Sorry about the inactivity.  I simply have been struggling with what I wish to write.  I generally prefer to write about my art form; but, the past two years have left me in such a funk I can’t think of anything else but the disaster that is occurring within our federal government and our society as a whole.  

My concern is that the United States, constitutionally and culturally is dying.  The fact that after two years approximately 40% of the American electorate, which consists of millions — MILLIONS — of people still think of Donald J. Trump as, not only their preferred president, but actually love this racist, misogynist, narcissistic sociopath.  Ergo, this puts me into an existential dilemma.  You see, Trump with his immorality, pathological lying, pre-pubescent and generally disgusting behaviour, is not the problem:  it’s the gratuitous stupidity and wanton ignorance of the American public.  I know it’s convenient for news commentators on shows like “Morning Joe” to pontificate that “the American people aren’t stupid.  They know what’s going on.  They’ll get it in time, etc. etc., blah, blah blah…  Unfortunately, such is not the case.  The American public, for the most part (that includes those who didn’t vote for Trump), ARE stupid.  And (yes, this does sound conspiratorial, but then again, conspiracies do exist), it cannot be fully dismissed that those who would be most threatened by an highly educated electorate would have a lot to lose. It’s simply a matter that when people are educated sufficiently to think critically they will choose people who have their best interests in mind; i. e., they will vote for those, who like themselves, believe that public office actually means working for the public good.  

Needless to say that has been not been the case for a long time.  Witness the latest Senatorial elections in Mississippi and Florida, and the Georgia governors race. The GOP and those even further to the right (the so-called alt-right, i. e., nut jobs, racists (admitted or otherwise), the fascists (admitted or otherwise), religious fundamentalists (now under the problematic and overly inclusive blanket of “evangelicals”), and all other so-called conservatives,  have had this problem with the public good.  Oh sure, they love to prattle on about how free enterprise and the open, competitive, market, i.e. capitalism,  is supposed to solve the issues of public health, transportation, shelter, insurance, and just about anything else that appertain to those essential aspects of living in a truly civilised society; i. e., as being good for the general public; yet, they know full well that the only people who genuinely benefit from these policies are those who own or have vested interests in the profit margins of these highly monopolised industries — not the public whose interest they are supposed to avail.

The reason and solution to all of this is quite simple, albeit initially expensive, but is what I see to be the only true remedy for a true democracy:  education.  I mean education on a scale never conceived before in this society.  And it’s not just the math and science courses that have simplistically been espoused.  I mean an expansive, heuristic education which teaches children to think critically; which encourages them to read and reach rational conclusions that will better their immediate circumstances and those to follow.  

The current United States system of public education, by virtue of its Federalist beginnings, has become this terrible mish-mash of locally mandated curricula dependent upon the political bent of that local school board.  The end result is, of course those who are in most need of a well developed, intensive, broad education get almost nothing; whereas, others, usually the more affluent, get the benefit of the latest information and learning techniques.  This is why we have the miserable political situation we have.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why a prevaricating misogynistic, sociopath can be elected president of the United States; and then proceed to completely counterman virtually everything and anything that even remotely pertains to constitutional government.  When you have a populous that easily manipulated by virtue of the fact they don’t know how reason, distinguishing between the actual truth and what they are told by those invested with keeping them stupid as true, it comes as no surprise. Such is silage upon which the uneducated feed.

Simply put, you cannot have a truly successful democracy without, at the very least, a well educated electorate.