No one is entitled to be ignorant.
— Harlan Ellison
Investigators this week found that a $2 billion warship burned because no one aboard turned on the fire-suppression system, according to US Naval Institute News.
The USS Bonhomme Richard burned last summer because its crew didn't know how to fight a fire, investigators concluded.
The fire-suppression system could have been activated, and the warship saved, by the push of a single button.
"It is surprising that nobody on the scene knew how to activate the system," a defense expert said.
A number of other missteps, including delays in reporting the fire, a disorganized command response, and a failure to seal off the area where the fire began, only worsened the situation.
The Navy blamed 36 individuals, including five admirals, for the ship's loss.
The incident is the second of its kind in eight years.
The USS Miami, a $ 1.6 billion submarine, burned in 2012.
The fatalist in me says catastrophes like the one aboard the Bonhomme Richard are overdetermined—brought about not by one, but by a "cascade of failures."
You could chalk the disaster up to hubris; but I'm more apt to blame sheer ignorance.
Americans have a romance with ignorance. It's at the bottom of most the errors and bad decisions we make, from investing in subprime mortgages to electing Donald Trump.
Our unfathomable ignorance is inexcusable, given how easy it is to become moderately informed about almost any topic. (Google it.)
Our widespread ignorance is willful, woeful, and thoroughly unconscionable.
We get what we deserve.
POSTSCRIPT: I felt a bit crabby when I penned this post. But less than 24 hours later, Maria Shriver wrote "most people don't want the truth," citing Trump's launch of his new social media platform TRUTH. She's right, by gum.
