It has for long been said that uneducated people are easier to control. And that is the reason why leaders of undeveloped countries do not invest in education: people focus on sex and rock and roll or samba and caipirinha, whatever the combination may be, and governors go on with their shameless stealing for yet another generation. In election time, they offer some bags of rice and the empoverished populace think it is right to pay back with their vote, as gratitude for the only gifts they have ever received.
In developed countries people know not to sell their vote for a bag of rice, even because they do not lack rice, so you’d think you’re safe.
The US and the UK, with their dual class system whereby if your parents are wealthy you get the best schools and if they are not you get Big Brother, alcohol, raping rap, and are very likely doomed to a lullaby life like your parents have had, how does uneducation play out?
Generation after generation, with politicians speaking more or less the same language to each other, with terms so disconnected from people’s lives, people simply voted less and abstention rose to unprecedented levels. Politicians thought they had stricken jackpot, “we can do what we want, they don’t care”! And the divide between wealthy and poor just grew and grew.
Until… Until demagogues rose to say bulls**t that uneducated hopeless people ate up as if someone finally represented them against a political class that oppressed them and sucked them dry. Now we have enough people playing their vote as if politics were a reality show and crazy decisions get approved. Brexit, really? Shoot your economic welfare in the foot, cripple the chances of your children to progress anywhere worth going, become a rudimentary society, by choice, so a few idiots rise to power and leave like a tsunami that caused havoc and left the leftovers to the vouchers. Trump, really?! The big round button in the hand of that?!
The dummification of the people in “developed” countries, after enough generations grew up to it that they make a majority vote, means not more power but loss of power by reasonable politicians. And that was a shoot in the foot long ago.
Democracy does not work well in dumb societies. It only works well when most people are involved. Like Denmark and the other Nordic countries, where politicians are forced to resign for receiving a discount for a door for their houses (true story).
Democracy requires education. Otherwise the country falls in the hands of the first demagogue who pretends to be the people’s friend for the sake of his own pocket.
If the US and the UK did not feel themselves so inherently superior to everyone else, perhaps they would have realised this on time. Any time a people thinks they are inherently superior, their fall from power begins. Problem is the rest of all of us will have to co-pay that bill. Argh
opinionatedana 