The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
A matter of basic intelligence
When President Donald Trump denies the existence of the global climate crisis — despite global scientific and political consensus that the time to pursue solutions of this existential crisis is long overdue — it’s time to question not only his politics, but also his basic intelligence.
The same was true when Trump advised us to drink Lysol to combat COVID-19. Yes, a tall glass of Lysol might kill the virus, but it also has problematic side effects, such as death. One day such things are greeted as Received Truth. The next, we are expected to forget them to make room for the next glob of noxious toxic waste dragged up from “the swamp” of alt-facts.
This is the same president who, early during the worst pandemic in a century, advised us to close our eyes and let it vanish. His Received Truth was the same when the United States has one death, as when it had 135,000.
Away from the halls of altfacts, employment in wind and solar power has passed that of the coal industry, and the use of renewables (sun, wind, and geothermal energy) recently passed that of coal for production of electricity in the United States. Using a dirty, carcinogenic fuel to produce power has lost any appeal it may have had. It’s now an expensive fuel, not only as defined in dollars, but also in health. Coal companies are ditching coal plants. The market has gotten up and left coal behind. These are not ragged-haired hippies; they are capitalists in suits and ties. When Trump blares support for “wonderful, clean coal,” he is worse than oxymoronic. It’s a matter of basic intelligence.
I might be able to tolerate denial that rising levels of carbon dioxide don’t warm the atmosphere and Lysol can clean both your bathtub and your lungs if these were the only two examples of lapses in basic intelligence in the Oval Office these days. These are only matters of geophysical facts and medical science. Who needs them? However, what about patriotic war-time history?
Trump’s ignorance of highschool history has reached amazing — even shocking — proportions. Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, in their 2020 book “A Very Stable Genius” recount that the president, while visiting Pearl Harbor, according to John F. Kelley, his former chief of staff, “Trump seemed to have no idea of what had actually happened there. Throughout [A Very Stable Genius], he is misinformed and confused, while at the same time utterly certain of himself.”
One more example of Trump’s limited, vain notions of himself came at the Pentagon when, again according to Rucker and Leonnig, “during which military leaders and Trump’s national security team, alarmed by ‘gaping holes in the president’s knowledge of history’… tried to give him a gentle lesson on American power. The meeting ended after Trump exploded, saying, among other things, ‘You’re all losers, you don’t know how to win anymore,’ and ‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies,’ he told a roomful of generals and admirals, all of whom had spent decades serving their country, many of whom, in so doing, had put their lives on the line, were being called losers and babies by a man who had been deferred from service in Vietnam five times for fallacious bone spurs.
Consider these breaches of reality. Now, I know that Trump is world-famous for fabricating almost everything he breathes on, but these are special, especially the ones attributed to sons Eric Trump and Donald Jr., which indicate that lack of basic intelligence isn’t just a matter of old age (full disclosure: I am 70 and getting older every day). Stretching his bona fides as a
Trump’s ignorance of high-school history has reached amazing — even shocking — proportions.
rather clumsy political operative, Eric asserted (in May of 2020) that the Democrats had invented the coronavirus to deflate daddy’s poll numbers, a nasty piece of chicanery that daddy himself usually reserves for the Chinese. Eric called it the Democrats’ “cognizant strategy,” whatever that means.
Some of Eric’s defenders said he was simply arguing that the Democrats were trying to harvest political points from the pandemic, which requires considerably fewer kilowatts than inventing a virus that is capable of killing at least a quarter million people (and counting). Watch out for those cunning Democrats, said Little Donald. They’ll milk the coronavirus for all it’s worth until the day after the election, and then it will go poof! The Trumps still think they can make the pandemic disappear. Talk about fake news!
Not to be one-upped by his little brother, Donald Jr. soon was calling on reporters and his 2.8 million Instagram followers with a scoop. He claimed, with no evidence (Daddy does this roughly every 15 minutes) that Joe Biden has been molesting children: “See ya later, alligator,” Little Don told his Instagram followers, next to a photo of Biden, “After while, pedophile!” said another alligator nearby. Maybe that’s what Daddy meant by “clearing the swamp” — character-assassinating reptiles. Make that foamy Lysol topping a double, Donald, on a slab of pecan pie.
Bruce E. Johansen, the author of “Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science, Society, and Solutions” and numerous other books, is the Frederick W. Kayser University Research Professor emeritus in Communication and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.