People write to me almost every day to say it is ignorance that is threatening our Democracy.

Many people feel that our President is ignorant and that he attracts and enables ignorant followers. I find that creepy.

They believe conspiracy theories, online extremism, and dishonest politicians are creating masses of angry and ill-informed people who are eating our Democracy alive.

They often cite Trump’s now-infamous rallies where thousands of people form a mob to shout insults and threats at reporters and urge his political opponents to be locked up.

Those rallies are potent examples of the different ways in which people see the same thing in entirely different ways.

I never feel comfortable with talk like that; I know from living in the country that there is a deep feeling here that the “elitists” who oppose Trump think all the people who support him are bigoted and ignorant.

I think resentment of being dismissed in that way is perhaps the single most significant reason that Trump won in 2016. It makes little sense to go down that road again, rather than to try to understand what has happened.

The challenge is not to argue people out of their beliefs or change their minds, it’s to offer everybody something better and more promising than they have now.

And then, deliver.

The country is wide open and ready to be kinder and gentler and normal. It’s up for grabs.

Trump is many things, but ignorant is not one of them.

Is ignorance really the problem with our Democracy?

Or is it something more profound than that?

It is so much easier to call each other names than face the real issues that we avoid – the news lately reinforces that idea.

If you love your history – I do – you will read that democracies get into trouble when governments lie to the people.

I think both political parties are equally guilty of that, although in different ways. I am probably out of the mainstream on that idea.

You just get to pick your poison.

For all of our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices we are free to make.

Intellectuals have always felt that Democracy enables the ignorant, and the people they consider “ignorant” feel they are the victim of a harmful kind of social and cultural bigotry – and elitism.

I know too many people who voted for Trump to accept the idea that his supporters are generally ignorant. It isn’t right, and it isn’t useful, and it isn’t democratic either.

Researching the writings about Democracy over the years, I see this is not a new thread or idea.

Democracy embraces and includes all kinds of people, from the brilliant and gifted to the angry and ill-informed. They’ve never liked each other.

The brilliantly have always feared that the “ignorant” will rise and prevail. Jefferson did that too.  He feared the mob much more than he feared a King.

I wanted to share some quotes about ignorance and Democracy that I find worth passing along.

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter,” that was Winston Churchill, the savior of Western Democracy.

Author Susan Collins wrote that collective thinking is usually short-lived. “We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”

H.L. Mencken was quite open about his belief that Democracy was so unstable that “As Democracy is perfected, the office of PresidentPresident represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and a downright moron will adorn the White House.”

And he loved the idea of democracy.

The author and futurist Isaac Asimov wrote that “there is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Jose Marti said, “the first duty of a man is to think for himself.” He would not have appreciated the left and the right.

Abraham Lincoln believed that elections belong to the people.

“It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” That’s a good description of how it feels to be an American sometimes in 2020.

We turned out backs on the fire and have burned our behinds, and we have the blisters to prove it.

The famed philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that “our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.”

I think Russell comes as close to the truth as anyone. I’ve been following President Trump closely, and I have no idea what he truly believes, accept it is quite apparent that what he says is almost always not what he believes.

The author and professor Howard Zinn wrote that “protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is essential to it.” That point has never seemed more relevant.

Wendell Berry suggested that the problem with Democracy was not ignorance but greed: “The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth – that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community – and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”

When communities and work are destroyed, great holes are left in society, and demagogues pop up to fill the void and process the rage. That isn’t new either, although you would be forgiven for thinking so if you watch cable news.

To me, Berry’s notion is much closer to the truth than the assumption that people who disagree with us are dumb.

Perhaps when we start telling the truth again, people will believe in their government again.

The most stirring writing about Democracy I found was from Charlie Chaplain. I know he had to flee the United States because congress wanted to ask him if he was a communist, but I was surprised by his passion.

He might have offered the best clues as to why Donald Trump is President today.

“You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of Democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie!

Debbie sent this message to me the other day: “I loved your insight and opinion, but I feel you are preaching to the choir. I wish the MAGA Trump-loving voters would see it the same way we do, but alas, it seems like this is only reinforcing what us Trump-haters already know.”

I wanted to tell Debbie (I did tell Debbie) that either she greatly misunderstands my purpose or I’m doing a poor job of expressing it.

It is pointless and self-destructive to think Chaplain’s vision of a kinder and gentler America can be realized by my squaring off against Trump’s supporters or by writing to the choir.

I believe people have to vote for something, not against something to prevail. try to explain things, not simply argue things, to be of any value or, purpose.

It is what it is. We can post all we want on Facebook and Twitter, but like the poet wrote, that won’t change a whit of it.

I have no wish to write to one side or the other.

I don’t choose my readers, I only appreciate having them. Like Lincoln said, we will all have to sit on our blisters. People will read my writing if they find it valuable, and not if they don’t.

I’ll take those odds.

I have no desire to turn Trump’s very loyal supporters around, which seems both patronizing and pointless to me. They know who they want to vote for, they don’t need me to tell them. I certainly don’t write to inflame them or win them over.

And I never tell other people what to do. I only write about me, and what I do.

People are confused and overwhelmed by the news raining down on them, and the hole that I see for me is writing from a distance, not from inside the scrum.

I am not the writer of the left or the right, I hope never to be either.

I believe there is a great awakening in America right now, on all sides. Debbie’s idea of dialogue is persuasion. Mine is inspiration and understanding. I don’t think it’s democratic to stop writing because it might upset somebody.

Some people wring their hands about all this turmoil, I think it is the very essence of what a democracy is and should be.

And several people have pointed out – some with exasperation –  that here,   the anti-Trump mob gets poked almost as often as the Trump one.

And don’t fool yourself. They are both mobs, herds, and rabid followers.

I don’t see this as the end of our democracy but as a rebirth and reimagining of it.  I am not in despair or rage.

The simple truth is that I would never forgive myself if I didn’t write about it. The job of a writer is to get people to think, not tell them who to vote for.

That is my two (or three) cents about what a democracy is, why I am on this earth.