Finally, imagine a President so ignorant of the U. S. Constitution as to ask his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to "get rid of" the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law passed by Congress. It was such formidable ignorance of the Constitution that subsequently allowed Trump to assert, "When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that's the way it's got to be. " It's total," (Meagan Flynn and Allyson Chiu, Washington Post, April 14, 2020)
Fortunately, most of the examples mentioned above of Trump's formidable ignorance have been harmless, except for notifying the world and the non-knuckle dragging majority of Americans that the so-called "City on the Hill" was now being led by a buffoon. Unfortunately, America and the world have also witnessed the dire consequences of Trump's attempt to foist his ignorance on the world.
Consider the existential threat posed by climate change. On January 25, 2014, ignoramus Trump called global warming a "hoax." Since becoming President, Trump has withdrawn the United States for the Paris Agreement, a far too loose world accord on combating climate change. The Agreement aims at keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 Â degreesC above pre-industrial levels. Yet, a 26 November 2019 report from the United Nations suggests that even if the member states achieve their specific goals, "the world is heading for a 3.2 degrees Celsius global temperature rise over pre-industrial levels."
What does that mean? According to David Wallace-Wells, writing in his recent book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, "Warming of 2 or 2.5 degrees would probably unleash suffering beyond anything that humans have ever experienced through many millennia of strain and strife and all-out war."
The actual notification of U. S. withdrawal was symbolic, because it does not take effect until November 4, 2020, the day after our presidential election. Yet, "The US government in practice abandoned any concern over the climate crisis some time ago, with the Trump administration so far rolling back more than 100 environmental protections, including an Obama-era plan to curb emissions from coal-fired power plants, limits on pollution emitted from cars and trucks and even energy efficiency standards for lightbulbs" (Oliver Milman, "How the global climate fight could be lost if Trump is re-elected," The Guardian, 27 July 2020).
Is there a single American out there who believes that Trump is even vaguely aware of the five major extinctions in Earth's history that, as David Wallace-Wells puts it, rendered "86 percent of all species dead, 450 million years ago; 70 million years later, 75 percent; 125 million years later, 96 percent; 50 million years later, 80 percent; 135 million years after that, 75 percent again?" (The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, Chapter One, "Cascades,) Is there a single American out there who believes that Trump recognizes that four of those five extinctions "involved climate change produced by greenhouse gas" (Ibid.).
Do you think he's educated enough to realize that the world has been adding carbon to the atmosphere at such a rapid rate that we now have "fully a third more carbon in the atmosphere than at any point in the last 800,000 thousand years - perhaps as long as 15 million years" (Ibid.).
Do you think that ignoramus Trump realizes, as Mr. Wallace-Wells states, "A warming planet leads to melting Arctic ice, which means less sunlight reflected back to the sun and more absorbed by a planet warming faster still, which means an ocean less able to absorb atmospheric carbon and so a planet warming faster still. A warming planet will also melt the Arctic permafrost, which contains 1.8 trillion tons of carbon, more than twice as much as is currently suspended in the earth's atmosphere, and some of which, when it thaws and is released, may evaporate as methane, which is thirty-four times as powerful a greenhouse gas warming blanket as carbon dioxide when judged on the time scale of a century" (Ibid.).
No, he doesn't. But sensible Americans can secure the end of the four years marked by Trump's environmental neglect and buffoonery by turning him and his ilk out of office this November.
Unfortunately, that task has been made more difficult by Trump's ongoing attempt to undermine America's democracy by ignorantly (or dishonestly) claiming that the "mail-in ballots" -- which states are increasingly turning to during the pandemic -- guarantee a "rigged" election, while "absentee ballots" (like the one he has used in the past) are an acceptable substitute for in-person voting.
On July 30th, Trump falsely asserted, "Absentee voting is different from mail-in voting and has more protections against fraud." Putting aside the suspicion that Trump's preemptive assault on the election process suggests that he knows he is going to lose, in fact, there is no difference between "mail-in" and "absentee" ballots.
"There's really no distinction," said Darren Hutchinson, a law professor at the University of Florida and an elections expert. "So, it's basically a falsehood that's been repeated over and over and over again" (Politifact, July 31, 2020).
Trump has asserted that the absentee voter needs to make an effort to obtain a ballot, while mail-in ballots are issued to potential voters without their effort. Not so, says Hutchinson. "There is no special process that absentee out-of-town voters go through that other mail-in voters do not" (Ibid.).
In an article titled "The False Narrative of Vote-by-Mail Fraud." Wendy R. Weiser and Harold Ekeh noted, "In the last two federal elections, roughly one out of every four Americans cast a mail ballot. In five states - Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington - mail balloting has been the primary method of voting. In 28 additional states, all voters have had the right to vote by mail ballot if they choose, without having to provide any reason or excuse. Over time, a growing number of voters have chosen that option. Since 2000 more than 250 million votes have been cast via mailed-out ballots, in all 50 states, according to the Vote at Home Institute. In 2018, more than 31 million American cast their ballots by mail, about 25.8 percent of election participants."
The authors emphasize that, of the billions of votes cast during the period from 2000 to 2012 only 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud were found. (Wendy R. Weiser and Harold Ekeh, "The False Narrative of Vote-by-Mail Fraud." Brennan Center, April 10, 2020)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
