Why Trump Wanted to Shut Down
the Department of Education

I shall not weary you with the customary lamentations concerning secondary school standards—lowered annually, of course, to satisfy the vanity of official statistics—nor shall I dwell on those degree factories that churn out masters and doctorates with the frantic haste of a central bank in times of financial ruin; to do so would be to force open already gaping doors with the grace of a battering ram. No. I prefer instead to regale you with a modern fable, or rather a farcical tragedy, which explains why dear Mr. Trump, in a sudden flash of fiscal lucidity, resolved to turn off the national education tap. This is the tale of X, a creature of our age whose gender I shall prudently conceal. Fatuity, you see, is a universal blemish. It requires no gender to flourish.

Picture the archetype. X has disowned their roots, erased their family name to dissolve into Uncle Sam’s great melting pot, and struts across LinkedIn branded not as an "expert"—a term far too vulgar—but as a "PhD" or "Dr." They wear these letters like medals of valor. A desperate screen for emptiness. A tragic bid for distinction where there is, in truth, only sterile conformity.

But the winds of fortune have shifted across the Atlantic. Mr. Trump, that businessman of the impetuous forelock, has cut the purse strings. He shut the valve on federal contracts, casting out battalions of researchers into the cold. And if he threatened to dismantle the Department of Education, it was out of a cold, implacable economic cynicism: why trouble oneself with shaping fine minds in America when one can simply import stuffed heads from across the globe? Why cultivate when one can simply buy? America no longer educates—if indeed it ever did. It shops. And X, alas, remains an unsold item on the discount shelf.

Returning home with tail between legs, X expected the red carpet. What sweet candor! Of doctors, we have legions already, protesting outside Parliament. I mean outside, pacing the perimeter, and not inside, slumbering on the velvet seats of the state.

Deprived of glory, X now sells us hot air: "Emotional Intelligence and Leadership." The concept is of a truly diabolical beauty: it is the art of motivating modern galley slaves to toil twenty-four hours a day so they might afford their Netflix subscriptions and their iPhones—and soon, the very air they breathe once their data centers have choked the atmosphere—all with a beaming smile. It is management through chemistry. Collapsing? "Here, have some coffee, some sugar, a line of white, that will set you right!" We manufacture robots worn down to the thread, and we call it progress. Robots who, the moment they cease to consume, find themselves hunted by ICE.

It was here that chance, destiny, or perhaps surveillance crossed our paths. True to that legendary Moroccan hospitality—a relic of an age when people still knew how to welcome a guest—I opened my door to X. And what was my reward? Larceny! X stole my telephone.

The irony is so pure it blinds: X, a scholar funded by one of America’s top ten universities, is writing a dissertation on... "Ethics and Artificial Intelligence." What a magnificent farce! X boasts of understanding the morality of machines, yet fails at the most rudimentary human decency. But let us not blame the machines! Large language models are accused of plundering knowledge, but this is a falsehood. AI is merely a mirror. It reflects what it finds upon the web and the diverse scholarship of great continents. And yet, who plundered the libraries of Baghdad? Who absorbed the wisdom of Andalusia, of Africa, of Asia, without ever citing a source, pocketing mathematics, medicine, and astronomy to build their grand "Renaissance"? Who burned the Great Library of Alexandria? You know the answer. The LLMs merely recite the systematic omissions organized by the history of the victors. They scan a web where our heritage has already been erased.

This misfortune sent me crashing back to that verse which echoes like a gong:

“قُلْ هَلْ يَسْتَوِي الَّذِينَ يَعْلَمُونَ وَالَّذِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ” سورة الزمر - الآية 9

Make no mistake. This is not a matter of education or degrees. X "knows". X already holds a doctorate in philosophy and is currently drafting a second. X has amassed facts, theories, information; their head is well-stuffed, like an attic where junk is piled high without order. It is a technical, cold, calculating knowledge. But what the verse points to is Conscience—the Light at the back of the cave.

A well-formed mind is one that judges, weighs, and distinguishes the just from the unjust. Knowledge without conscience, as Rabelais wrote, is but the ruin of the soul. X is a ruin adorned with diplomas. An encyclopedia capable of theft, with not a shred of human decency left. Such is the consequence of an individualized civility, of technical expertise divorced from human grace, of Instagrammed empathy, and of capitalized respect.

Finally, let us look at our own leaders. The canvas is not entirely bleak. There is that courageous quarter who, lacking colossal means, attempt to fashion a future, to manage with sheer ingenuity. And then there are the rest, who have forgotten. Forgotten the meaning of the word "اقرء", remembering only the figures in their bank accounts. Forgotten the opening lines of our anthem:

 « منبت الأحرار؛ مشرق الأنوار »

Light does not emanate from a doctorate purchased on credit. It springs from the memory of who we are. From those qualities and values which, when understood and respected, will allow us to live in the best of all possible worlds.

This essay was written by Wiam ATFI, sharpened and translated by Voltaire AI, a satirical and philosophical assistant.

January 26, 2026.