(Warning: If you normally find my writing dense and incomprehensible, don't bother with this post).
After watching and listening to Rick Scott's deposition in a civil suit back in 1995, the brain came up with the suggestion that perhaps the phrase "I don't know," as spoken, is not necessarily the same as what is customarily transcribed. What if, "ay dun no," is not an admission of ignorance, but rather a claim to having done nothing -- i.e. short for "I done nothing."
If some brains do not recognize the reversal of meaning encoded in the syllable 'not,' isn't it just as possible that the distinction between 'know' and 'no' is missing? We call Republicans the 'party of no' because of their habitual oppositionaly stance. But what if their 'no' is interchangeable with or a variant of 'know'? Since almost all their utterances are transcribed from audio recordings by literate people, there's no way to tell if some of their speech wouldn't make more sense, if we took their linguistic disability into account. What we hear may not be what they say.
We know that Donald Rumsfeld was perplexed by the concept symbolized by the word 'know' because of his famous musings on the 'known knowns' and the 'known unknowns' and the 'unknown unknowns' and he even explained 'what we don't know we don't know' but left out the 'unknown knowns,' the things he knows without being aware -- perhaps because he's unaware or in denial. Which suggests that the connection between knowlege and awareness may be foreign to him. His knowlege is an expression of memory (information), rather than perception.
It seems sort of strange that the instinct-driven seem precluded from perceiving their own perceptions. It's as if sensory perceptions trigger emotions and get stuck. Perhaps that's because there's a disconnect between the basal ganglia and the cognitive brain, the memory bank. The missing link.
If there is a disconnect, then logical conclusions are pretty much ruled out. And, while it is possible that Rick Scott maintained his ignorance as a front through two hours of interrogation, it also seems possible that his not knowing the meaning of words was not feigned.
What we have to confront is that we have created organizations for which having parrots at the top is ideal. People parroting what other people say and write and doing so uncritically is perfect for organizations designed to negate personal liability.