For all intents and purposes, Donald Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination this past week with his victory in the Indiana primary. I share an office with three young Canadians. They were very perplexed by this development. "How can this be?" they asked "What's wrong with the United States?" Embarrassed and dismayed, I really didn't have much of an answer for them except, "If you ever lived in Arkansas for two years and were forced once every month to sit and listen to my Arkansan barber explain the evils of the world while he cut your hair, maybe you'd understand," was the best response I could come up with.
Today, however, I stumbled across an astonishing news story that really explains the rise of Donald Trump in one concise tale. It's the story of Guido Menzio, math professor at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. (Google "Guido Menzio" and you can get the full version of the story.) Dr. Menzio was sitting on an American Airlines flight, waiting to depart the Philadelphia airport for Syracuse. A woman took her seat next to him and saw him scribbling on his notepad. Because he had curly hair and was olive-skinned, the indecipherable scribbles on his pad really alarmed her. These scribbles looked like they were Arabic. Add to that the fact, that he wouldn't strike up a conversation with her when she tried caused her to become highly suspicious that she was sitting next to a terrorist. The woman slipped a note to the flight attendant to alert the attendant of her fears. The flight crew first removed the woman so she could be interviewed, then they asked Dr. Menzio to leave the plane. After two hours of interrogation, security realized that Dr. Menzio was not calculating how to detonate an explosive charge on the aircraft, but instead he was only trying to solve a mathematical problem on his notepad as he prepared for the academic presentation he was scheduled to deliver in Toronto the next day. The woman was allowed to take a different flight of her choosing and Dr. Menzio was allowed to re-take his seat as the original flight proceeded to Syracuse after all the passengers suffered a two-hour delay.
I need to forward this story to my Canadian colleagues as it perfectly explains the rise of Donald Trump. The fear and paranoia that has been cultivated in the U.S., especially since 9-11, has affected a sizable percentage of Americans to such a degree that they are unable to distinguish between real threats and mathematics. The constant warnings we are bombarded by, especially at airports, that threats are all around us and must be reported have put some people on complete edge and Donald Trump is doing a masterful job of stoking these same people's fears with his rhetoric. Add to this the Trumpian and Republican scapegoating of Muslims and Mexicans and other brown-skinned people, and it's no wonder that poor, olive-skinned, Italian Dr. Menzio was mistaken for the "enemy."
The United States is also a country that has become so tuned in to social media, online fun, video games, reality television, and other forms of entertainment that many of us can't even recognize mathematics when we see it. The woman on the airplane, perhaps prompted by watching too much Jack Bauer or other espionage programming, saw secret code or Arabic messages, where there was only math. A person like Donald Trump, a reality TV star himself, thrives in an environment where a sizable percentage of the population has difficulty sorting through the blizzard of images and figuring out where reality and fiction diverge. Instead of cultivating a thoughtful society of rational, critical thinkers, we are creating an army of consumers whose minds travel wherever their whims take them.
Finally, the woman faced no sanction or consequence for her idiocy and paranoia. She was not even forced to sit next to Dr. Menzio on the flight to Syracuse or to apologize to him and all the other inconvenienced passengers for her madness. Instead, she was rewarded with a different flight of her choosing. Similarly, what consequences have those who stir up fear and paranoia received for their actions? Almost none at all. Those in the media who stoke the flames and politicians who scapegoat and antagonize have received almost no censure. Even Donald Trump has escaped, until very recently, the intense scrutiny and critical examination from the press that he has deserved. Instead, media organizations like Fox, CNN, and MSNBC, have given him free publicity by broadcasting virtually every one of his speeches, interviews, and utterances, even admitting they broadcast Wall-to-Wall Trump because it has helped their ratings and bottom lines. No consequences for spouting paranoia, ignorance, and madness; instead, if your lunacy is entertaining enough and can capture viewers, you get a free forum.
Yes, Dr. Menzio was using, OMG, Arabic numerals. Yes, he was also utilizing Al-Gebra in his calculations. And, in preparation for his conference he was certainly constructing methods of math instruction. Nevertheless, Dr. Menzio was doing absolutely nothing that warranted removal from a flight to Syracuse. But the ignorant, paranoid woman, in full Donald Trump mode, thought otherwise and her ignorance was given power that was totally unwarranted. In a nation filled with millions and millions of people infected with this ignorance and fear, inhabited by battalions of citizens as oblivious as the woman on the flight to Syracuse, when people like this use their power of the ballot, my Canadian friends, this is how you get Donald Trump standing only one election day away from the White House.
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