“Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal….The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit. An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country.’’

— Charles Simic (born 1938), Serbian-American essayist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet as well as a professor emeritus of literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire. He lives in Strafford, N.H.