Welcome to Donald Trump's Ignorant America (Jesse Berney, Rolling Stone)

[highplainsdem]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/welcome-to-donald-trumps-ignorant-america-w462019

The day before Donald Trump's inauguration as president of the United States – an actual event taking place in the universe we live in – news broke that his administration plans to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities. And I wanted to scream.

This is Donald Trump's America: one where things like art and books and science and learning and thoughtful consideration of complicated problems are deemed worthless and tossed aside. This can't be surprising after the Trump we saw on the campaign trail, the man who never answered a question with a hint of intelligence or depth. In an interview this week, he couldn't name a single book he's reading. He's appointed a secretary of education who wants to destroy public schools. He reportedly offered a notorious anti-vaccination activist a position leading a commission investigating vaccines. He called global warming a Chinese hoax.

Of course he's getting rid of the NEA and the NEH. What use does Donald Trump have for the things that make life beautiful and good? He surrounds himself with gilded ugliness. He's a billionaire who hangs a Renoir reproduction in the $100 million abattoir he lives in, because why would he want an original? He has enough money and fame to access to the finest tailors in the world, and his suits don't fit. His hair is stupid.

I know, I'm petty. I'm a snob. I'm a liberal elitist, and elitist liberal snobbery is why Trump won. You know what? I don't care. I'm tired of shouldering the burden of cultural empathy when no one asks the folks who voted for the racist, misogynist manbaby to take two damn seconds to consider the moral implications of putting an ignorant pussy-grabber into the most powerful job on the planet.

We have a president who doesn't read books. He doesn't read books. Even George W. Bush read books, and he still managed to destroy the economy and entangle us in two unwinnable wars. What horrors will Trump visit upon the nation and the world? How will he change America for the worse?

-snip-

[Blanks]

1. Even George W. Bush read books...

I expect we'll be hearing lots of comparisons like this. Even the worst president that this country has ever had, is an order of magnitude better than this guy.

[mnhtnbb]

7. Bushie boy read books because Laura was a librarian and she made sure

he always had something to read. Whether he remembered anything--or thought about anything--he read is a different question.

All Melania knows how to do is take off her clothes and show off her plastic--oops, probably saline--tits.

[dalton99a]

2. Ignorant and proud of it.

Fuck them.

[Solly Mack]

6. They really are proud of it.

And, yes, fuck them all.

[Brainstormy]

3. Great article, but

I don't believe George Bush, My Pet Goat Aside, actually did read books. He may have owned some books. He may have meant to read to some books. I don't believe he did.

[dalton99a]

4. Rove claimed W was a reader:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/deadlineusa/2008/dec/30/georgebush-usa

According to Rove - often referred to as Bush's brain - the two competed for the last four years over who read the most books. By the end of 2006, Bush had read a highly respectable 95 books to Rove's 110...

But what kind of books did Dubya devour? Lots of biographies, particularly political ones: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Babe Ruth, King Leopold, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, LBJ - and Genghis Khan. But there was also time for fiction with the president showing a penchant for Travis McGee novels by John MacDonald (eight). Perhaps most surprising on the 2006 list was Albert Camus's The Outsider - the archetypal novel of alienation. For good measure, each year they competed, Bush read the Bible cover to cover.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

5. K&R