immigration system so you can decide who is a citizen, who stays in the country or gets whisked away to a foreign gulag, who is or isn’t a person deserving of human and legal rights. You’ll want possession of private information on everybody so you can use that data to attack your enemies.

You want all this power so you can shape the future, but you’ll also want to seize control of the past.”

 

Anyone who has ever watched or listened to Donald Trump knows that his go-to line of attack is to charge  any accuser with precisely the accusation against him.   The accusation of ‘Fake News’ was early brought against Trump and he took it up against his accusers and used it so thoroughly that people forgot where it came from. Currently he is doing the same thing on the infamous Epstein files which has been an epic conspiracy theory of the far right, including particularly, the Trumpsters, and now he repeatedly calls it the Democratic conspiracy or the Liberal conspiracy. Now  it is true that the Democrats have taken it up when they saw his own base finding disappointment in their leader, but it has been a right -wing conspiracy theory for much longer than that. Soon most people and all of his base will forget that the Democrats did not start this conspiracy. Trump is very effective at this technique.

 

Another good example was when Trump shortly after taking office issued an executive order advancing what he called “patriotic education.” That was followed by a second called “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” which sought to end instruction about transgender issues, White privilege, and unconscious bias. He did that because he hated talk about transgender issues and the like because they are, in his language, “woke.” If anyone cries out against injustice Trump is opposed, as can be seen by his innumerable executive  orders that try hard to stamp out all justice. Like a creature out of Orwell’s book 1984 war is peace and slavery is freedom. Orwell was the first, to my knowledge, to describe this phenomenon of attacking the attacker. But Trump has perfected it.

 

Ignorance can be funny. Or not.

The Sleep of Reason, The War on Smart, Trump

 

Recently, I learned that comedians are smart. At least they are smart enough to gather together a diverse collection of funny people. And when they smell ignorance, they smell funny. Recently this was proved by the actions of Donald Trump. Actually, this has happened many times, but it certainly happened when Donald Trump declared war on brains. One of those actions—there are actually many—was the dismissal of basically all of the Department of Education. After all who needs education. Trump’s sons didn’t need no education!

 

As Jimmy Kimmel said, “Trump famously said he loves the poorly educated, and now he will have so many more people to love.” Supposedly that is what it means to say ignorance is bliss.

 

Kimmel also said this: “Trump signed the order [gutting the Department of Education] during an event at the White House. They invited  like ‘Hey kids, who hates school?’  And they’re like ‘Well we all do!’  And they said, ‘Well, good news, it’s over.’

 

One more comment from Kimmel:  “The idea behind this is to let the states come up with their own educational standards. For instance, from here one, in order to receive a high school diploma in Florida, all you have to do is complete the maze on the back of the kids’ menu at Fuddruckers.”

 

Jimmy Fallon said this, “Today, President Trump signed an executive order to shut down the Department of Education. It’s a historic move that years from now kids will not read about in history books.”

 

Greg Gutfeld said, “President Trump signed an order today to dismantle the Department of Education. Yep. Soon employees will be reading their pink slips at a third-grade level.”

 

Yes, in the good ole USA, famous the world over for the strength of its universities is turning to dumb. Dumb on steroids.  And this is no accident. This is what Trump and the Trumpsters want—ignorance.  They want dumb! They want it. And they’ll get it. Kimmel was right when he called it “a confederacy of dunces.”

 

Why does Trump want dumb?  I think Hannah Arendt had the answer::

 

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

 

Trump, like most totalitarians likes dumb! Look at his cabinet of sycophants and this is abundantly clear.

 

 

Raging Hate Machines

Death of Truth, Hate, Right-wing Extremism, The Sleep of Reason

 

In the documentary film The Brain Washing of My Dad Jen Senko’s father started to listen to Rush Limbaugh on a small portable radio with ear buds. He was in business—ready to attack the world. At least the part of the world that was sane.

 

Then, as his daughter Jen Senko said, “it got worse when he discovered Fox News. It was like he had joined a cult or a new religion.” He started sending links to hateful stories to his relatives and acquaintances.

 

Jen Senko wondered if he really was brain-washed. She was determined to figure it out. So she made a film about her father and his changes. She found similar stories from around the country. She realized this issue went far beyond just her father and his wild politics. There were bitter and angry people everywhere.  Loving and caring people from around the country were turning into raging hate machines. What was going on? She wanted to know. So do I.

 

She concluded that ordinary people around the country had become raging hate machines after listening to and watching right-wing media. First it was right-wing talk radio, then it was cable TV, particularly Fox News.

 

Hillary Clinton referred to it as a vast right-wing conspiracy. She, of course, along with her husband, were 2 of its biggest victims.

 

Jen said when Reagan was elected president in 1980 she noticed the country going into what she called a more hardened place. This was also the time when her father started to change from fun loving to hating.

The Brain-washing of My Dad

Death of Truth, Right-wing Extremism, The Sleep of Reason, Trumpism

 

A few years ago at documentary film festival in Winnipeg I watched an extraordinary film. It was called, alluringly, “The Brain Washing of my Dad.” I have often thought about it wishing to see it again. Then I realized you can watch it on You-Tube and I watched it again. it was worth the revisit.

This documentary film was written, directed, narrated, and produced by Jen Senko, a documentary filmmaker. It is a fascinating film.

Senko called the film a “Family Non-fiction Film.” In that film she described the father of her youth as a kind and friendly man, a goofy man, who never had an unkind word to say about anyone.  He never said anything bad about any group of people. He never demonstrated any racism for example. He was a truck driver who loved his family and his children who loved him. He was an ideal dad who took his kids on camping trips that gave them memories for their entire life. Sort of like my Dad!

Of course, the father, like a friend of mine, another long distance trucker who introduced me to Rush Limbaugh,  also drove a lot on long commutes listening to American talk radio. As I had already learned it was a cauldron of hate. Particularly as my friend, the long distance trucker also told me, “I listened to Rush Limbaugh because he kept me awake.”  This was a radio show without punches being pulled. It was real life radio. And it was filled with visceral hate against liberals, Democrats, elites, and a bit more subtly, blacks. Radio like that could keep a trucker awake, even if he, or later, she, had driven too long without proper sleep. It was never boring and kept one engaged.

Senko told the story of how when she was a young girl walking with her young sister and her dad and they encountered a homeless black man sitting on a sidewalk. The man held out his cup asking for help. Asking for change. She said her father gave him money. So much money it seemed like a lot to her. Of course, she was young, and young people are often overly impressed by sums of money. But actually, what impressed her more was the fact that her father called the homeless black man “Sir.”  He showed him so much respect it struck her as surprising. Her father was teaching his two daughters to treat everybody with respect. This was a valuable life lesson.

She said her family was not really political. She described her father as “a non-political Kennedy Democrat.”[1] And they lived in Arizona! But that did not last.  “When my father started listening to talk radio, I saw him change. A lot.”

It was an extraordinary film.    Here is an excerpt:

“In the 1960s Jen Senko’s Dad never had a bad word to say about any race or people or person. Then in the 80s after my Dad discovered talk radio, he suddenly didn’t like black people, poor people, gay people, feminists Hispanics and especially Democrats. After he discovered Fox News they became the enemy.”

 

Through the documentary film Jen Senko tries to show the transformation of her father from a non-political Democrat to an angry fanatical hate-filled Republican. How did that happen?

Yet the film is really much more than that. The film is not really just about one man who was brain-washed, it is really about a country that was boondoggled.