I was showering off the day’s dirt when a nasty thought crossed my mind, spurned to my consciousness by my ongoing inquiries into how the hell it is that, a country in which most of its citizens hold a high school diploma, meaning that they were considered to have gotten enough out of school to graduate, sixty million of those who voted in the election voted for Donald Trump?  I have written several pieces critical of schools and teaching and teacher education programs and my mind is always working to discover whether or not my criticism is overly critical and I usually come back to certain aspects of the American reality that serve as evidence that I may not be all that crazy in the conclusions I draw, that a very large segment of the American public does not think well.  I find my evidence in the kind of television programs that are on TV–the majority–that appeal to people who are not intellectuals, seemingly not that intelligent and the TV measure of smart is confirmed by me in the pitches that are used in the advertisements that accompany these programs and the level of thoughtfulness and informedness to which they appeal.  The advertisers, who do know a lot about the mind of the American public spend a lot of money on stupid!

There are many other indicators, even scientific studies done by think tanks like CATO and Brookings that show that if one asks a voter about the issues, a very large portion of those who vote have little understanding of those issues but they do know for whom they are going to vote.

I have been in a debate of a kind, online, with several people who consistently defend the educational system and teachers, many of them who see themselves as liberal in their thinking.  When I ask them how it is that this nation votes as it does, how it is that Fox News is still the most popular outlet for news on the television, how it is that people can be persuaded to by things by the kind of advertising I see, how it can be that popular films almost always show at least a few people violently killed–the most popular having the highest body counts, and on and on, they still tell me that teachers are doing the best they can and that I should support and not criticize.

So I am in the shower and it dawns on me that I have never seen a figure for or heard anything concerning how many teachers might have voted for Donald Trump, a measure, I think, of smarts, of good and sound judgment.  I think that it is an unfair question, the kind that in and of itself is judgmental.  But then, considering who this man is, what he is known to be, the way in which he shows that he is not worthy of a vote from those who are even half way educated, it is very much possible, probable in fact, that at least some teachers, those with the responsibility to help young people grow to be thoughtful and informed, voted for Trump and, most likely, watch Fox, hate the media as a result of listening to what the man and the network have to say, and are the kind of people who buy what Shak and other star shills tell them to buy despite the fact that the celebrity shills have nothing to recommend them as recommenders of the products they shill to sell.

So I Googled to find out if there was anything to show how many teachers might have voted for Trump.  In the earliest stages of my inquiry I found this.

Unions freaked out because members voted for Donald Trump

More to come!