Lack of intelligence can be cured with education for the most part, and our Constitution can be amended. The major problem I have noticed is that those who can control the messaging will steer the nation as they please. They can convince their audience that ignorance is a blessing, that education is unnecessary, and that anyone who disagrees is wrong and against the nation. That was Roger Ailes’s goal when he led Fox News, and that was Elon’s goal when he bought Twitter. The result has been multiple generations of willfully ignorant voters who will gladly vote against their own interests in order to “own” those they were told to oppose.
As the quote from Anne Sewall’s Black Beauty goes: “Only ignorance! only ignorance! how can you talk about only ignorance? Don’t you know that it is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness? — and which does the most mischief heaven only knows. If people can say, ‘Oh! I did not know, I did not mean any harm,’ they think it is all right.”
More than weak-minded, too many American voters showed that they are weak-willed and weak-hearted — too weak-willed to do their homework before the election that the two top trending Google searches after the election were “what is a tariff” and “how can i change my vote”; and too weak-hearted that despite everything nasty and cringy that Trump said throughout his campaign about women, minorities, migrants, and those who disagree with him (our families, friends, and neighbors essentially) was not enough to sway so many voters from voting for him. Those folks, despite everything that they were warned about with accompanying evidence, voted against their best interests believing somehow that Trump’s intentions would not affect them only to find out too late that they will be as screwed as the rest of us if not more so. The buyers’ remorse continues to grow as more news surfaces about Trump’s broken promises, Elon’s increasing influence, and the calamity building up in MAGA World before Trump is even sworn in; but Trump voters have no one but themselves to blame for their unease and future problems.
A clown, a sex offender, and a felon walk into the bar to which the barkeeper says, “Hello, Mr. Trump!”