Douglas Rooks’ recent op-ed on Trump’s goal of an ignorant electorate (Aug. 7) brought two authors to mind: Franklin D. Roosevelt and George Orwell.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. April 12 of this year was also the end of National Library Week. As Rooks laments the withdrawal of funding for knowledge and research, it is worth noting the following statement from FDR, in 1939. “I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them.”

Public libraries and public education have an intrinsic role to play in strengthening democracy, and, as Rooks noted, defunding libraries, NPR, scientific research, and the virtual extortion of universities, news organizations and law firms “is part of a broad-scale assault on knowledge itself.”

That brings to mind a slogan of the society in George Orwell’s book “1984,” “Ignorance is strength.” The authoritarian government in “1984” persistently lied to the populace and forbade the independent production of knowledge, even engaging in a deliberate effort to reduce the number of words in the English language. Fewer words virtually eliminates one’s ability to criticize the government and persuade others to fight against it. Ignorance (of the electorate) is strength (of the authoritarian government).

It is obvious that knowledge is socially produced. So, too, is ignorance, and Rooks is right to urge us to fight the deliberate production of ignorance.

Cletis Boyer
Belfast