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Ignorance + Arrogance = Downfall [1]

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Date: 2025-02-16

I argue with a lot of different Tramp supporters in my travels, and their common factor is that they are both ignorant and arrogant.

Ignorance

They confidently believe things that are absolutely not true. They lack basic facts. Take money, as just one example of many.

I have frequently been lectured about how Obama must have been corrupt, because he was much richer after being President than before. I explain that he wrote several multimillion dollar bestselling books, and that he was very open about all of his taxes and finances as President.

They change the subject to another Democratic leader, like John Kerry. I ask if they have ever heard of Heinz Ketchup and explain that Teresa Heinz helped finance her husband’s career.

This goes on for a while, as I explain that Al Gore grew up rich and ask if they’ve ever heard of Apple, where Al Gore joined the board over 20 years ago. And he wrote books.

Then they explain how Bill Gates makes billions selling vaccines—with or without microchips. And I have to explain that charity is when you donate money without being able to benefit financially.

Then the Clintons, and again, I explain that their foundation is a charity. And they also wrote books.

And some will mention George Soros, and I have to explain charity once again, often citing Acts 35: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’.

In every conversation I have with a Tramp supporter, they lecture me about how global finance works, despite demonstrating no actual knowledge of global finance. They have conspiratorial theories about trade, currency, gold, oil, and numerous other economic topics. And I have to disabuse them of their delusions.

Arrogance

During these conversations, they often reveal how they made their money, and I’ve learned much about the trucking industry, agriculture, construction, timber and fossil fuel extraction, among others. Typically, they are older white men, and many lack college degrees. But despite their backgrounds, they opine voluminously on esoteric topics, such as the history and institutional governance of international banking. Sure, they may not know the correct terminology or be able to explain what the IMF is or does, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to explain in shocking detail how Biden was a front for a hidden cabal of globalists.

Folks here who may know me as an arrogant, opinionated jerk, with authority issues and a habit of discussing issues that many would prefer to ignore, might be surprised to learn that in person, I’m a non-confrontational, self-deprecating listener, who uses common words without revealing my credentials or experience. Maybe an appeal to expertise would convince one or two, but as a rule these folks disparage Ivy League education, graduate degrees, and global financial expertise. If I admitted that billionaires have shaken my hand, thanking me personally for my work on behalf of some of their billions, even folks here would view me with more suspicion, rather than less. Believe it or not, in any case, I am less arrogant in person.

Ignorance + Arrogance

Now that I’m traveling to remote places all over the country, I enjoy meeting different people and hearing their views. My northeastern ‘liberal elite’ upbringing did not give me much experience speaking with “the common clay of the new west… you know, morons”. When I find a true believer, I like to let them rant for a good 30 minutes, so I’ve heard a lot of ignorance and arrogance in the past few years. Even if I wanted to interrupt, I would find it difficult to get a word in edgewise. They are absolutely certain that they know more about the climate crisis than scientists, they know more about infectious diseases and vaccines than Dr Fauci, and their expertise crosses many fields. I keep a straight face while they mispronounce words, get countries wrong, and contradict themselves more than you can imagine. Then I ask a few simple questions that I hope cause them to want to go home and rethink their lives.

Honestly, it’s impossible to correct all the wrong-headed and pig-headed views. And I’ve tried.

Because many of these folks believe anything that fits their views. As mainly men, they like to present the world as full of dangers, which require strong men—like themselves—to protect others heroically. So they often talk about believing in Bigfoot, UFOs, and global PSYOPs to take over the US population. Because it is easier to understand a few conspiracy theories than to keep up with the challenging moral dilemmas of rapidly accelerating technologies and complex global crises, when you lack education. Because they don’t listen. They ignore contrary evidence. They feel truthiness in their guts. They don’t doubt themselves, but they doubt anyone who doesn’t share their core beliefs. People listen to people they trust, and these folks trust the wrong people. Because many are rural Americans, they often have limited experience with diversity in the US, let alone experience traveling abroad, so they have mistaken impressions of different cultures. What diversity they might watch on screen doesn’t fit in their daily lives. Their whole worldview is based in ignorance. They don’t know that many countries have better food, education, healthcare, transportation, and vacations than the US. They don’t realize that China has 250 million working adults with higher education, far more than the US at 100 million. And yet they feel entitled to higher wages than anyone else in the world, despite not having finished college. They are certain that being born a white man in America makes them God’s gift to everyone else, entitled to do anything they want, because they believe they’re better than everyone else.

The political game of the day may be to win over 1.5% of voters by focusing on the price of eggs in Bakersfield, but I know those voters. They are not motivated by rational policies. They are motivated by racial policies. As long as others—different from them—suffer more, they will pay higher prices gladly. Their towns have long suffered from lack of opportunity, because they are unwelcome to newcomers of different ethnicities. Isolation and lack of diversity are points of local pride, for which they willingly give up opportunities for their children to have better lives. They are arrogant about their ignorance.

Hubris = Downfall

“Those whom the gods would destroy they first make proud.” — Sophocles ”The cause of the pleasure for those committing hubris is that by harming people, they think themselves superior”. — Aristotle “Pride goes before destruction,

a haughty spirit before a fall.” — Proverbs 16:18 NIV ”He that is proud eats up himself; pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle.” — William Shakespeare

The ancient philosophers hated hubris, and their literature is full of tragedies where prideful people suffer terrible consequences: Icarus who flew too close to the sun, Arachne who believed herself a better weaver than Athena, Oedipus who gained power in ignorance and ended in tragedy, and Ajax who declined divine assistance. Pride was considered the first deadly sin, leading to the other six. Shakespeare’s plays are full of hubristic tragic characters: Brutus, MacBeth, Othello, and Romeo. We have forgotten those lessons. Today’s screen heroes often have massive egos, surpassing even their pectoral muscles.

FAFO

When I make mistakes, I try learning from them. When any person tells me something valuable that I didn’t know, I’m grateful. Humility makes room to improve. Rational, evidence-driven, logical thinkers seek truth and understand consequences.

Instinctually motivated people operate on a much more basic level. They want it, so they take it, without apology. Their identity makes them right and others wrong, in their own proud minds. Only if forced to reckon with their actions do they resort to self-serving rationalizing.

The once grand old party is now driven by their instinctual beliefs, not facts. In their arrogance, they are not concerned with their own ignorance. They do not stop and consider the consequences if they are wrong, because they so arrogantly believe themselves right. They have become the mob of which the founders—whom they frequently misquote—warned us.

Appeals to reason are like pearls before swine. They crave the ego-boosting emotional lift that they get from Tramp. They desperately want to believe that their simplistic, racist world view was right all along, and that the well-educated, responsible public servants in the world are criminals.

This fatal hubris inevitably causes them to act foolishly. And there will be tragic consequences. We will see the downfall. Hopefully the sudden education of experiencing the coming conflicts will cause the scales to fall from their eyes, albeit too late.

Global Scale

Unfortunately, the consequences will affect far more than one would-be royal family. The ultimate problem faced by humanity at this time is the climate crisis. I know polling doesn’t show it as a top concern yet. If I polled my passengers while driving Highway 1, ‘driving off the cliff’ would not be a concern. But if I started speaking like a crazy person and driving erratically along the edge, suddenly ‘not driving over the cliff’ would become their number one concern.

After Tramp tanks our economy, damages our government, increases carbon pollution, and causes numerous other problems, I am confident that some future pundit will claim that the downfall was inevitable. They will claim that our debt was unserviceable, that our democracy was too inefficient, and that there was no way to stop the climate crisis. Nonsense. Economic growth supported our debt, democratic institutions kept the peace and slowly improved society, and we could have converted away from fossil fuels, if only we had tried.

But we didn’t try. ½ our voters were full of hubris, eagerly swallowed baseless lies out of vanity and ignorance, and arrogantly supported all the wrong policies out of cruelty and stupidity. Most people were too lazy or thoughtless to do anything to reduce their carbon footprint. Those of us who understood the crisis, failed to present the consequences in simple enough terms, that speak to their instinctual fears. More people will die in droughts, heat, fires, floods and storms; each year worse than the last. More wars will start. More famine. More refugees. More disease. The living natural beauty of the world will not decline, it will collapse, gone forever. It has already begun. I have seen it in burned wilderness and species in precipitous decline.

I hope that we do not simply pull back from the edge a little. I hope our coming tragic consequences cause the ignorant to stop being arrogant. I hope that we each stop for a moment and rethink our path forward. I hope that we all try to see reason. I hope we all do more, before it is too late.

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