the dumbing down of america

There has been a noticeable trend over the past twenty five years, it has become more apparent in every election cycle that it costs more money to win elections. It is staggering the millions it costs to run for even mayor of a big city. This is really old news. The interesting question is why.

Let us turn the clock back to 1976. Before this time, political contests were usually decided in smoke filled back rooms where the Big Money Boyz called the shots. This started to change after World War 2 when servicemen and women started using the G.I. Bill to go to college. This was the first time the working class was given access to higher education. This was expanded after the Korean war. The effect was that America had an army of engineers to win the space race against the Soviets.

During the Vietnam war draft deferments were given to men in college and thanks to LBJ. Student loans were easy to get. So the colleges were full with so many young people getting a liberal education. It was only natural that as these young people grew up and learned how the government was supposed to work, they became increasingly dissatisfied with how the government really worked. So began all the movements.

The civil rights, environmental, and war protest movements. The environmental movement has been the most enduring of the all the movements. The government made the movement official by creating a Department of the Environment. Which has been in court battles with the Congress to enforce the environmental laws ever since. Draw your own conclusions about that.

So a well educated and healthier population decided to take a more active role in elective government. Barack Obama being the most dramatic example of this grass roots movement. Barack will run against McCain who will be backed by the Big Money Boyz, But Barack will win. Because we are at one of those important turning points in history where the old system no longer works and is replaced with a new system, and only history will tell us whether it works better than the old system.

There is a trend that has been developing for at least the past twenty years. The cost of a college education for the middle class has gotten more expensive and the government is paying far less. Veterans were the first to feel it as the military started scaling back on how much college it would pay for. Even as good paying manufacturing jobs started leaving America. The American middle class was required to pay for more of their children's higher education. If you happened to be divorced the government will force you to pay for your child's education, but if you stayed married your child is on his own. How is that for irony.

America is way behind in the math and sciences which means engineering and anyone who can read knows that. Has the government done anything special to improve this situation? The answer is NO. Most middle class young men and women even with scholarships graduate with crushing debt in student loans. Could it be that the government or the Big Money Boyz are tired of all these young people knowing how the system should work and trying to change the way it does work. Trying to take back the power of the people.

Hilary Clinton proposed universal health care in the early 90s and has been vilified and murdered in the press ever since. Is it just a conspiracy theory? Or is there a movement by the powers that run this country to dumb-down America? The public schools are a shambles. Those who do not get an education have a very good chance of ending up as guests of the justice system. Not everyone of course, but enough people that the states can not afford to house them.

It is simple but true that a well educated and healthy population benefits everyone. When the least of us do better we all do better. Politicians always talk about the American spirit of innovation. This means more than devising ways to borrow money and create hallucinated wealth. It means having a well educated and healthy people who have the tools to create and engineer solutions to the big and very serious problems that face this nation and the world. Which movement are you a part of?