From Baghdad to Washington: How the Trump Administration Mirrors the Mongol Destruction of Knowledge
In 1258, the Mongols invaded Baghdad and destroyed the House of Wisdom — the greatest library and center of scientific thought in the world at that time. In 2025, the United States—once the global beacon of science, innovation, and free thought—faces its own siege. This time, not by horseback invaders, but by suits and slogans, budget cuts and denialism.
The names have changed. The methods have modernized. But the underlying force is the same: a fear and rejection of knowledge.
🏛️ The House of Wisdom: A Beacon Extinguished
Baghdad’s House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah) was a flourishing intellectual hub where Greek philosophy, Persian astronomy, Indian mathematics, and Arab medicine came together. Under the Abbasid Caliphate, scholars of every religion and background collaborated to translate, expand, and preserve the sum total of the world's knowledge.
When Hulagu Khan’s Mongol forces sacked Baghdad, they didn't just conquer a city—they wiped out centuries of learning. Books were dumped into the Tigris River in such quantities that the water allegedly ran black with ink. Scientists and scholars were killed. What followed was a centuries-long intellectual and cultural decline in the region.
🏛️ The U.S. as a Modern House of Wisdom
For the past century, the United States has been the modern world’s House of Wisdom.
NASA put humans on the moon.
NOAA tracks climate change and predicts hurricanes.
The CDC eradicated smallpox and fought pandemics.
Public schools, libraries, and universities expanded education access across race, class, and geography.
But under the Trump administration, that edifice is being slowly and deliberately dismantled. And unlike the Mongols, this destruction comes not from outside invaders, but from within.
🔥 Parallel #1: Defunding Knowledge Institutions
The Trump administration has made it a policy goal to gut institutions of learning and science:
NOAA: Slashed by up to 27%, crippling climate research, weather forecasting, and oceanic monitoring.
NIH and CDC: Budgets restricted or redirected, including pandemic preparedness programs cut just before COVID-19.
EPA: Science panels disbanded, researchers pushed out, and regulations rewritten by industry insiders.
Public Education: Support shifted toward private schools and charter experiments; libraries defunded at local levels.
Much like the Mongols tossing books into the river, this isn’t about efficiency—it’s about destroying the tools of inquiry and dissent.
📚 Parallel #2: Anti-Intellectualism and Fear of Truth
The Mongols didn’t value scholarship. They feared it. It was a threat to their rule, their narrative, their myths of power.
Similarly, the Trump movement has turned scientists into villains, professors into propagandists, and facts into partisan weapons.
Climate change? “A hoax by China.”
COVID-19? “It'll disappear like magic.”
Education? “Leftist indoctrination.”
Journalists? “Enemies of the people.”
The result: millions rejecting vaccines, denying rising temperatures, ignoring economic data, and believing elections are stolen because their leaders told them facts are fake.
🧪 Parallel #3: Killing the Future
When the Mongols destroyed Baghdad, they didn’t just erase the past—they robbed the future. Generations of would-be scientists, philosophers, and doctors grew up in a dark age.
In America, defunding science and education has long-term consequences:
Fewer researchers to tackle AI, pandemics, or cancer.
Less preparedness for climate disasters.
A population easily manipulated by disinformation.
A workforce lagging behind global innovation leaders like China, Germany, and South Korea.
💣 The Tools of Destruction Today: Not Swords, But Sharpies
Where the Mongols used fire and steel, today’s knowledge destroyers use:
Budget cuts
Executive orders
Disinformation campaigns
Intimidation of experts
Book bans and curriculum restrictions
From libraries pulling history books to governors outlawing climate policy to a president altering a hurricane map with a Sharpie—we’ve traded torches for red pens, but the outcome is chillingly familiar.
🏚️ What Happens When the Library Falls?
In Baghdad, it took a generation to realize what was lost. In America, we might not have to wait that long:
In 2025, Texas floods killed dozens. Forecasting delays—exacerbated by Trump-era NOAA cuts—may have cost lives.
Public trust in vaccines cratered, leading to resurging outbreaks of preventable diseases.
High school students are learning rewritten versions of history, stripped of uncomfortable truths.
We're living the early days of a new intellectual collapse, orchestrated not by barbarians but by bureaucrats who know exactly what they're doing.
🌍 Lessons from Baghdad: Rebuild or Relapse
The destruction of the House of Wisdom was a turning point—a warning in world history. Knowledge doesn’t just build civilizations. It safeguards them. When it is lost, what follows is not order but chaos.
We are at a similar crossroads today.
Will we rebuild? Or will we let the modern-day Tigris run black with the data, studies, forecasts, and facts that could have saved us?
If we keep treating scientists like enemies, and facts like threats, we shouldn’t be surprised when the future treats us like fools.
Final Thought:
It took centuries for the Islamic world to recover from 1258. America might not have that long. Because the real question isn’t whether we can rebuild after this anti-knowledge movement.
The question is: Will there be anyone left who remembers how?