Reply #3: I don't know where you get your statistics

[Gyre]

but that isn't important. You're correct in the main part of your points.

What I've been afraid of for a long time, in the context of growth of mindless TV, and social promotion in the public school system, is what seems to me to be an increasing inability for America to heal itself (solve it's own diseases) because it no longer has any historical memory, nor any analytical ability. Hence, it can't tell when it's being "played" by a dishonest government.

(McCarthyism, I'm convinced, was killed as quickly as it was because America was a smarter country in the 50s than it is now. More historical knowledge and better public schools at least in the American centers of power (the northeast).)

However, dumbing down the population will only work for so long. The peasantry in England before the Magna Carta didn't have a lot of historical or analytical ability either. Still, they had apparently, an intrinsic threshold that was crossed by a despotic and corrupt government. Thus triggering a shift from feudalism to a more democratic form in an early western government.

My point is, there's hope, but only in a pretty abstract way. I suggest weapons training cause I think it's going to get pretty ugly before it gets better. With all the shit it's suffered for the last 5 years, America is still substantially oblivious to the treachery at the top.

Gyre