Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.

— Daniel 12:3

I’ve always been fascinated with immune systems.

When I was 13, I contracted diabetes after my immune system attacked and disabled my pancreas. My mother’s immune system attacked her eyes with bird shot retinapathy, rendering her nearly blind. After the transplant, my immune system had to be utterly muted, lest it reject the new organs.

Now, the nation has developed its own immune system — against logic, reason and science. Call it a Cognitive Immune System. And it comes courtesy of the Republican Party and its Dullard-In-Chief.

Trumptards and the man they worship have decided that the most effective defense of their long-held belief system — one largely scaffolded by religion — is to challenge the progress we’ve made as a species as progress at all.

They have even built up anti-bodies to protect their CIS, in the form of conspiracy theories, social media and, of course, religious idolatry. Even the notion of intellect has become a criticism of our elected officials.

It’s difficult to lay this at the feet of anyone but those on the political right. Consider: Anti-vaxxers, flat-Earthers, climate deniers, creationists — all are branches under the Republican umbrella. Name one anti-intellectual theory that does not belong to the right, which has somehow turned science into an ideology. Even in the midst of a global pandemic, protective masks have become a political statement. Is it any wonder the U.S. has nearly triple the coronavirus deaths of any country on the planet?

Now consider the most renown mouthpieces of the dimwitted, which have overtaken the helm of the GOP: Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Pat Robertson. Republicans began priming the dummy pump decades ago (remember when Ronald Reagan was largely dismissed as the bubble-headed co-star opposite a chimp in Bedtime for Bonzo?). GOP  strategists struck electoral gold in that mine shaft, and increasingly fracked the political landscape with the likes of George W., Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin, Ben Carson, and on and on and on andonandonandon. They became the party too dumb to fail.

Even their media outlets have cornered the market on stupidity: Breitbart, The Sinclair Group, Fox News, not to mention the blogs, radio talk shows and news hours of the cognitively-challenged (Jeanine Pirro, anyone?). Their latest darling is Newsmax, which landed a Trump interview recently thanks to investigative gumshoe and cockholster Sean Spicer.

In conservatives’ defense, some have seen the mauling that has happened within the ranks. Washington Post columnist George Will made news — and enemies — for a recent piece in which he wrote that “Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers.” (By the way, George, your invitation to the National Prayer Breakfast must have gotten lost in the mail.)

Unfortunately, Will & Co. have run smack-dab into The iPhone Paradox, which confounds at least 45% of the nation.

The iPhone Paradox is based loosely on Fermi’s Paradox, which posits that, given the billions of stars similar to the sun in our galaxy alone, we should have found intelligent life — or any life — somewhere in the universe. Yet that cupboard remains bare.

Similarly, we have managed to fit enough computing power (more than was aboard the Apollo 11 moon landing) into a candy bar-sized gadget to illuminate our brains to enlightenment. Yet we still doubt the credibility of scientists on everything from the Earth’s shape to its temperature — as we reach for an iPhone to give us our global positioning to find grandma’s house.

All that knowledge, at our fingertips. Yet it sits untouched in our back pocket.

Perhaps cognitive thinking is like alien life. We don’t really act like we’re interested in finding it. And if we’re not interested, why would it be interested in finding us?