My favorite teacher in high school was Mr. Rowe.  He was my sophomore English teacher, during the first year Lake Havasu High School opened its doors. The last year he taught at Lake Havasu High School, before he retired, he was my son’s English teacher.

Dean Rowe taught us more than English—he taught us how to think. I remember the day he told our class the school had decided to start requiring its students to wear school uniforms. This was back in 1969 or 1970, when girls wore mini skirts despite our dress code, and our generation was not receptive to the idea of school uniforms in public schools.

We spent that entire period brainstorming ways to stop the new rule. But just as the class was coming to an end, Mr. Rowe revealed there were no plans to require us to wear uniforms. It had all been an exercise, designed to make us think critically and work together toward a common goal. Before we left for our next period, we all promised not to tell the next class, so we wouldn’t spoil the exercise for them.

I remember him teaching Shakespeare and mythology. He told us stories about his life that inevitably segued into a teaching moment. One I specifically recall involved his time in the Navy. Dean’s students all knew he had been in the Navy. There was at least one vintage Navy recruitment poster hanging on our classroom wall.

On this particular day, he brought up the topic of his time in the Navy, which turned into a lesson on marketing and advertising techniques, specifically the one that involved triggering the target’s emotions to get them to react in a certain way; either buy the product or enlist in the military. I believe it was that vintage poster that did it for Dean.

There was another one of his lectures I always remembered. I thought about it yesterday, and I had something of an epiphany,  making me realize it described many voters today.

I suspect the intent of the lecture was to teach us things are not always as they appear, AKA don’t judge a book by the cover.  Yet, my new takeaway from that lecture, has nothing to do with Mr. Rowe’s original intent.  As I recall, Mr. Rowe was sharing with us an experience he had in college. His class was taken to a mental facility and were required to interact with some of the patients there, and then later Dean and his fellow students would analyze their interactions with the patients to deduce why they were in the facility.

There was a patient—let’s call him Hal—who Mr. Rowe spent some time with that day. Hal was a nice, softspoken, friendly young man. Mr. Rowe couldn’t understand why he had been institutionalized.  Later he learned Hal had been on a farm where someone was operating a hay bailer. Out of the blue, without warning, Hal picked up another man and shoved him in the running hay bailer.

Had Hal intended to murder someone that day? No. Hal was simply curious as to what would happen if someone was put in the hay bailer. His intent was never to kill anyone. But his brain was unable to think ahead and mentally work out what the consequences of his actions might be.

While Dean’s intended lesson that day might have been never judge a book by its cover, the delayed lesson I learned 55 years later is that some people are unable to mentally work out the consequences of their actions. They must live those consequences before they understand. And yet, for some, even that may not teach them. I don’t think it taught Hal anything.

Since the presidential election I’ve seen a lot of MAGA supporters cheering on Trump when he talks about things like  taking over Greenland, Canada, and Panama, without deference to the citizens who live there, or the fact they are our allies.

To them, in this moment in time, they relish that bully behavior, believing it shows strength and will demand the respect of the world. He’s their guy, and they love what they perceive as toughness.

However, they fail to have the ability to look into the future and use their critical thinking skills to see what this will actually do to our country—how this thing might end.

But gee, Bobbi, you say, no one can predict the future. To which I disagree.

Just look to history for the answer. And it doesn’t end well. Not even for Trump.