Waltz Of Ignorance
Huzzah for ignorance! The election of the individual which we now have in the White House has given me pause to think about the nature of ignorance. The President and his supporters represent ignorance piled high and deep. I note that ignorance and power entails an escalation of violence, a resort to violence in order to assert one’s point of view. What is policy, if not a point of view translated into legal form? Apart from reason what else remains but violence in order to get one’s way? Observe any two-year old having a tantrum. Toddlers can be excused because they have not yet mastered the use of language, which is the key to reason.
Ignorance is not about anything other than a discharge of one’s feelings, one’s emotional state. Our feelings are the changing, ephemeral states of one’s mind. Like the weather. ignorance is usually masked by noise, the noise of a disjointed, non-sequitur litany of disconnected commentary. From time to time I am forced to endure someone’s rambling soliloquy of complaint and nonsensical observations about how they feel about their life. In truth I do not care about their petty likes and dislikes. I smile and remain silent until they are finished. Then I walk away. There is no point. What can I possibly say?
On Thursday President Trump held a meeting with the rapper Kanye West in the Oval Office. This was a grand celebration of ignorance par excellence.
Here is what the meeting was like. Courage!
There are things
that cannot be taught
in ten easy lessons
or popularized;
they take years of skull sweat.
This is treason in an age,
when ignorance has come into its own
and one man’s opinion
is as good as another’s.
The world is what it is—
—and doesn’t forgive ignorance.
excerpt Glory Road by R. A. Heinlein
