"All men are created equal" trumpets the Declaration of Independence. Yet we do not treat 'the others' as equals. We are in dire competition with all for the necessities of life. We have inherent fear that 'the others' will take our possessions, rape our wives, and make slaves of our children. We fear it because it has and is happening everyday in this world. It is part of 'Nature', despite Steven Pinker and his 'Better Angels'. And to maintain power the political and propaganda minded use that fear to support their 'power base'. Divide and keep them ignorant so they don't have any power, don't deserve any power, and that they don't have it or deserve it because the powerful point them to 'the others' as the cause of their powerlessness. Politics pure and simple. Race, class, nationality, education achievement, intelligence, geographical location, religion, sexual appetites, even favorite foods: all are sources of personal pride and self-aggrandizement and degradation of the 'others'. The black race has been enslaved, freed, kept uneducated, separated from whites, hung and set on fire in their own back yards, hated, feared, by educated and uneducated whites since the beginning of history. Yet we fought a political fight for 80 years and a civil war for 4 years, at the cost of 600,000 lives, to stop slavery. Brown vs. School Board and then Dr. King helped equality. We know, deep down, 'All men are equal' but we choose to not believe it. We need to work and educate, and love.
All my life I was told managers don't need to know how to do what their workers do, only get them to do it. It's part of the "dumbing down" generations. Most congressmen don't know which end of the screw driver goes in the hand. So why should they understand Cosmology, Evolution, Energy and Entropy. They obviously haven't read Shakespeare, Gibbon, or any philosophy either. Their job is to spend 4 trillion dollars a year. Their backers tell them how to, if they wish to keep the backing, and they do it very well, thank you. The fact that our underpaid educators don't educate is right in line with our underpaid Representatives don't Represent, us. The corruption of our Representatives, before they can even run for office and sell it, is systemic. We have made a virtue out of it. It gives us something to whine about. Of course the easy fix of changing the Constitution and becoming an Actual Democracy gets pooh hoohed, mocked, laughed at, denigrated in every possible way. But as a sworn member of the 'lunatic fringe' I know we will soon begin campaigning to have the people vote directly on the laws, the Executives, and the Judges. Its our only salvation, save revolution, and we will never do that because the means of Amending the Constitution is solid, used, and soon to be used again. End this failed Republic by finally making the U.S. the first Actual Democracy in the world. Replace the hope for freedom and equality with your votes for them. See assocactualdemocray.com & join.