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If the majority of the people are too uninformed, lackadaisical, or apathetic to make the democratic process rational and effective, then they just reveal their inherent nature, according to this thinking. It is not an upper class that keeps the demos unenlightened, but it is the people's own disposition that makes them eschew enlightenment, and thus dependent on some sort of rulers. If people did not naturally have the disposition they display in a dysfunctional democracy, other people would not be able to exploit and mislead them the way they do. Ruling elites do not create popular ignorance and apathy, a defender of Plato might say, they only use it for their own purposes--in the same way in which a seller of dubious merchandise does not create lack of buyer discretion, but simply exploits that deficiency. For Platonists, in short, the incompetence and victimization of the masses are a more or less permanent condition. The eventual education and emancipation of the demos envisioned by the Left is a baseless hope in their eyes. To a large extent they would agree with what the conservative scholar and journalist H. L. Mencken once wrote in a letter to the Socialist Upton Sinclair: "The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the common people are doomed to be diddled forever.†(11)