Introduction

This Introduction notes that 77,000,000 American citizens voted for Donald Trump even though he was a convicted felon and autocratic narcissist. They therefore abandoned the “self-evident truth” principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness inscribed in the Declaration of Independence. That is, they failed to exercise citizenship as a vocation dedicated to good public behavior which supports voting in favor of candidates who will protect and maintain democratic values and institutions. Anticipating further analysis in later chapters, the Introduction ascribes this failure of responsible citizenship to, among other causes, the marketplace for ideas today which is overloaded with information and disinformation, leading to muddled thinking, a scarcity of common sense, and what Neil Postman called a media imperative of “amusing ourselves to death,” or entertainment rather than education.