King of Nothing

“What if I derp?”

got a major pest problem this year actually

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, wants to control not just what we do, but also what we know and how we think. He knows that an uninformed public is easier to divide and conquer. Gutting funding for public broadcasting is part of a broader attack on the American mind. This attack on our minds reduces our capacity for self-government, because ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny. [Cartoon by Drew Sheneman]