The popularity of stupidity is a head-scratcher. How can anyone in their right mind prefer ignorance to awareness?

                  Since the Renaissance, humans in the Western World have aspired to know more and understand better. The experiment was an astonishing success. Marvel at our advances in science, engineering, economics, health, in every realm where thought propels progress. I keep looking at my smart phone and saying wow: human brains, in a complex collaboration, made this! Faith can only reiterate what it already knows; but Reason constantly reaches new conclusions, which may improve the lives of all.

                  Everybody must aspire to intelligence, right? Education and exploration lift humans from the mire of mediocrity into the exhilaration of opportunity. Who wouldn’t want to know more!

                  Lots of folks, it turns out. The present American regime, which until recently was supported by a majority, rails against facts, candor, freedom of inquiry in pretty much every branch of knowing. Universities are attacked, science derided, history replaced by propaganda, truth scuttled. Bravado supplants bravery, wars are commenced without thought. If evidence doesn’t support the regime’s objective, to hell with evidence. Either the Commander-in-Chief is an illiterate thug or enjoys playing the part. Civility is for wusses, who aren’t man enough to pussy-grab.

                  How can this approach be better for mankind? Why would anybody opt for ignorance?

                  Too much of a good thing is my hunch. The dizzying proliferation of knowledge discourages many from trying to master any, just as too large a food portion tamps appetite.

                  Two centuries ago a professional might know almost everything about their profession, a professor the entirety of their subject. Today proficiency in even a sliver of a subject is a wild-eyed dream. While I know a little about a lot, I consider myself knowledgeable about nothing except my own story. Even about literature in English, I rate myself a rube.

                  While having lots to learn may inspire the avid, more, I suspect, feel diminished by their ignorance. If you want to know, where do you even start? Polymathy is no longer possible. So to hell with it, let the experts preen their prestige, I’ll applaud illiteracy as my proud achievement: “I know what I know!”

                  America’s current catastrophe was caused, in part, by the folks identified as low-information voters reelecting the Nameless One. Voting with their gut they didn’t use their heads. Now a large and swelling majority of Americans regret their mistake, but our present mess was predictable.

                  For a few months these neo-Know-Nothings got their jollies humbling the smarties, wrecking the machinery of knowing constructed over the centuries. Let the truth be what they decreed, facts be damned. Soon enough their trashing party came to its sorry conclusion. Wars were lost. Prices soared. Friendships soured. Systems broke. Dissatisfaction spiked.

                  Throw the rascals out, folks are now shouting. I’m betting we will. But restoring the breakage, trust especially, will take an age, if it’s possible. So much easier to break than to build. 

                  America’s next leader must be a Moses, resoldering our cracked nation into one. No more smarts versus stupids, us versus them, rich versus the rest, our nation needs us all. We want everyone to be the best they can be and the care of one be the care of all. Stupidity is a stupid choice, so let’s smarten up – and quiet down, put our rage and rancor aside and unite in pursuit of compelling goals.

                  Pie in the sky? You bet. But what good’s a sky without some pie in it? Let’s ready ourselves for when the fighting stops. It would be stupid not to.