I've written elsewhere about how democracy will eventually fail unless it is supported by a system that provides a proper liberal as well as technical education to everyone.
https://medium.com/the-curmudgeon/education-and-democracy-d077d89187a5
One of the skills one acquires as a result of said education is the ability, not only to articulate ones' own ideas and beliefs, but also to listen critically to those of others. Now by critically here, I mean in a manner which analyses these beliefs and views for logic, coherence and an evidential basis. The argument ex ratione rather than ab affectu.
Unfortunately for all concerned, from the Hippie movement of the late 1960s through the New Age one of the 1980s and beyond, reason has increasingly been forced to give ground to emotion. The whole 'Age of Aquarius' thing. It starts with the character of Mr Spock being shown time and time again that emotion, not logic, is the proper response to a problem, continues through the doctrinaire politics of Thatcher and Reagan and has now reached the stage where an under-educated but passionate mob attacks a government building at the bidding of a psychopath. Now we look at Governor De Santis and wonder "What rough beast, it's hour come round at last..." slouches toward Washington to be inaugurated? Have matters truly gone so far?
Suddenly, what a person thinks or knows, is less important that what they feel. Simple offence trumps reasoned argument, facts are discarded because they hurt feelings. Knowledge, or the possesion of knowledge, now renders a person suspect, rather than admirable, Any attempt to approach an issue in a reasonable and measured fashion is met with howls of "We want it all and we want it now!"
How this will be resolved, it's impossible to say. Do we, can we, exclude the majority from political and social discourse until they can be educated? Who does the excluding? By what measure? Who does the educating? Who decides when it's enough? Quis custodiet custodes?
As for Adam Sandler, what do you think, Whackus Bonkus?
