The only books Trump cares about are the books he can cook.

"Hillary’s called me a 'xenophobe' a few times. How many people even know what the word means? Same with 'nativist'."-Donald J. Trump, June 2016

The Republican National Convention is beginning in Cleveland today. There are so many things to wonder about in the strange rise of Donald J. Trump's joke candidacy, but this quotation from a couple of weeks ago sums him up for me today. Has the United States ever had a major-party candidate who is as relentlessly and proudly anti-intellectual as he is? He could turn to his dictionary to look up 'xenophobe' and 'nativist,' but he's not a big fan of books. And who needs books when you can learn everything you need from "watching the shows"?

Maybe Right-Wing Oklahoma Lawmakers Are Right to Ban AP U.S. History

After all, look at me, I graduated with honors from a major university as a history major, elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the history honor society Phi Alpha Theta, and I was twisted into a fucking liberal!  If that doesn't prove that studying history is evil, I don't know what does.

If the legislature doesn't act, kids in
 Tulsa might be seen wearing these.

If only the Oklahoma state legislature had been there to straighten out nefarious educators in the 60s and 70s and save me from all those pointy-headed teachers and professors in Pennsylvania, California, and New Jersey, who conspired with national teachers' unions (and maybe the Communist Party) to twist my young mind against the beauties of unquestioning patriotism and myths about our founding as God's Beacon of American Exceptionalism, and taught me to "think" (as if that were a good thing).