I aced it, with what I learned in 8th Grade civics class. Educated guess on number of Amendments.
Sobering to think that this level of knowledge belongs to only 10% of us. El Rushbo’s “low information voters” are a frightening majority.
On Fox they seriously debated Joe Biden stealing the ‘Rat nomination from Hillary!
Meanwhile, we have a towering Constitutional intellect in Ted Cruz. And other fine Republicans as well.
2016 will be a fateful year indeed.
One striking theme to come out of this reading was how the Nazis "dumbed down" their citizens by de-emphasizing academic achievement. Instead, they kept their young people focused on sports and on political dogma. Sound familiar?
Any political opponents of Nazism were shouted down in universities and professors who didn't get with the program were shunted aside. Goebbels had complete control of the media and while the outside world laughed at the ridiculous assertions being made in the German media, the German citizens themselves began to believe them.
In 1933, when the Nazis gained power, their heavy-handed tactics towards the Jews were met with scorn and repulsion by many German citizens. However, by 1938, after five years of indoctrination and repression, the Germans simply shrugged their shoulders at the atrocities of Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) that November, in which thousands of Jewish synagogues and shops were smashed and set on fire and in which tens of thousands of Jews had their property confiscated by the state and were sent to concentration camps.
By then, the German people were either ignorant or they were too beaten down to speak up. It was Kristallnacht that set the stage for WW2 and the death of tens of millions for that's when the Nazis realized that they had the German people cowed and they could do anything, anything at all from that point on.