Willful Ignorance is Contagious

”Low-IQ stupidity might still be spread across both sides of the political aisle, but willful ignorance — the dogmatic cultish belief that loudmouths’ opinions are on equal ground with facts and evidence presented by informed experts — is the entire basis of the MAGA movement."
-John Gruber, ‘Stupid-Americans Are the New Irish-Americans, Trump Is Their JFK’)

This is one of my favorite posts from John Gruber…it pops up in my Readwise review feed often. It’s commentary on Isaac Asimov’s January, 1980 Newsweek article A Cult of Ignorance.

I was reminded of this again today when reading Paul Krugman’s recent article titled The Rise of the Measles-Industrial Complex which discussed that low vaccination rates in the U.S. were an entirely Republican phenomenon. This is a pattern that we’ve seen before during the coronavirus pandemic, where “red states” suffered 38% higher COVID death rates than “blue states” once the vaccine was available.

This pattern is apparently continuing with childhood vaccinations. What was surprising (perhaps it shouldn’t be) is that the anti-vax movement is supported by right-wing media and conspiracy theory networks, both of which make a good deal of revenue from peddling alternative therapies to their anti-intellectual audiences.

In an effort to pander to this group (aka the MAGA base), Trump recently signed an executive order to reduce childhood vaccination rates even further. A loudmouth leading the willfully ignorant.