Ignorance vs. Intelligence

I’ll start by saying I’m not a doctor. I’m not a clinical psychologist, a psychiatrist, a mental health expert. I’m not a sociologist or a social worker. I have no formal training and the excuse of a Psych 101 class I took in college definitely doesn’t count. But, I figure, what the hell, others have completely decided to disregard experts and act like they can speak with great depth and education on COVID one minute, macroeconomics the next and then pivot gracefully to the perils of windmill cancer. As Tom Nichols would write, it’s the death of expertise.

Not to go on too long about this, because it’s not the main point of my post, but there’s a Rush song (there’s always a Rush song) and I believe I’ve referenced it before, but I think it’s timely even if it is 47 years old.

Scheming demons
Dressed in kingly guise
Beating down the multitude
And scoffing at the wise

I’m also reminded of a great quote by the author Isaac Asimov:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

So, here we are after the improbable election of Donald Trump to a second term. And, I think the overall theme for this result is, ignorance.

To me, there is a great difference between ignorance and other terms used interchangeably like, stupidity or moronic. Being intelligent doesn’t inoculate you from being ignorant. You could be a whiz at writing code, removing an appendix, or rebuilding a carburetor - skills which are admirable. You could help get rockets into space, discover a drug to cure cancer, or understand our labyrinthine tax code - again admirable skills and work. You can still be ignorant as hell.

I saw a post on Threads the other day from someone who was touting their two college degrees and all the other things they (allegedly) had done. Followed by one of the most ignorant posts I’ve seen. I wish I could find it again to give it as an example but a) Threads sucks for that and 2) the specifics aren’t that important.

In this country, we have a growing population of ignorant people. We have people that have little understanding of what’s going on around them, little desire to learn, and little retention of things like Civics they may have been taught in school. We have, and completely understandably, people who are just trying to make it through the day. They get up, walk the dog and/or get the kids ready for school. They go to work and come home to make dinner, spend some time with the family, maybe watch Dancing With the Stars, and go to bed. Maybe they have to work a second job. Maybe their kids need extra help with their math homework. Maybe the house needs to be cleaned, the dog needs another walk or a hundred other things that will keep them from being aware of what’s going on in the world. Maybe they catch a bit of the 6:00 or 11:00 news, but what they get is mostly fear porn, 5 minutes of weather and 2 minutes of sports. That’s it.

They don’t have the time to be as ensconced in politics. They don’t have the curiosity to try to understand what’s going on. They live in ignorance of the larger world around them. They may or may not be good people. They may or may not have voted for Trump, hell they may or may not have voted at all.

Let’s start with tariffs. This chart showing the rise in the search term “what is a tariff" over time. See the spike after the election? Yeah, that’s a bunch of ignorant people thinking, ‘maybe I should find out what this is all about.’ Wish I could see their faces.

When asked about his tariffs, trump repeatedly said that the countries that he imposes those on will pay for them. While anyone who takes a beat to think about it or decides to Google it will tell you, that’s not how this works. Across the board tariffs of products coming into this country are going to be paid by the people that buy those products. People on the right think that tariffs are good. They think that companies will just bring manufacturing jobs back to the States. While that may happen, it would take years to get there. The CHIPS act signed into law by President Biden is just starting to see positive effects but the full results won’t be known for years - plenty of time for trump to take credit for it. I mean, why not, Republican Congress Critters already are taking credit for it despite having voted against it and the ignorant people in this country fall for it. But, I digress.

Tariffs are a tool, they aren’t the whole toolbox. They can be used to some effect when done surgically. They helped to, eventually, bring more car production back to the States. But, this is where trump fails. A blanket tariff on goods coming in means that we’ll pay more for things that aren’t or can’t be produced here. Coffee isn’t grown here (although if climate change keeps going, maybe that will be a benefit). There are rare earth minerals that are mined in other parts of the world used for things like computer chips and solar panels and batteries that aren’t found in enough abundance here. If you like the variety of fresh fruits and vegetables available at the grocery store year round, a lot of those are imported when not in season. And, frankly, not every company wants to close up their shop in Europe, Africa or Asia and reopen here, or open a second factory here. They’ll just charge more to make up for the tariffs.

So, let’s say you have a fairly successful widget company. You proudly make your widgets in the States with 100% widget materials made in the States. But, you have competition. There’s a widget company in, let’s say S. Korea. This widget company has been eating into your sales - they produce their widgets for less and can sell them for less. Say, your widgets cost $4.00 and their widgets cost $3.75. Now, trump comes along and adds a tariff of 12%. Now, the S. Korean widgets are going to be sold for, at minimum, $4.20. Great! Win for American widgets. They’re now 20 cents less and since so many people buy widgets at the big box widget store every week, our American made widget sales will go up. But wait a second, you think. You’re a savvy businessman. You know you can now raise the price of your widgets. You could add another 15 cents on to the price of yours, bringing it up to $4.15 per widget and you’re still less than the foreign made widgets. Hot damn. As for us, the consumer, we’re now paying 10% more for our widgets, if we buy American, than we were before.

Now, say instead of widgets, we’re talking about cars. $40,000 for a car just became $44,000. Or, an $800 smart phone just went to $880.

We’ll be paying more. Estimates are $4,000 per family more. Want to talk about rising cost of goods?

One thing that I’m still waiting to hear is how trump will bring down costs. What will he do to bring down the cost of eggs or bacon? Well, if he deports millions of immigrants, I can tell you the cost of your bacon is going to go up. The cost of your produce, new homes, chicken breasts, and meat will all go up. Want your roof reshingled or your driveway repaved? How about your landscaping? Immigrants do the work Americans don’t or won’t.

This is a great article that describes what happened when Georgia passed a law cracking down on undocumented workers - https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/17/the-law-of-unintended-consequences-georgias-immigration-law-backfires/

As you can imagine, the Georgia agriculture industry took a huge hit. Now, we can talk about how businesses exploit undocumented workers or how they make, in some cases, less than minimum wage and what we should do about it, but the reality is, they do the work we don’t want to do for wages we wouldn’t think of doing that work for.

So, when people are screaming for throwing 11 million people out of this country, stop and think what the ramifications of that will be.

Ignorance is also about to run rampant in the world of Health and Human Services. If trump follows through and puts Kennedy the Lesser in charge, you should consider home schooling your kids. Measles, mumps and other diseases could become a thing of the future. Polio? There was a vaccine for that but because trump is putting a conspiracy theorist instead of a scientist in charge, time to break out the iron lungs.

Kennedy is one of the more interesting characters - brain worm, dead bear cub and whale head aside. This guy used to be a champion of the environment. Now, he’s cozying up to a demagogue that will repeal the EPA and allow the oligarchs to pollute the water, soil and air. Kennedy was a (maybe the?) founder of Waterkeeper Alliance - a non profit geared towards protecting our waterways and drinking water. Yet, he’s cozied up to the president that may be the lest interested in that since Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. Here’s part of the statement from their current CEO:

Waterkeeper Alliance is sending a letter to the incoming Trump administration that lays out critical policy priorities, including drinking water quality, clean energy investments, strengthened water infrastructure, and modernized regulation for industrial agriculture.

Of course, when you realize that Kennedy, whether it be brain worms or steroids or whatever else he may have ingested, has gone completely off the rails, it starts to make sense.

Speaking of ketamine, Elon (or Leon as trump called him) Musk has decided that the worst thing the United States ever did was interfere with South African apartheid and would like to import that to his new country.

No worries that trump wants to roll back EV mandates and he, checks notes, owns an EV car manufacturer. He must be making bank from his government contracts. When Elon is put in charge of the “department of government efficiency” or whatever Orwellian name it’s going to get, do you think cutting back on any of his government contracts will be part of the deal? Think he’ll cut out money he gets for SpaceX or Starlink? Yeah, me neither.

How many people that just voted know about Musk’s past? About Kennedy’s brain worm and whale head? How many understand what an oligarchy is? Hell, how many of the “constitution loving red blooded Americans” know that there are two emoluments clauses in that document?

How many can tell us exactly how trump is going to bring down the cost of anything? To be fair, I had doubts about Harris’ ability to do that. Sure, the oligopoly that controls our grocery shopping has been price gouging us. We all know that as their profits have soared. The Biden administration’s FTC has tried to block a big merger between Kroger and Albertson’s and that’s tied up in courts right now, but what happens when trump takes office?

Trump is expected to replace FTC Chair Lina Khan, who has led the Biden administration’s aggressive antitrust stance and championed its drive to block the Kroger-Albertsons deal. In addition, Trump’s administration will likely do away with merger guidelines that Khan spearheaded and the Biden administration finalized in October, sister site Legal Dive noted. ¹

How many people realize that when a few companies control a market, in this case, actual markets, prices aren’t going to go down? Less competition means Kroger is able to charge whatever they want and there’s little you can do because there are fewer choices.

Ignorance has also led voters to choose a president that has taken away their right to choose. The Dobbs decision has led to a country where reproductive rights have become a patchwork across the country. I saw an interview with a college student who parroted the line that trump sent the decision back to the states. My first question is, what? That is to say, what does that mean? Are there other rights that should be sent back to the states? Same sex marriage? Women’s suffrage? Should we allow states to bring back anti-miscegenation laws? When you say that, you’re just repeating something you heard and spending not one iota of time becoming less ignorant.

But, let’s unpack that quickly. First off, there is little doubt that if a GOP Congress sends a bill making abortion illegal in all 50 states, he’ll sign it. He can say he’s not in favor of it until he’s orange in the face, but he’ll sign it. Second, part of Project 2025 is to enforce the Comstock Act. If you aren’t aware of what that is, this act was written in the heady days of the 1870’s and named after, who I can only imagine was a direct descendent of Cotton Mather.

The Comstock Act prohibits the mailing of:

• Obscene materials, such as pornography

• Contraceptives

• Information about contraceptives

• Items that can be used to produce an abortion 

So, for the young college student I saw interviewed, congratulations, you played yourself. There is little doubt that a right wing administration will not only enforce this act, it will try to put other executive orders in place. Trump once said that a woman should get some sort of punishment for having an abortion. If you haven’t seen this clip, you should watch it. If you don’t want to hear his voice, I understand.

Of course, he tries to not get pinned down, but the words are there, if you want to listen.

Whether it’s a law or it’s a DOJ under control of the administration enforcing the Comstock Act, you will not be safe by being in a blue state.

I was listening to a podcast this morning and heard that only about 58% of the country owns stocks or mutual funds so talking about record closes of the NYSE does little to sway them. However, 86% of the public sector workers have a pension plan - that includes, of course, police and fire, teachers and city workers. Overall, only about 21% of US workers have a pension fund. I wonder if they think those pensions are held at the local savings & loan or if they’re managed and invested in a wide range of financial tools including stocks, bonds and mutual funds. A stock market consistently hitting record highs over the past year means their pension funds are more solvent. A crash could mean the end to those pensions. I would hope that anyone who has signed up for a 401(k)s or 403(b) understands where their money is being invested, if not on a micro scale, at least a general idea of it and know that most is probably in mutual funds, which means stocks.

Ignore and ignorance are from the same Latin roots - in meaning “not, opposite of” and gnarus “aware, acquainted with”. In my most generous moments, I think a large part of our population is just ignorant. They are not aware or acquainted with everything around trump. They don’t know that he’s a 34 time felon, they don’t know that he stole classified documents or that he was responsible for the attack on the Capitol. They don’t know that he made millions of dollars from foreign dignitaries staying at one or more of his properties. They may not even know how many lawyers have been censured or even lost their license because of the 2020 election lies. They may not know that 16 Nobel winning economists say that a trump economy will be worse than the one we have now under Biden and Harris.² Of course, they think that someone like Joe Rogan or Elon Musk (who does have an undergrad degree in economics) is the same as 16 people who have reached the peak in that discipline. They may not know that a former Chief of Staff said that trump is a fascist who prefers the dictator approach to government. That CoS was, of course a 4 star general. How many know that Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense and West Point graduate, said “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.” What about 4-star general, Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs? He said, "“We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America – and we’re willing to die to protect it.” There’s a list of these and others over at CNN³

There is no doubt that a portion of our population is racist and hateful and voted for him because he hates the same people they hate and his crass and sometimes barely comprehensible speeches give them the permission they need to be crass. But, I choose to believe that ignorance was the main factor. They want the price of milk to go down and, even if they can’t tell you how trump will accomplish that, they voted based on that.

One last point on this already too long post, the price of gas. Trump says we’ll “drill baby drill”. Wonder what’s been going on the past 4 years…In 2023, the US broke its record for oil in December of 2023 at 13 million barrels/day. The previous number was 12.6 million in 2019. Under the Biden administration, more oil is being produced than at any other point in our history. Now, we can argue whether that’s actually a good thing or not, but if you think that oil companies are chomping at the bit to extensively expand drilling operations, I’d like to introduce you to a thing we call “supply and demand”. There’s a point where those companies will decide to not drill because a glut in the market will keep prices down. In 2022, it was $118/barrel. Today it’s $70. If you think oil companies want prices to drop lower because of more supply, you are not the economic genius you think you are.

But, ignorance is strong in this country and I’m not sure how we combat it.

1. https://www.grocerydive.com/news/grocery-mergers-kroger-albertsons-trump/732342/

2. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24777566-nobel-letter-final

3. https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03/politics/donald-trump-former-allies-what-matters/index.html