The United States has degenerated into a social order that is awash in public stupidity and views critical thought as both a liability and a threat. Not only is this obvious in the presence of a celebrity culture that embraces the banal and idiotic, but also in the prevailing discourses and policies of a range of politicians and anti-public intellectuals who believe that the legacy of the Enlightenment needs to be reversed.
It is hard to imagine, but in a Maryland school, a 13- year old girl was arrested for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance. There is more at work than stupidity and a flight from responsibility on the part of educators, parents and politicians who maintain these laws, there is also the growing sentiment that young people constitute a threat to adults and that the only way to deal with them is to subject them to mind-crushing punishment.
Trump, like that canary in the coalmine, makes clear what elements of fascism are really like. Let's be honest. The racism, the ignorance, the stupidity, the baiting, the great-man affect, this notion that he exists in a circle of certainty that can't be doubted, this kind of perverse hatred of the other. We've seen this before. This legacy is not new. What we have to recognize is the different form that it takes at a different moment in history.
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