The Dumbing Down of America

By far the biggest story, the defining one in fact, of the last 40 or so years is the Republican (A.L.E.C.) orchestrated “dumbing down of America,” and the American "mainstream media" has not only not investigated or reported on this monumental American disaster, it has colluded in it.

None of the mainstreamers has ever undertaken in any of these ongoing decades to investigate the decline in funding for public education - terrible teacher salaries, no investment in school buildings and supplies except the replacing of good textbooks with disinforming ones and at the same time the huge amounts of money spent in endless attacks: on public education in general and on teachers' unions, and on course content in particular (e.g., on government / Democracy / THE URGENT NECESSITY THAT EVERY ONE VOTE AND BE INFORMED); on universities, in which attacks they have largely succeeded by making American college and graduate education the most expensive on Earth; on real research and real research institutions; on grants; and, of course, on broadcast and print media, including Public Television which though under right wing attack is nonetheless, like the Mainstreamers, not observing these degradations. Then there is the ever rising cost of college education and the CONCOMITANT LACK of available, affordable money to pay for it, one of our Nation's biggest scandals that has, until Elizabeth Warren's campaign to help, been ignored by the Mainstreamers.

The mainstreamers have not brought before the public the decline in U.S. world educational ranking (3rd in 1979; nearing 38th now, a change which could not possibly be accidental) or that there are no longer enough qualified American students who can afford it to fill our graduate schools thus reducing the quality of the education - for lack of revenue. Nor has the media ever even mentioned - let alone investigated - the rightwing's own massive investment and involvement in disinformation: their pretend news; the ugly, anti-scientific, falsified research; phony research organizations and grants; their anti-democracy activities; and their endless hate-, fear-, and WAR-mongering. The MM has until the Trump era virtually ignored the massive scandal of the Rupert Murdoch enterprises' malpractices both in Great Britain and here. However they are finally dealing with it appropriately - calling lies lies and liars liars.

And not only have they not been following all these huge stories, the mainstreamers have themselves: quit telling the whole truth; been reporting rumors as truth; increasingly given voice to their own rightwing liars; ignored the grotesque and even dangerous fabrications of the right, or pretended that the rightwing lies were somehow balanced by what was said on the left (...What left? ...What fabrications? ..."Justifiable" lies? ...Dangerous lies that can be ignored???). And then there is the incredible malfeasance of the New York Times with regard to the crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinians.

This collusion of the mainstream media in this attack on America is stunning given their supposed "free media" ethic, their supposed commitment to real news, their supposed mastery of business and the importance of an educated labor force for America's competitiveness, the need for well educated police, the need for well-informed, believing people to defend Democracy, the still fresh infamy of their complicity in the run-up to the Iraq War (re-invented for each new military excursion) and PREEMINENTLY that these organizations will be the first to go once our Democracy is lost. Even their dominant "corporate" (read rightwing/immoral) point of view, won't convince America's now thoroughly, aggressively ignorant that any but the most rightwing media aren’t “LIBERAL” because this has been a staple of the dumb-down campaign.

At least with the advent of the Trump era attack on our Democracy, the MM with the NOTABLE EXCEPTION OF Facetime and Twitter> has started investigating and printing the truth about what the pro-Russia Republican teams are involved in. But the Mainstream Media has to study in depth this Dumbing Down campaign and then demand National solutions in order to join with Thomas Jefferson -- BTW America's number one anti-big-government patriot -- who nonetheless reminded all of us that "The Nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was and never will be."