Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Fabers, author, activist, attorney, and host of the Lurie Daniel

Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126.

A cult of ignorance.

That was how Isaac Asimov described the American intelligentsia, and I'm being fully facetious there,

when he wrote about them in 1980. And when it came to his feelings about the cult of ignorance

that was driving American policy, both domestic and foreign at that time, again, in 1980,

here is what he had to say. It's hard to quarrel with that

ancient justification of the free press, America's right to know. It seems almost cruel to

ask ingenuously. America's right to know what, please, science, mathematics, economics,

foreign languages? None of those things, of course.

In fact, one might well suppose that the popular feeling is that Americans are a lot better off without any of that tripe.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has 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. That, my friends, is where we find ourselves

today as the cult of ignorance persists in the United States and it is being

driven from the very top. Now, says Isaac Asimov, we have a new slogan, don't trust the experts.

Remember, folks, this is 1980. This whole rejection of intelligence isn't something new. It's almost

part and parcel of the American experience. Isaac Asimov later

continues talking about the various phrases that Americans were embracing at the time. Faces like

don't trust the experts, which he says was safe for them because none of them have ever

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