TRUMP AND INTELLECTUALS

TRUMP AND INTELLECTUALS

What is an intellectual? One dictionary defines the word “intellectual” as follows: “Intellectual is often used to describe intensive reasoning and deep thinking, particularly in relation to subjects that tend to spark deep discussion, such as literature or philosophy.” Intellectuals are usually educated people who, as the above definition says, engage in deep thinking. Universities, institutions, think tanks, and the professions are filled with intellectuals. Occasionally you find intellectuals with no formal higher education. They are self-taught thinkers (autodidacts) who engage in serious reading and deep thinking. There are many intellectuals in the media and the arts. Sometimes, one finds intellectuals in politics, government, and the military. But the current atmosphere in Washington, under Donald Trump, is anti-intellectual. 
Trump has tried to refute the argument that he is ignorant and uneducated by pointing out that he attended a top university and a top graduate school (Wharton School). What he doesn't mention is what a lousy student he was. In his book Fear, Bob Woodward quotes Steve Bannon as saying: "Trump doesn't like intellectuals." Trump was a guy who "never went to class. Never took a note. Never went a lecture. The night before a final, he comes in at midnight from the fraternity house, puts on a pot of coffee, takes your notes, memorizes as much as he can, walks in at 8 in the morning and gets a C. And that's good enough." Trump was the son of a multimillionaire and therefore it was expected that he would attend college. But like millions of college graduates, he learned nothing and remained a seriously uneducated person.

In a recent article in The New Yorker magazine, the author, Patrick Keefe, describes the tenure and firing of former General H.R. McMaster as National Security Advisor to President Trump. The thrust of the article is about the difficulties of an honorable man with deep integrity serving a president who has no integrity. The article makes clear that one of the reasons Trump disliked McMaster, and fired him, was because McMaster is an intellectual with a PhD.

In the beginning of the article about General McMaster, the author describes Trump’s dealings with written matter. He says that when Trump assumed office, N.S.C. staffers initially generated memos for him that resembled those produced for his predecessors: multi-page explications of policy and strategy. But an edict came down, “thin it out.” The staff dutifully trimmed the memos until they were a single page. But then word came back: “This is still too much.”  A senior Trump aide explained to the staffers that the President “is a visual person,” and asked them to express points “pictorially.” By the time (the staffers) left, they had these cards that pictorially explained the information a president has to have. A former staffer also said that Trump receives a thick briefing book every night, but that nobody harbors the illusion that he reads it. Current and former officials said that filling out a card is the best way to raise an issue with him in writing. They said that everything that needs to be conveyed to the president must be boiled down to two or three points, with the syntactical complexity of “See Jane run.” 

This is all very sad, but it is also somewhat frightening. Trump, the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, is a virtual illiterate. That is cause for concern in a complex world where he must deal with highly complicated issues and with heads of government who are far superior to him in intelligence.

As a good indication of how things have changed in Washington, compare the Trump Administration to that of President John F. Kennedy. On April 29, 1962, Kennedy hosted a dinner at the White House for American Nobel Prize winners and other intellectuals. At that dinner he said that this was the greatest gathering of eminent minds held at the White House since Thomas Jefferson sat there alone. Try to imagine Trump holding such a gathering or saying something with the wit and intelligence possessed by President Kennedy.

Kennedy was himself an intellectual. He welcomed intellectuals to the White House. During his presidency he surrounded himself with intellectuals such as Arthur Schlesinger and Ted Sorensen. Today, alas, Donald Trump, who dislikes and avoids intellectuals, has surrounded himself with incompetent hacks like Scott Pruitt. He has managed to get rid of intellectuals such as H.R. McMaster.

I remember the hope, optimism, and enthusiasm with which many of us greeted the presidency of Kennedy. I also remember the despair when he was assassinated. His policies, speeches, and ideals transformed me from a Republican into a Democrat. I’m sure that millions of others did the same. I also believe that the appeal of Donald Trump to the lowest common denominator of uneducated, anti-intellectual people in America will have the opposite effect. Sadly, such people vastly outnumber the intellectuals.

Millions of men voted against Hillary Clinton because they felt that she was condescending, snobbish, and female. She did not appeal to their bigotry against African Americans and Hispanic immigrants. They preferred a man who acted like one of them. If Hillary were president, you can be sure that her administration would be more like that of John Kennedy. Hillary not only reads books, she writes them. Trump supporters realized that Hillary Clinton was one of the dreaded things they hate—an intellectual.