When citizens are subjected to a “flooding of the zone”–daily assaults on a wide variety of systems, beliefs and values that have long been an accepted part of our governing environment–we can be forgiven for a lack of focus. It’s hard enough just to keep track of what is happening, let alone to decide which attacks are most worrisome. But Adam Serwer makes a good case for putting the war on knowledge at the top of the list.
In The New Dark Age, Serwer writes
The warlords who sacked Rome did not intend to doom Western Europe to centuries of ignorance. It was not a foreseeable consequence of their actions. The same cannot be said of the sweeping attack on human knowledge and progress that the Trump administration is now undertaking—a deliberate destruction of education, science, and history, conducted with a fanaticism that recalls the Dark Ages that followed Rome’s fall.
Serwer enumerates the Trump assaults: threats to withhold funding from colleges and universities that don’t submit to MAGA demands. Sustained attacks on the engines of American scientific inquiry– the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health–and on repositories of America’s history, including the Smithsonian. Arts organizations and libraries are losing funding. Large numbers of government scientists have lost their jobs and remaining researchers prevented from broaching forbidden subjects. “Entire databases of public-health information collected over decades are at risk of vanishing. Any facts that contradict the gospel of Trumpism are treated as heretical.”
These various initiatives and policy changes are often regarded as discrete problems, but they comprise a unified assault. The Trump administration has launched a comprehensive attack on knowledge itself, a war against culture, history, and science. If this assault is successful, it will undermine Americans’ ability to comprehend the world around us. Like the inquisitors of old, who persecuted Galileo for daring to notice that the sun did not, in fact, revolve around the Earth, they believe that truth-seeking imperils their hold on power.
Serwer describes the attacks on universities. He uses the example of West Point, and the administration’s purge of forbidden texts to reveal what MAGA’s “ideal university” might look like.
West Point initiated a schoolwide push to remove any readings that focused on race, gender or the darker moments of American history.” A professor who “leads a course on genocide was instructed not to mention atrocities committed against Native Americans, according to several academy officials. The English department purged works by well-known Black authors, such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
The Trump administration’s attack on knowledge is broad-based; it isn’t limited to academia. The administration has also singled out and fired government employees involved in research of multiple kinds.
These are people who do the crucial work of informing Americans about and protecting them from diseases, natural disasters, and other threats to their health. Thousands of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been let go, including most of those whose job it is to maintain workplace safety standards. Experts at the Food and Drug Administration including, according to the Times, “lab scientists who tested food and drugs for contaminants or deadly bacteria; veterinary division specialists investigating bird flu transmission; and researchers who monitored televised ads for false claims about prescription drugs” have been purged. Workers in the Department of Agriculture’s U.S. Forest Service research team, who develop “tools to model fire risk, markets, forest restoration and water,” have been targeted for layoffs. The Environmental Protection Agency’s entire research arm is being “eliminated.” The administration has made “deep cuts” to the Department of Education’s research division.
Serwer enumerates the nature of the cuts and their foreseeable consequences, especially for public health. As he notes, modern agriculture and medicine, and advances in information technology like the internet and GPS were built on the foundation of federally funded research.
For the past century, state-funded advances have been the rule rather than the exception. Private-sector innovation can take off after an invention becomes profitable, but the research that leads to that invention tends to be a costly gamble—for this reason, the government often takes on the initial risk that private firms cannot. Commercial flight, radar, microchips, spaceflight, advanced prosthetics, lactose-free milk, MRI machines—the list of government-supported research triumphs is practically endless.
MAGA’s racist fight against “wokeness” requires destroying huge swaths of scholarship and research, and distorting any American history that undercuts the administration’s goal: destroying the “ability to discover, accumulate, or present any knowledge that could be used to oppose Trumpism.”
You really need to click through and read the entire essay–and weep.
Welcome to a new Dark Ages.
I’ll accept your evidence and raise you one article from Chris Hedges, where he writes:
“The historian Ramsay MacMullen, in “Corruption and the Decline of Rome,” writes that what destroyed the Roman Empire was “the diverting of governmental force, its misdirection.” Power became about enriching private interests. This misdirection renders government powerless, at least as an institution that can address the needs and protect the rights of the citizenry. Our government, in this sense, is powerless. It is a tool of corporations, banks, the war industry, and oligarchs. It cannibalizes itself to funnel wealth upwards.”
Chris’s article is aptly called “The Rule of Idiots.”
Like most discussions about realism, they tend to be dark because the matter is dark. We get depressed, then run over to our televisions and indulge in some Disney Magic, and everyone feels better. We prefer the illusion over reality!
All great societies head into decline and absurdity. As Einstein warned in the 1940s, capitalism isn’t the best system for society, and the lack of distribution among participants will only get worse. The basis of capitalism is “competition,” while the basis for central planning is “collaboration.”
We compete instead of collaborating, and therefore, we resent the collective, which is the exact opposite of what being part of a society should be. This is where Ayn Rand devotees take our country when they hold leadership positions. They abhor the collective and replace everything with the almighty individual.
“Everyone must pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Only the fittest survive.”
When I hear the Silicon Valley Tech Bro Libertarians talk about “their contribution to society” (ego), they never mention that in the early 2000s, they were all funded by the CIA’s joint venture fund, In-Q-Tel. Last I checked, the CIA is part of our federal government, supported by taxpayer dollars.
The spat ended between Musk and Trump when Dear Leader reminded him of how grateful he should be to the federal government since all his wealth has come from taxpayers. Once Steve Bannon mentioned privatizing SpaceX, the spat came to an end. LOL
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-rule-of-idiots/
Adam Serwer’s The Cruelty is the Point is also a very worthy and historical examination of tRump’s rise. It includes many of his essays from the last decade.
One saving grace is that the rest of the world still exists to retain the knowledge temporarily lost here.
If you wanted to put into place a system that would run the government, create laws, enforce those laws and make all the decisions needed for science, industry, education, and the economy where would you start? I think that you would start by charging into all of the existing government control locations and syphon off their knowledge and data, funnel it into an entirely new entity where, newly programed, you could replace the old system.
Can we all say “AI”?
Thanks, Todd, for mentioning the egregious Steve Bannon, everybody’s drunk uncle. He is the coiner, I believe, of the sophisticated political undertaking of “flooding the zone with bullshit” and then do what you intend behind the scenes.
That “thought” process combined with Project 2025 is the modern-day equivalent of the sacking of Rome. But the Visigoths didn’t have electronic libraries where all the works of man are stored. So, take hope. Once the orange carbuncle on the butt of humanity is purged from the earth, the recovery can occur. It will long and painful and difficult, but we won’t lose any information, just time.
Meanwhile, the human population on earth continues to grow toward 9 billion. The planet can really only produce enough calories (without climate change and other pollution destroying food producing environments) to support half that number. So, who will the rich and powerful allow to starve?
Maga’s war on rights, which progresses a little at a time, hasn’t yet ruled out all of our right to free speech, just the part called knowledge.
Our right to believe what we will and discuss it is still in place, as it was in all primitive societies.
There is politics, that is in, but political science, like all sciences, is out, due to MAGA’s war on education, which extends from pre-K up to the most prestigious PhD programs, because knowing is “woke.” Harvard is “woke” too, as is Columbia. No freedom for professors to speak and pass on their knowledge to certain students.
This, of course, is a return to the past, which we outran 250 years ago when we ousted King George III. Then the Confederacy. Then, authoritarianism in Europe and Japan. Now the same set of beliefs runs Russia and Israel as well as us.
As an interesting aside, Harvard was established in Cambridge long before the principles of liberal democracy were enshrined in our Constitution.
Now, knowledge is out of style, as evidenced by our President, who specializes in entertainment, the telling of stories.
It’s too bad that the quickest way out of the current crises, is to elect Democrats. Fortunately Orange Jesus has governed by Executive Order, rather than sending bills to Congress for passage. It’s clear that he has no idea what he’s signing. It’s also clear that he hasn’t read any of them. The most powerful man in the world doesn’t read!
God help us!
So what happened when Rome prevented their mercenary salaria from becoming Roman citizens? The Visgoths sacked Rome in 410 CE, and that was pretty much the end of the Roman empire! Even the conversion to Christianity during Constantine’s Nicene council in 325 AD, couldn’t save Rome at that point.
So our modern day salaried mercenaries or salaria in 2025 CE, are in the process of sacking government here. Now, who says history doesn’t repeat? Keep them stupid, mistreat them, and eventually pay the price! That’s when those salaria turn on their overlords! And just as they sacked Rome and slit those Romans stomachs open to find the jewels and gold, I’m sure we’ll see that again here. The Romans didn’t learn their lesson when they sacked Jerusalem in ’70 CE, and The Romans could not extrapolate that they’re mercenaries were learning from them at that point. They cut The dead or alive Jews open, to scoop out their jewelry. So obviously, what goes around comes around, the goth salaria were aware of that And when treasure hunting in the Romans belly.
I would venture to say that in the not too distant future, during collapse of society, they’ll be plenty of this repeated behavior that we’ve seen in past history. And actually, the British or Britain is an offshoot of Rome, and the United States is an offshoot of Britain! Kind of interesting I thought.
The Roman government defaulted to the house of Habsburg, the austrians, and of course the church of Rome, built their fortress within Rome. That would be the Vatican, who is guarded by by their mercenary salaria The Popes Swiss guards!
You can see the connections, history always repeats.
And in the meantime the majority of SCOTUS keeps handing down decisions that seem designed to render themselves powerless. I can’t figure out what they think their futures are going to be when they are no longer needed. After all, under the thumb of a dictator, EVERYONE else is a disposable slave to his whims.
Nailed that one Sharon!
“…they believe that truth-seeking imperils their hold on power.” I will venture to say that they are right about that. Not that it eliminates it, but does, I believe threaten it. Just as Trump’s “alternative facts” were meant to do in his first term, the erasing of EMPIRICAL facts is meant to destroy any urge to respond to his BS executive declarations, to erase any interest in questioning his sycophantic picks for the cabinet, etc.
“Once the orange carbuncle on the butt of humanity is purged from the earth, the recovery can occur.” I hope you are right, Vernon, but just as the idiocy of GWB, led to empowering Roger Ailes at Faux News, we can not know how this fool’s venal momentum will play out once he, himself, is gone.
Melanoma destroyed the once beautiful W.H. Rose Garden, maybe that can be seen as a metaphor for OJ’s impact…anything of beauty, science, art, etc. that he fears can be wiped outdoor severely damaged.
Mitch D., Yes. Uncertainty awaits us and the world. To take your Faux News point back a little further: It was Saint Ronald who expedited Rupert Murdoch’s citizenship effort and allowed the expelled-from-Australia monster to eventually hire Roger Ailes. GHW Bush was responsible for hiring Lee Atwater and Karl Rove into the RNC to purposefully create the scorched-earth operating philosophy of political rhetoric. They found their mouthpiece in very over-rated Newt Gingrich who proceeded to begin the assault on banking regulations. Connecting these dots requires that one showers afterward.
BTW, I learned that Roger Ailes and I attended Ohio University at the same time. He worked at the local radio station, WOUB. We never met, as far as I know, but I do wish I could go back in time.
I hate that this is called “Trumpism.” Trump doesn’t care about this one whit. He likes three things only: fame, wealth and himself (probably in the reverse order). So, naming it thus obscures the fact of the people who are really pushing for the new dark age: the Christian Nationalists behind Project 2025. Their lead evangelist in the administration seems to be Stephen Miller. Or as I think of him, Nosferatu. Because he must look that way on purpose, yes?
Meanwhile, I read in the Chronicle of Higher Ed today that IU is requiring anyone who takes their buyout agreement to sign a non-disparagement agreement as a condition of their buyout. It makes me wonder what would happen if they did not take the buyout and did not sign the agreement but still disparaged the university.
“Vows of silence. Faculty members at Indiana University at Bloomington who want to take advantage of a voluntary buyout have to agree not to say anything bad about the institution after they leave. Nondisparagement clauses are common in the corporate world, but in higher ed they are rarely seen. As our Adrienne Lu writes, IU’s stipulation is particularly noteworthy because the state and the university have come under criticism in recent years from free-speech advocates for moves that they argue restrict faculty criticism and trample academic freedom. “
Vernon, you reference St. Reagan, he who also embraced the Evangelical crazies, and I appreciate your connecting the dots. GHW does not get the “proper” recognition he deserves, for helping to unravel what was, once, something of an approximation to Democracy. I did not realize that Murdoch was expelled. Excuse me for a bit, I hear my shower calling my name.
Three words to describe this –
Chinese Cultural Revolution
I hope we can recover –
Also remember, Supreme Court appointees from Nixon on have led us here. The “normal” Republicans supported their party in elevating jurists who ruled on Citizens United and other critical cases. This has been a long time coming. [Democrats didn’t excel here either, as the Overton Window was moved.]