> "I wonder how long it will be before more people realize this."
It is not in the interest of the ruling elite for this fact to become apparent. They control education and media, and have mastered the art of dividing society along various (ultimately facile and irrelevant) fault lines.
(Do you remember when Blue and Red state meme suddenly appeared out of nowhere like a cheap ready-made knockoff hanging in every one of our various media outlets? Is it a surprise that every time the country finally starts focusing on a substantial issue some completely random troll topic is pushed on queue; is the biggest problem facing USA the decision to allow gay marriage or to rescue this sinking ship of a state?)
"We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition."
You take that sentence and run it by a random sampling of 18 year olds in America. A certain proportion may be able to parse it; a subset of that may actually understand what is said; an even smaller subset would be able to reason about the proposition. Am I being completely pessimistic for thinking that the percentage that can even understand that as English is in single digit percentile?
How so many people in the comments thought that it was the actual Facebook login page, as it was (temporarily) Google's #1 hit for "Facebook login?" Well, have a look at their english. The grammar, the underlying argument structure, the confused-awkward lololols, the lot of it.
That's the majority of people in the US. Most adults stopped during or after high school. Remember high school? Remember the attitudes of students going through history & government courses? That's where they stopped, that was their final set of saved data on the matter.
And worse, they're still much better off -- even intellectually -- than many times their numbers across the planet: sustenance farmers, laborers, tribespeople, etc. (I'm speaking as someone born on the same land that my family spent centuries sustenance farming). A good portion of the human population's still living in the mode Ghandi called "more like animals than people." (rough quote from memory, sorry).
We're in agreement. However I'm not sure if you see this as an 'organic' phenomena (i.e. most people prefer to be mindless cattle that is educated only to the minimal extent necessary to be functional production units) or (as I do) as a systemic policy driven elite project to shape the human society. They haven't exactly been quiet or secretive about it.
The current elite clearly think that a systemic leveling across the board (aka domesticating the people identified by Ghandi) and homogenization is the only way to address the inherent contingent (your context) and intrinsic (your genetics) differences between humans.
My experience (obviously a tiny sample) is that the distribution is not smooth and quite lumpy, actually. I am not yet convinced that people generally prefer to be misinformed and deceived, and live lives of animals as opposed to a beings primarily distinguishing themselves by their possession of minds.
I do remember High School and do remember the history and government teachers (History: leftist progressive; Government: (presumed) future Bush voter). I remember (as memorable "learning" events) the woven tie of the history teacher and his half-hearted efforts to inject a bit of reality into the official version, and, the episode where the government teacher discussed "Deep Throat"[] with a flirting jock in class. No, I did not live in the ghettos among the disadvantaged and downwardly mobile; this is somewhere in a suburb around Washington DC -- the "Empire's capital" what a joke -- circa early 80s. in a county that likes to boast of the exceptional concentration of the highly educated amongst its residents. (Boggles the mind.)
[edit: The movie not the source. In any event, the film in question was actually "The opening of Misty Beethoven" ...]
I see it as people not caring about the truth as much as trying to be happy & safe. If that involves lots of accepted lies & illusions, then so be it. The mind's purpose is to assist the body in achieving darwinian goals -- knowing the truth of the world around them isn't terribly relevant. In parallel, those taking advantage of this situation aren't likely to spend much time thinking hard about it -- it works, that's all that matters. Justifying actions that bring you financial success is an art form driven over millennia of evolution & refinement.
Ha! I grew up in Springfield, VA, mid-late 90s for high school.
It is not in the interest of the ruling elite for this fact to become apparent. They control education and media, and have mastered the art of dividing society along various (ultimately facile and irrelevant) fault lines.
(Do you remember when Blue and Red state meme suddenly appeared out of nowhere like a cheap ready-made knockoff hanging in every one of our various media outlets? Is it a surprise that every time the country finally starts focusing on a substantial issue some completely random troll topic is pushed on queue; is the biggest problem facing USA the decision to allow gay marriage or to rescue this sinking ship of a state?)
"We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition."
You take that sentence and run it by a random sampling of 18 year olds in America. A certain proportion may be able to parse it; a subset of that may actually understand what is said; an even smaller subset would be able to reason about the proposition. Am I being completely pessimistic for thinking that the percentage that can even understand that as English is in single digit percentile?