When Neither Knowledge of History nor Knowledge and Concern About Government and Politics Are Valued

How a relatively small group of wealthy people have managed to 1) transfer incredible wealth to themselves, 2) gradually and dramatically underfund government while increasing its burdens, 3) seed the lexicon with terms of “bloated” programs (although the ones they desire are never included) and “excessive” social benefit—nay, “entitlement”—transfers, and 4) control and divert the economics and politics of a supposed democracy,  can perhaps be summed up in the following:

To expound on John Fugelsang, the extremely rich got the rich to convince much of the middle class that the poor, including the working poor, were responsible for all the middle class’s problems, and the rich and extremely rich are “small businessmen” and “good job creators” being so unfairly “persecuted” via “huge and oppressive” taxation and regulation, that the middle class needs to rally behind the goal of gutting government and further lowering taxes for the wealthy—even though as that happens, the situation of the middle class gets worse and worse.

Only a citizenry obsessively concerned with only the “private” sphere could, over decades, let willful ignorance dramatically undermine the public sphere, and as a result, disempower and impoverish themselves.