In this series, my second compilation of essays published originally on Substack, I use the “lost” Gospel of Mary of Magdala to examine matters pertaining to teaching and leadership in the current dystopia of the American experiment. The “weft” of my argument opens with a very blunt retort to I.A. Richards’ famous assertion that “rhetoric should be the study of misunderstanding and its remedies:” “Sorry, Ivor, there is no remedy for misunderstanding! The best thing to do is avoid it.” Subsequent essays proffer an assortment of prophylactic concepts and strategies toward that end, including “passive listening,” “safe” spaces, and “unconditional trust.” Other essays explore the intentional dismantling of the public education system in the US over the last 25 years, the coincident and equally intentional diminution of higher education, and the valorization of “ignorance” as a means to assert control over everyday Americans. The “woof” of the argument is a series of close readings of the Gospel of Mary, examining the many misunderstandings it enacts and perpetrates in the context of the contemporaneous cultural clash between Gnostic and Orthodox Christianities during the first half of the first millennium CE, the sum of which reveal that many of the most intransigent problems vexing us today were baked into the system right from the outset. It all ends, surprisingly (even to me), on a positive note about the future, the current madness clearing the ground for what’s next and new. And much better.