I think it’s important to distinguish between stupidity and ignorance. The problem is not that 40% of the country is stupid. Actual intelligence hasn’t changed all that much in a very long time. What has changed is the level, and kind, of education people receive.

The conservatives have spent the last 40 years fighting to destroy the American educational system. They have been terrifyingly successful. Funding has been cut to a fraction of what it was and the required curriculum has been turned into propaganda. Meanwhile, a society that used to view education as critical has been taught to view it with suspicion and ridicule. Parents no longer push their children to do well in school. Children believe that it will not be an important factor in the futures.

We also celebrate the virtues of willful ignorance. Choosing not to understand things is seen as bold and independent. Educated and considered opinions are not considered superior to any others, and are often viewed as inferior or less genuine. This has lead us to our current situation, where a clearly unqualified candidate was elected to lead the country because poorly educated people thought he was “one of them”. Several generations have not been taught any critical thinking skills, leaving them without the tools needed to evaluate their choices.

I am still hopeful that we can recover from our experiment with fascism, but it is going to take decades to fix the underlying problems, and that is only if the public can be convinced that they are problems and need fixing.