Death to intelligence

In a new stretch, Donald Trump has proposed canceling university grants, including Harvard, the oldest university in the country, in an attempt to reverse the "ideology" he considers hostile to his surprising political ideals. woke.

That an authoritarian leader wages war against knowledge, against intellectuals, is nothing new. The phrase "patched" Millán-Astray is attributed to "Death to intelligence". Pol Pot, in short, ordered the death of everyone who wore glasses, because glasses, apart from being a sign of "deviation from nature," symbolized intellectuals, the letter-sick. In fact, he also burned libraries, because he believed that bourgeois civilization (and reading was bourgeois) had contaminated human beings. If we weren't talking about a bloodthirsty man, we would be moved that he would use such an "obvious" symbol as glasses to wipe out readers. Iran has grown weary of imprisoning "reformist intellectuals." No need to go on. Studying and learning, wanting to know, questioning things, is the most powerful weapon we have. That's why it's students who start revolutions and why it's students who are the favorite target of dictatorships.

Donald Trump is, however, something else, because unlike all the bosses —you'll excuse me; the word is almost Catalan—that we mentioned, he is, in theory, a democrat elected at the polls. Trump, let's say it again, is that builder from the 1980s who got rich with bricks and mortar, who dresses in expensive and tacky clothes, and who at the end of lunch gives obvious and thoughtful advice to young people as a self-made man and mocks, in a hoarse voice, books and black-and-white films. This was all we were missing, thanks to him: having to defend the "tietismo" (a kind of "brother-in-law" thing) because of the "cuadismo" (a kind of "brother-in-law" thing).