VALUED TRAITS OF REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP PART 2 – THE REIGN AND REIN OF IGNORANCE

 VALUED TRAITS OF REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP PART 2 – THE REIGN AND REIN OF IGNORANCE

By Ruth A. Sheets

Ignorance is the lack of knowledge on a specific subject.  It has also come to be an insult for someone who doesn’t understand proper behavior for a particular group or situation.  Republicans today highly value ignorance (first definition).  They want their followers to be ignorant of what is really going on in the world and of what their leaders are doing.  The top leadership wants to elect candidates who are mostly ignorant of “the big picture,” and in the case of “the ‘freedom’ caucus,” ignorant of almost everything except what makes them angry and hateful because those emotions can be useful to the leadership.  I define Republican leadership as those who control the Republican money sources and political power, thus the actions of the party.  

It seems clear the less knowledgeable Republican legislators are, the more valuable they are to the party.  If a legislator doesn’t know much about the important issues, they are more easily directed to respond “appropriately.”   When they don’t, they are reined in and quickly informed they will suffer what has happened to others who didn’t comply; their time in power will be over if they don’t straighten up.  Those who have integrity and actually think, are also expendable. 

 Repeating talking points so as to appear “informed” to constituents is essential.  The candidate or legislator could get overwhelmed with the many elements of a complex topic, but no problem, talking points can simplify everything, and little to no knowledge is necessary.  In fact in the modern Republican Party, knowledge is an obstacle.

 Donald Trump, the reigning Republican standard bearer,  is ignorant on many topics, in fact, most topics.  But, there is one thing he is very knowledgeable about and skilled with, how to con folks.  He knows very well how to get some people to believe he is quite a genius who has become very rich by his own talent.  His blustering lets them think he is courageous and his claims “I love you” seem genuine to them.  Once they have latched onto him, they rarely stray because they just know they are right about him.  It takes an enormous talent for a mostly ignorant old man to get so many people to believe such utter nonsense.  He counts on his fan club to be ignorant and pliable.  He has learned over time by sending up test balloons, just which lines connect with most of those followers.  Anything he says that does not get a big cheer first or second  time around is dumped.  A new phrase, slogan, insult, or whine will be sent up later in the rally or at his next public event.  Three word slogans work best.

I often wonder why people are so willing to go along with such outrageous manipulation.  It seems to me people would be highly insulted, and want to get away from someone who would treat them so cavalierly, but I have seen little evidence of it among Trumpers and Trumpettes.  Maybe ignorance of the true nature of someone who seems exciting and who spews the anger, hatred, resentment, and fear they are feeling is irrelevant.  Wanting to belong is an intense human need.  Trump uses that “need” to foster and demand loyalty from his supporters that he can’t reciprocate.  The less his fans know, the better for Trump, his handlers, and the Party.  I believe there is no more depth than that to Trump.

 A character who depends even more on ignorance for his “work” is Ron DeSantis.  He uses a different approach, but is successful, at least in Florida.  He knows a little about a lot of things but is sure of his own brilliance and everyone else’s ignorance.  After all, he graduated from Yale and Harvard!  He has learned that the Florida legislature is made up of rather ignorant Republicans.  DeSantis pretty deftly uses their ignorance to encourage anti-American, often unconstitutional cruelty into bills he wants them to vote on, frequently with little or no discussion. (How can they discuss what they don’t really understand?  They can’t and they don’t!)  Any Democrat who dares challenge what the legislature is doing is shouted down, ignored, or insulted, all according to plan.  DeSantis wields cruelty with a minimum of discomfort to himself.  After all, he can blame the legislators who passed the bills.  He just signed them.  Neat, huh!  Even better, the legislators’ ignorance lets DeSantis convince them they have done a great service to the people of Florida, and god’s will too, a twofer! 

DeSantis can hardly stand to be around people and regularly shows his distaste.  He seems to be OK, though watching people suffer while he does nothing to help. People may try to fight his cruel actions, but of course, with minimal success.  DeSantis appears to see himself as a genius that is untouchable.  Everyone else is, well, not.  Democrats even helped him out last year, staying home, letting him be elected governor so he’d do even more damage in a second term. 

 Much of what DeSantis has done would not have passed if ignorance were not at the center.  Our Ronnie knew that.  His big first move was during COVID when the best defense we had included :wearing masks, social separation, and washing hands.  Then vaccines came available and DeSantis sent up a test balloon about COVID vaccine, wearing masks, and getting kids back in school.   It is hard to know if he is really ignorant of how to stop viral infections or if he didn’t care and just lied to a population stuck in a kind of COVID isolation stupor.  He lied about COVID vaccines and got the legislature to disallow mask mandates,  and Kids had to be back in the classroom.  He played even more on general ignorance when he made fun of wearing masks and ignored the risk of kids in multi-generational homes bringing COVID home from school to their grandparents.  We know people died due to these breaches in trust, but we will never know how many because no specific public records of it were kept, and DeSantis doesn’t care that some minions happened to die.  Yes, he is that heartless and believes he is untouchable by people who question his actions, and so far he has been proven right in Florida. 

After last year’s election, DeSantis now thinks he has a mandate to do whatever he wants to certain Floridians.  Again he preyed on people’s ignorance of issues of gender and race and went for banning books on topics he knew Republicans could be manipulated into wanting banned.  He made up a series of claims/lies about transgender young people and the “terrible” parents who would use DRUGS on them.  His ignorance on the topic is deep, but it doesn’t matter.  He has the Republican Party’s cruelty generator on his side as well as the pathetic Florida legislature.  So, he and a bunch of ignorant red state legislatures will hurt a lot of vulnerable young people and their caring families.  What kind of people go after vulnerable kids for no honest medical reason?  Not people with integrity!

Then, DeSantis, a white men, descendent of Italian immigrants, has decided he has the right to dictate US history related to African-Americans.  He began by condemning Critical Race Theory which is a graduate school subject, lying that it was being taught in K-12 schools so had to be stopped.  That was not sufficient pain for Black Americans, so he forced an AP course on Black history to cover topics the way he would do it.  Again, not enough, so he pushed for banning books about Black heroes like Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglas.  That wasn’t enough either, so he and his “Department of Education” decided they must rewrite the US History curriculum to minimize the contributions of non-white Americans.  The new version claims slavery provided benefits for the enslaved people, and the examples they cited were not even people who would meet that criteria.”  The truth, there were no benefits for enslaved persons!  DeSantis’s excuse for all this anti-Black American activity; he doesn’t want little white kids to feel uncomfortable.  When I first heard that, from his own mouth, I laughed out loud.  What blatant ignorance and cruelty.  DeSantis in his own ignorance is telling the world that little white kids are far more fragile and incompetent than the African-American kids whose families had lived the history he wants to set aside. 

 Women’s right to bodily autonomy was another target of our Ronnie.  He has no idea what women experience related to reproduction (despite his wife having had kids).  His 6-week ban proves his cruelty and ignorance as well as that of the rest of the Republican leadership.  Every American should be asking, how is it that untrained white men have any right to make medical decisions for women, trans youth, or anyone else?  I await the next steps DeSantis will take to further devalue the contributions of people who are not rich, white, “straight,” pseudo-christian males.

 Our Supreme Court conservatives are on board with such white male ignorant incompetence, and appreciate and practice it.  OK, ignorance has worked well for conservatives on the Supreme Court and some lower courts for decades, but 13 years ago it was made very clear.  The Supreme Court’s ruling on Citizens United is one of the most ignorant rulings of the Roberts court.  It claimed that money is speech and corporations are persons, and that corporations should be able to contribute as much money to political campaigns and candidates as they choose.  They don’t even have to report it if done right.  Johnny Roberts was and is so desperate for white Republicans to be in power everywhere, he and his majority gave permission for white-owned, even foreign corporations to buy elections.  Was he ignorant of what that would do to our political system or was he along with his conservative cronies deliberately undermining our democracy?  It would be fun to think “ignorant” but I am pretty sure it was about undermining too.  

Then, there’s Samuel Alito, writing in the Dobbs case that overturned a 50-year precedent, Roe v. Wade, for no compelling reason.  The ignorance in his written decision is appalling.  He clearly had no concept that abortion has been part of (women’s) history for millennia.  Then he cited ignorant Medieval and 17^th century British misogynists to make law in this country.  Of course, the other conservative crew were on board.  They compounded their cruelty by giving pregnant persons’ bodily autonomy to red states where they knew ignorance reigns, where many legislators don’t even know what their state constitution says about abortion, human rights, or probably anything else.  Amazing!  The Reds jumped in to quickly pass cruel abortion bans and fight every challenge.  

Republican ignorance goes on:  global warming, vaccines, science in general, US History, our Constitution, economics, elections, etc. etc.  Ignorance is the theme of Republican governance.  Their pride in their ignorance is astounding.  I bet Republicans are proud of their cruelty too, which complements their ignorance.  That’s a potent form of power that Republican leadership is fostering these days.  They rarely have to explain the off-the-wall laws they are coming up with; I’m guessing they couldn’t even if asked.   One thing that is certain, they have nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with taking away rights and doing harm to the most vulnerable Americans and for what?  Maybe it’s that vulnerable people often make easy targets.  It’s happened before.  Cruelty is their point, yoked with ignorance.

It is hard to have a democratic system when one of the major political parties sees ignorance as a virtue, both the ignorance of their leadership and that of the underlings who either serve their masters in legislatures on the courts, or in other party positions.  Then there is the cultivated ignorance of the followers who are being groomed to ask few questions, to believe and do what they are told, and to blame everyone but themselves and their masters for whatever negative happens to them while collecting kudos for the things that are positive, even if they had nothing to do with or actually opposed them. 

We who still value knowledge must make it a gem to be sought after, and ignorance a temporary condition that should be corrected through knowledge.  We need some smart people working on how to do this.