Shamelessly wishing to harvest Donald Trump’s credulously misguided “base,” Harvard graduate Senator Ted Cruz tweeted the inanest absurdities, much akin to his former president’s thousands of misleading lies: “By rejoining the Paris Agreement, President Biden indicates he’s more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh.”
Cruz, Texas’ claim to shame, thinks like Donald Trump, that Americans are stupid enough to think that the Paris Agreement has something to do with Parisians. About seventy million Americans, including some Laredoans, would agree with Ted.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran cleric who left New York to return to his native Germany in 1942 to speak and write against Nazism was arrested there and hanged in a Berlin prison in spring of 1945 on Adolf Hitler’s orders. Born in 1906, Reverend Bonhoeffer wrote prolifically about Christianity and ethics. I feel the following words from his “Letters and Papers from Prison” are so clear that even Laredo’s GOP chair, the local Border Patrol Union leader, and the criminals who assaulted the U.S. Capitol on January 6 might possibly understand:
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”
Ignorance means lack of information and can be remedied through education. However, one has to have the will to know truth.
Peace to all, harm to none.
I was introduced to Bonhoeffer in the late 50’s. I had been a civil engineering major my first two years when I decided to go into the Methodist ministry. I was amazed at how relevant Bonhoeffer was then and even more so today.