11 March—Turkey vultures are supposed to start flying back to Canisteo, New York, during the week beginning today. (Don’t confuse them with the cliff swallows that are expected back in San Juan Capistrano, California, next week.) Turkey vultures are generally unappreciated birds even though they do us a favor by feeding almost entirely on carrion and human garbage. Human garbage? That’s why Donald Trump’s bodyguards are said to be on the constant lookout for turkey vultures.

And that takes us to a letter in yesterday’s Sunday Republican that perfectly illustrates why politicians like Donald Trump are able to thrive on the ignorance and gullibility of so many voters. The letter was written by an indignant woman—we’ll call her Mme. Anti-Defarge—defending herself against a far-left letter writer who a fortnight earlier had accused her of not checking her facts when she regurgitated statements from far-right sources.

Mme. Anti-Defarge comes out knitting needles drawn in her riposte, taking offense at the 21^st-century lefty’s innocent implication that she uses a computer. On the contrary, she boasts, she’s not computer literate, nor does she wish to be. She doesn’t use Google, Facebook, TikTok, or X. How conservative can you be? At least she has a television set and must be TV literate.

Most of Mme. Anti-Defarge’s information, she proudly and confidently assures readers, comes from “respected watchdog groups such as Judicial Watch, the U.S. Justice Foundation, Freedom Watch and The Epoch Times newspaper opinion articles by revered writers such as Victor Davis Hanson, Thomas Buckley and others.” (She must subscribe to all their publications in hard copy, for which they must be grateful.)

Mme. Anti-Defarge watches “Mark Levin’s TV program with guests worth listening to such as Attorney Alan Dershowitz and New Gingrich.” And she believes the information she gets there is “more truthful and accurate than what [she] would get from sources such as Al Jazeera or the BBC.”

It should go without saying, but she says it anyway: “That’s what’s so great about this country—others can choose their sources, and I will choose mine.” Before going into questionable details, then, Mme. Anti-Defarge observes that “fact checkers consistently check facts they do not want to be true.” Good point—and with more than a tincture of truth.

So, you may ask, what makes Mme. Anti-Defarge an ignorant and gullible voter? You mean you didn’t pick up on the “respected” and “revered” sources of what she claims is “most” of her information, by which she doubtless means “all”? Well, they’re all pretty far to the right, to put it mildly. Even registered Democrat Alan Dershowitz. Nothing, no one at all from the other side or the middle.

That’s typical. And it’s precisely why Trump and mostly ultra-right pols are able to influence their base of willfully ignorant and gullible voters so easily and effectively: the horde of pugnaciously benighted ultra-right followers gets all its news and commentary only from ultra-right media. They simply don’t want to hear the other side.

The ultra-left peanut gallery is almost as bad, mind you, but comes across as more intelligent and better informed about the opposition, if no more reasonable or willing to compromise.

Trainers often put blinkers or blinders on racehorses to keep the exploited animals narrowly focused on what the trainers think the horses should be doing. Closed minds are blinders, an invitation for demagogues and autocrats to prey on ignorance and gullibility . . .