Profiles in Ignorance

I don't think I have followed the author on social media or read his political satire before, but when I saw the premise of this book, I couldn't resist asking for an arc because it seemed like the thing I would like. And I wasn't completely wrong.

I didn't have many expectations from the book, so it was pleasantly surprising to see the author give an explanation for the way the book is structured and follow through in a very methodical way. It might simplistic on first glance - three stages of ignorance, namely, Ridicule, Acceptance, and Celebration. But once the book gets going with each of these sections, it's easy to see these historical events and rise of the ignorant politician as a natural progression. While I am much more familiar with the Celebration section of the book because I have been living in the Trump era of American politics, I learnt a lot about the rise of Ronald Reagan and the Bushes, and the failures of Don Quayle and maybe Sarah Palin but how those failures have led to where we are today. There were many surprises that also felt inevitable, and because this celebration of ignorance and vilification of knowledge, facts and reality can feel both disheartening and anger inducing, the author writes about these historical figures and events with a lot of humor, just to reduce the sting a little.

I particularly dreaded reading the section about Trump because we have seen it all play in real time and I didn't wanna read those horror stories again but I think this section was relatively smaller than the others, thank god. But even before the release, the book already feels slightly outdated because so much has happened since the author must have finished writing the book, including the Jan 6 hearings and the current Top Secret documents investigation and I'm sure things will get worse. However, the author ends the book on a hopeful note. Ofcourse he agrees that it's not easy because we have to all stop being hobby political activists and actually do work on the ground to change one mind at a time to save our democracy - and maybe these efforts will yield results someday but it feels scarier by the day to me. Changing people's minds sounds like a good idea and even a necessary idea, but I don't know if we are in a position where it's possible to change most minds. I can only hope the author's call to action and optimism works, and more of us actively contribute to bring politics back to the real world, and not live in Trump's alternative reality anymore.

Overall, the book was written in a very humorous way and that's definitely necessary because the content can be very bleak. It's hard to imagine the reigns of the oldest democracy of the world being in the hands of leaders who celebrate ignorance and call anyone else who wants to live in a reality/facts based world as elite - but that's where we could possibly be again and what this book proves is that things can always get worse. So, yes, read this book, have a laugh, but also remember how the events of the last fifty years led to our today and work to change that.