Nonsense

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

― Robert Frost

A high-school history teacher outside Paris was beheaded yesterday by an angry Islamist.

The teacher's sin? 

He showed his class Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

French president Emmanuel Macron responded by declaring that Islamists are at war with "the Republic and its values."

"This battle is ours and it is existential. They will not pass. Obscurantism and the violence that goes with it will not win."

Imagine an American teacher beheaded by a Proud Boy for showing his class the cover of Mad, and you'd have the picture. 

Obscurantism has an obscure history.

The term derives from Letters of Obscure Men, a 16th century book lampooning the argument between a humanist and a monk over whether every copy of the Talmud—being heretical—should be burned (the pope favored burning the books).

Two centuries later, philosophers called all enemies of the Enlightenment obscurantists.

Obscurantism, as Macron means the word, assumes the hoi polloi are morons and seeks to restrict knowledge—especially knowledge about the workings of government—to rulers.

It was obscurantism that provoked the French Revolution, when Louis XVI's clumsy efforts to cover up famines cost him his head.

Obscurantism is alive today, not only in the Paris suburbs, but in the White House.

Trump's effort to cover up Covid-19, disclosed last month by Bob Woodward, is a costly example. Over 225,000 Americans have already died from the virus. Another 175,000 are soon to follow.

“I wanted to always play it down," Trump boasted. "I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Plato called that sort of nonsense a "noble lie." 

I call it obscurantism—and eagerly await our revolution on November 3.