A British philanthropist once said that - "In order to stay in power, the government must keep its' people uneducated".
One need not look too far to see what is going on with the public school system in this country. Not only are our schools bad, but we have the highest rate of drop outs than any highly industrialized country in the world. This has been our history and continues to be the great American curse.
Successive American Governments have always taken advantage of the lesser educated citizens. This is done by tightening the noose on the poor, abandoning the inner cities and syphoning aid into newly created suburbs or 'old money' neighborhoods.
All across the low income neighborhoods, a large majority of parents work two jobs to make ends meet, thereby leaving most children unattended at home. Kids eventually drop out of school and begin getting into all kinds of trouble. By bureaucratizing the public school systems and moving from small to very large classes, overwhelmed teachers are mostly coming in to pick up a pay check. Meanwhile, it's the kids that lose. The middle school and high school drop out rate has been rising steadily since the mid nineteen seventies. Besides, this trend is part of our history and has been an epidemic in the Appalachian region for sometime.
The problem is, these lesser educated people are still proud citizens of this great nation and they have a right to vote. These are folks with an average educational competence of a sixth grader. These are folks who lack any understanding of how Government works and yet have the power to elect people into political office.
What needs to ultimately happen is an amendment in the constitution that states - An eligible voter must be a US citizen, at least 18 years of age, with at a minimum, a high school diploma, GED, or equivalent educational achievement.
If this were the case, campaigns would mostly be about the issues facing the nation. McCain and his Rovian ilk know that ignorant people are extremely easy to manipulate. This is why the false campaign ads are very effective. Eventually, if we don't rise up and demand a change in how our democracy is conducted, we the educated masses will always end up with incompetent leaders who continually get elected by the overwhelming majority of lesser educated citizens.
This is a fact the Republicans have learned to exploit to their advantage. They know the code words to get these voters to the booth. The rest of the world sees this and they put us all in the same bundle and call us idiots.
I wrote this diary to assist us in realizing the power of the electorate and what we are up against. The solution lies in finding a way to educate those who don't realize what's happening and hitting them with the message for a home run.