What do you call someone appointed to a position for which they have absolutely no prior experience,  a person who got the appointment by a tie-breaking vote from Vice president Pence? Why, a Trump appointee, of course. A GOP contributor who has contributed, along with her family, so much money for so long, that when asked just how much, the answer was perhaps 200 million dollars. The only rational conclusion as to why she was appointed was that she bought her way into public office.

The second reason to put someone like this in charge of the Department of Education is as a figurehead for forces “behind the throne” to easily manipulate and carry out their agenda(s). Make no mistake, manipulating education is the long-term gateway to control. With someone like Betsy DeVos in that position, it will evolve from the Department of Education to the Department of Indoctrination. Or at least that’s what DeVos’ many highly conservative supporters hope. Her appointment is just cog in the machine to gut knowledge, and science in particular, from within the federal government and how it can effect policy, policy which up to this point wasn’t particularly favorable to the folks who’re now in control in Washington. Folks in the oil and gas and coal industries. With Betsy in place, if you think some of the education laws that have been attempted at the state level were insane, just wait for the new DeVos federal education guidelines to begin to trickle out.

Felon
n. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.

Fib
n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar’s nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.

Finance
n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America’s most precious discoveries and possessions.

Flop
v. Suddenly to change one’s opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.

Fool
n. A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscience, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the platitude and the circle of the sciences. He created patriotism and taught the nations war — founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine and Chicago. He established monarchical and republican government. He is from everlasting to everlasting — such as creation’s dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the procession of being. His grandmotherly hand was warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares Man’s evening meal of milk-and-morality and turns down the covers of the universal grave. And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion he will sit up to write a history of human civilization.

Freedom
n. Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint’s infinite multitude of methods. A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. Liberty. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.

Selections taken from the Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce as they apply to the 45^th president of the United States.