Dear John,
Sesame Street has helped children learn to read and count for over half a century. So why is Trump trying to cut funding to PBS? It’s part of a larger plan:
Trump is waging a war on the American mind.
Throughout history, tyrants have understood that their major enemy is an educated public. Slaveholders prohibited enslaved people from learning to read. The Third Reich burned books. The Khmer Rouge banned music. Stalin and Pinochet censored the media.
And Trump, like past authoritarians, knows that an uninformed public is easier to divide and conquer.
The only way to protect ourselves from the authoritarian attack on our minds is to understand what Trump is doing and why, and to spread the word far and wide. Please watch this week’s video and share it as broadly as you can.
There are five facets to the authoritarian attack on our minds that I cover in the video:
1. Rewrite history
2. Gut education
3. Dismantle science
4. Suppress the media
5. Attack the arts
Trump is unleashing all of them. And added up, they render us less informed, less inspired, and easier to control. They empower Trump to divide us with hatred and fear. And they prevent us from discovering that we have more in common with one another than with the authoritarians who try to rule us.
This attack on our minds ultimately reduces our capacity for self-government, because ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.
Thank you for spreading the truth by sharing this video.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media
