"Ignorance is not a virtue." Obama at Rutgers

President Obama gave the commencement address at Rutgers University yesterday.  Some of his remarks could be taken as a not so thinly veiled political attack on Republicans, and Donald Trump in particular.   But it could just as easily be seen as an advocacy of rationality, science, and inclusiveness.   It's an attack on Trump Republicans only in that they embrace irrationality, ignorance, building walls to keep people out.

Here are some quotes.

“In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. . . .  It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about. That’s not keeping it real, or telling it like it is. That’s not challenging political correctness. That’s just not knowing what you’re talking about.”

“When our leaders express a disdain for facts, when they’re not held accountable for repeating falsehoods, and just making stuff up while actual experts are dismissed as elitist, then we’ve got a problem. The rejection of facts, the rejection of reason and science, that is the path to decline.”

“Climate change is not something subject to political spin. There is evidence."
 
“The world is more interconnected than ever before.  Building a wall won’t change that.”

*   *   *

Is that an anti-Trump attack?    All of those statements are true and important, regardless of whom the Republicans nominate for president.   If those statements apply to Donald Trump, it is because he has positioned himself as anti-rational, anti-science, and anti-inclusive of those different from him.

Ralph