The Other Plague Infecting America

In November 2020, 74 million people voted for the Orange Menace. Today, Trump’s favorability rating hovers around 43 percent according to the Real Clear Politics average of eight national polls. That’s 110.4 million people when applied to the estimated US voting-age population in 2020. 

There has always been a wacko fringe. But now that extreme wing is huge.

How is it that so many millions of people support a self-interested, pathological liar? How is it that so many millions don’t recognize the treason Trump committed on January 6, 2021?

The reason runs deep, but there are little indicator flags everywhere. They’re the canaries in the coal mine.

A magazine editor was once asked the qualifications for his job. His reply was, “You have to know the difference between there, their and they’re.”

When many millions of Americans think that people lay down, not lie down, say “I could have went” instead of “I could have gone,” say “aks” rather than “ask,” and don’t know the difference between its and it’s or your and you’re, that indicates there’s something seriously lacking in primary and secondary education.

Not knowing simple, standard English is like not knowing basic arithmetic.

If American education has failed at teaching the fundamentals, it cannot have succeeded at teaching critical thinking. That’s shown in the support for Trump. More than 110 million people cannot distinguish fact from falsehood, reality from fantasy.

That disconnect has always infected a small percentage of the population. But now the infection has been amplified and hurried along by the internet and right-wing media. 

The infection has become a plague, and it’s threatening American democracy.                                

                                                                                                                                            — Doug Fiske