From nojo Stinque:
Somehow we had grown up thinking truth was something to be valued, that facts trumped fantasies. Somehow we were under the impression that this was a value we shared with other sentient beings who lived under our flag, that of course everyone was interested in the truth, that of course we all wanted to know the facts at hand.
And then, as we cast our first national vote, Americans elected a charming liar as President, and the wheels started coming off.
It was a few years later that we found an expression for it: “aggressive ignorance”. We’re fine with ignorance as such — we’re all born with it — but while some of us feast upon the world we’re born into, many others do everything they can to avoid it. They live a lie, they enjoy living a lie, they insist upon living a lie, even when the truth is made available. They don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to see it.
And there are enough of of them to take the rest of us down with them. Just look where we are now.