Confused Trump Supporters Mistake Declaration of Independence For Liberal ‘Propaganda’

Last month, we brought you “Bring Back The ‘Smoke-Filled Rooms‘” in which we cited a paper by Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes  on the way to noting that Americans have proven definitively that they’re too stupid to vote.

Here’s an excerpt from Rauch and Wittes’ paper:

Voters are very ignorant, and always have been. In October of 2015, a survey by Fairleigh Dickenson University found that only a third of respondents could name the three branches of government. Only one of eight could name the three branches, knew that the Republicans controlled the House, and knew that John Roberts was chief justice; a quarter knew none of the above. Majorities don’t know who has the power to declare war, the functions of the branches, or who controls monetary policy. The public wildly overestimates the crime rate and believes the government spends more on foreign aid than on Social Security or Medicare. In 2007, more than half said the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. Such examples can be multiplied ad infinitum, and they aren’t new. In 1964, only 38 percent knew that the Soviet Union was not a member of NATO, and in 1986, a majority could not identify Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet leader.

“The American Founders,” Rauch and Wittes note, “were not populists.”

Well, in a testament to the idea that America could use a little more backroom deal making over cigarettes and bourbon and a little less “participation” by Joe the plumber, quite a few Twitter users were appalled at what some called “propaganda” tweeted out on July 4 by NPR’s official account.

This “propaganda” firehose lasted for 113 consecutive tweets.

One person who wasn’t pleased was “Darren Mills” who, on his Twitter profile, describes himself as “a Libertarian, a Christian, [and] an ex-writer for big news.”

Darren also offers a possible explanation for why he is an “ex”-writer. He was, he claims, “blackballed… thanks to left wing/feminist job lynch mob.”

That may or may not be true, but based on Darren’s responses to NPR’s “propaganda” tweets, we would posit another explanation for why he was “blackballed”: namely, Darren is a fucking idiot.

Guess how we know? We know because Darren tweeted this to NPR on Tuesday:

Any guesses as to what “trash” Darren is referring to?

If you said “The Declaration of Independence,” you win a Darren-style American flag logo next to your Twitter name.

Here’s Darren again:

But Darren shouldn’t feel bad (and trust us, he doesn’t – just look at his most recent tweets), because he wasn’t the only American who didn’t get it.

There was Debbie:

And then there was “A Human Being,” who was convinced that NPR had been hacked and then hilariously tried to decode what she thought was some kind of hidden message in their “cryptic” tweets:

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“The Founders.”

And then there was “Elephino,” who correctly surmised that NPR was on a “mission,” but quite clearly didn’t understand what that “mission” was:

And then “Jason”:

“Um,” no, Jason.

And don’t forget “John”, who thinks it’s about time to “drain the swamp” – where that means getting rid of those annoying Founding Fathers:

Of course the ultimate irony in all of this is that some of the angry tweets assumed the references to the king were references to Trump, which means his supporters were tacitly (and accidentally) calling him a tyrant.

So coming full circle, we say again, “bring back the smoke-filled rooms because you’ve proven you’re too stupid to vote.”

Oh, and incidentally, if you want to contact the above-mentioned “Darren,” his information is available below (via a public tweet he pinned) – although we imagine you might have a hard time getting through given that he’s probably been swamped over the last 24 or so hours…