Photograph Source: Philip Cohen – CC BY-SA 2.0

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

– Thomas Jefferson, 1816

I think we can assume that unless the non-MAGA sector of American voters find some way to remove Donald J. Trump from office, or he vacates it the way Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy did, or the way Harrison, Taylor, Harding and FDR did, or the way Nixon did, you can settle down to four years of Trump presidency.

So far, after about two weeks, we can expect President Trump will push hard to replace all possible obstructions, Congressional, Constitutional, and Military, to his will to power. This is a power claim not directed at shaping a “higher humanity,” Nietzsche’s dream, but profiting on real estate, regal offerings, and merchandizing his presidency (Shop at Trumptstore.com). If you know U.S. presidential history, you’ll know this guy is a “never before.”

Actually, in Thomas Jefferson’s view, being ignorant of history and the workings of government and much more is a danger to any electoral Constitutional democracy hoping to hold on to freedoms won. Always, however, in danger of being lost. Like now.

Trump can be a one-off if we bring History, for one, back into public education, alongside Civics and its focus on how democratic governments work, the role of political parties, and Constitutional rights and the paths to their enactment. Here, we should teach historical struggles, highlighting strong positions at the time which collapsed into nonsense, and weak positions which over time found their way to acceptance. At a more primer level, we need to stand firm in regard to what a sentence is, in other words, how to read beyond messaging and emojis, how to build an argument grounded in supportable facts and evidence, and how to employ the methods of both dialectic and rhetoric to expose what is false, inconsistent and baseless.

You can discern at once that we are in desperate need of such skills.

Reading critically not confined to what STEM curricula require is essential if the scope of knowledge Jefferson found necessary to battle the forces of anti-liberal autocracy can be attained. There is much nonsense that has gained an equal footing with rational and empirically based discourse. Much has been turned upside down. For instance, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6th insurrection presented clear evidence to make its case. Results: the insurrection was turned by Presidential order into a “day of love.” The members of the Select Committee should be indicted Trump declared. Trump demands an apology from a bishop who asked from the pulpit that mercy be shown to immigrants and LGBTQ people.

Examples of how the world of reliable reasoning is being turned on its head proliferate every day. What the response has been is expressed here in an 2023........

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