Enter Karl Rove, Super Genius...or is he?
He's a bright, very well-educated, highly-connected, very powerful Republican who has somehow convinced a significant portion of not so well-educated, alienated, fading and marginalized working Americans that their real enemy is education, community and prosperity, and anything and anyone that offers a plan to raise the accessibility of such things to a wider set of Americans.
So, yes -- I'd say he's done quite a number...but since human beings desire knowledge and community and material well-being, what he is doing is diverting a very powerful current from its natural course.
Perhaps that's not so swift.
How come? For no matter how mighty the dam, eventually the stream will reassert itself.
The end result will be the destruction of the dam -- and the damned artifice -- same as every other instance when those who prized domination over democracy held sway.
And, as is the custom with deluges, much general misery and destruction will come with the collapse.
On second thought...no. It's not that Karl Rove is so smart, on account he's not.
It's not even that most human beings are so stupid. That's the bitter, easy, fatalistic conclusion, and it's wrong, too.
It's that trust in knowledge, in community and in the worth of one's own words and works is so rare, that it is easy for dominators and tyrants to walk in, pose as saviors...and work their mischief and play their games with the minds and fortunes and lives of the hopeless and misled.
The good news is that the same tools being attempted to lock people into ignorance and alienation and an emerging caste system can be used to combat such efforts...
...and be used to invent new instruments for liberation.
Like cute cartoons featuring colorful dinosaurs, for example.
I mean, really. How can a person look at such powerful concentrations of cuteness and not feel empowered? :)