An exchange on Facebook. The person with whom I am talking is not the ignorance to which the title refers. Rather, ignorance is meant to signify a nasty fact of our current existence as a society that is with great regularity ignored and ignored because the truth of it greatly upset our sense of who we are and why we have become who we are now as a nation.
The discussion was generated by the posting of this link to a Charles Blow piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/opinion/trump-hijacked-american-presidency.html?smid=fb-share) and the person I am conversing with agrees that we are being held hostage to which I reply,
Educator Jack: And how many of those he is holding voluntarily came to be so held? Trump is but one and he is really not a very meaningful one except for the fact that 60,000,000 plus voters in this country voted for him and gave him the power to hold them hostage. …See More
E.H. It’s not just Trump, however. It’s a good portion of the GOP leadership. No checks and balances, we are indeed being held hostage. Education is most definitely key, which is why they’re trying to gut public school education and force people who want college into debt, abiding debt.
Engeducator Jack My point is that there is a public that elects such people to office. That they are able to get elected by people, most of whom graduated from high school and some from college, before Trump ever decided to run. Is the problem that we have been, as a society, miss-educated–become unable to distinguish between legitimate authority and that which is not? Listen too much and think too little, want to be told what to do and are afraid to challenge those who want to be able to tell us what to do? I happen to know that a good many of those who are now quaking in their boots for what Trump has done and what he just might do were never interested, let alone involved, in the decision making process of this society and that a good many who were had little sense of what constituted good decisions in a democracy predicated on the principles so brilliantly written down in the Declaration of Independence. Look at the percentages for voter turnout over the years, consider how many can be influenced by ridiculous beings such as Rush and Hannity and, Trump. The GOP leadership is but a scapegoat for those who do not really want to look at what is rotten in the country. The GOP wins and wins a lot and they have been winning and winning a lot for a very long time. Wake up people. It is us and not just THEM.
