Stunning Ignorance

   Trumpies went ballistic this week at what they perceived as a direct attack on their Fearful Leader, claiming it was a call for revolution and rebellion against their Beloved Don-Don.
   It seems the NPR public broadcasting network presented a line-by-line Twitter feed of the Declaration of Independence as their stations broadcast a reading of the document, as it has every July 4 for nearly thirty years.
   Those who saw only the Twitter feed immediately interpreted the presentation as an attack on the current occupant of the Oval Office. The responses included this accusation: "Where is the part about the right to keep and bear arms? Why did NPR delete the part about guns?"
   That, of course, is the Second Amendment to the Constitution, written more than a dozen years after the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
   The Declaration does, indeed, compile a long list of abuses perpetrated at the time by King George III. But many modern Twitter followers saw only "propaganda" by NPR against the current president.
   "This is why you're going to get defunded," said one twit to NPR. Another called the NPR feed "spam," and said he would stop following NPR postings.
   And according to a Washington Post analysis, "the blowback increased when the tweets reached the portion of the Declaration that outlined, in unsparing detail, all the ways Britain's George III had wronged the then-Colonies."
   These included lines that the ruler "has obstructed the administration of justice," and that "A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."
   Such lines prompted many Trumpies to assume a reference to the current president.
   And as for the Declaration line that "it is the Right of the People to abolish" such an abusive government "and to institute new Government," this prompted another Trumpie to accuse NPR of "calling for revolution," and that its action was out to "condone violence while trying to sound 'patriotic.'"
   So how is it that so many Americans fail to recognize the words of one of the founding documents of the republic, and react so defensively to a perceived assault on their Ignoramus in Chief? It's not as if copies of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution are hard to find. Every year, newspapers around the country reprint the text of the Declaration on July 4, Independence Day. And this year, the television network HBO presented a documentary of prominent Americans, including all living presidents, reading the entire texts of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
   Could it be a fault in the American education system, that school children are not exposed to the words and sentiments that helped to found the nation? If that's true, then how to rationalize drastic cuts in federal funding for the public schools of America?
   Finally, here's another question, which has been posted several times on this blog: How dumb do the politicians think we the people are? One possible answer has been, "Very."
   Sadly, that answer may be correct.
   It's time for Americans to prove the politicians wrong.