Attacking educators: GOP's newest strategy: keep our voters ignorant

 Attacking educators is GOP's newest strategy: keep our voters ignorant. The comments by Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state, calling the head of the teachers' union, Randi Weingarten, the most dangerous person in America, was not only an over-the-top jaw-dropper but it also signifies a dramatic shift in party affiliation demographics. No, Pompeo, the greatest danger to America is ignorance unfiltered by reason, respect, and knowledge of facts and history. There is no "been there done that" wisdom to temper irrational behavior and blind devotion to conspiracy theories.

Pompeo's reasoning appears to be fed by the political opportunism of one who is a highly educated person when he knows better, appealing to the least educated person: attacking teaching "wokeness" (i.e. history based on fact and not white nationalist racism) as dangerous to the country. This is verbal manipulation that caters to the change in the demographics of his political party. Pompeo is not the only one. Texas Senator Ted Cruz is another highly educated political leader who knows better but has made a successful political career of taking advantage of those less educated. It is sheer intellectual dishonesty. and demagoguery.

Since the beginning of this century, the affiliation of the GOP by education level shifted from those with higher education levels to the lower, less educated. The GOP is now the party of the more ignorant of history and a perspective of looking at facts and evidence without critical thinking

What is "critical thinking"? Here is my definition: taking a thought, looking at various sources of facts evidence, considering pros and cons, how something like that resulted before, and then drawing conclusions. That is deductive That takes literacy and education and consideration of proof and facts. .

There is another "critical thinking" process that starts with a theory Sometimes treating as fact conspiracy theories that sound right and plausible results in their eventually being debunked. Their advocates are believing the theory is correct first and and then theysearch for evidence to prove it., Even then they just disregad facts and evidence to the contrary, developing more theories to explain away emerging facts. (best example: Arizona Cyber Ninja Audits of the 2020 vote that found no fraud and gained Biden 360 votes) In spite of that, those still say the 2020 election was stolen. Inconvenient truth is sometimes too bitter a pill to swallow.

Pompeo says head of teacher’s union is the ‘most dangerous person in the world’ | The Hill

Opinion | Never Forget What Ted Cruz Did - The New York Times (nytimes.com)