“Ignorance is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery.”—Swami Vivekananda

“Ignorance is death”—could there be a better description of U.S. President Donald Trump? Ignorance is Trump’s stock and trade, his life’s mission. He luxuriates in it and wears it as a crown. As a lover of ignorance, he surrounds himself with fellow travelers. He picked a Fox News blowhard as secretary of defense, an anti-vaxxer nutcase as his secretary of Health and Human Services, and a totally unqualified sycophant as national intelligence director. In short, some of the government’s top officials charged with the health and defense of the American people are totally unqualified.

As they say, what could go wrong?

At the same time, Trump empowered Elon Musk and his band of spoiled children to begin mass terminations of federal employees. Moving at the speed of light, using both terminations and pressured early retirements, they forced people out by the thousands, often without the slightest idea of what job they did or what disruptions their departures might cause. And surprise—almost immediately agencies started asking some of these terminated, but indispensable, civil servants to return to their jobs.

At least the families of those who die will know their loved ones gave their lives for a greater purpose—tax cuts for the wealthy.

As much as his ignorance in running the government has harmed this country, the worst part isn’t his own incompetence at governing. It is the way he has managed, with the help of the far-right machine, to reengineer the thinking of millions of people to view ignorance as a virtue. Under this “through the looking glass” view of the world, shooting from the hip is better than expertise and careful reflection. And this extends to the belief that one’s own gut feeling on scientific subjects, such as global warming and vaccinations, is more reliable than multiple studies produced under the scientific method.

Trump is the Johnny Appleseed of ignorance. It sprouts wherever he goes. And this ignorance has proven to be deadly. The best-known example, of course, has been his response to the Covid-19 pandemic during its earlier, more deadly, phase. From the beginning, Trump did everything he could to minimize the danger and spread conspiracy theories. He advocated quack remedies,........

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