[AtLast]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but of different Americans, without access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but with a much greater receptivity to learning than today's public.[/I]
(Susan Jacoby--The Age of American Unreason)

But it's more poignant even than that. In 1940, only about a quarter of all American men and women had even graduated high school. The numbers for college graduates were both under 10%. That means that around 70% of all Americans had less than a high school diploma and still they behaved like this. We're not talking a population of intellectuals. Now, the overwhelming majority of Americans graduate high school and about a third of all Americans have a college degree. And yet, more than half of us couldn't tell you which coast of the continent borders the Pacific ocean and which borders the Atlantic. A nation of people who hadn't graduated high school thought it important to know where Germany, Japan and Italy were. A nation of high school graduates could care less to know and would look down their nose and call elitist--or worse--any person who did care to know.

That's what we've lost. I was raised by people who grew up in that America, who remembered what it was like. They taught me that as a black woman in America it was my *job* to be informed and to think deeply on the issues of the day, if for no better reason than so I could vote well and explain things to my children. I don't want America to turn into a bunch of policy wonks (okay, I wouldn't shed any tears if we did but I don't expect it to happen). I would like for America to get whatever it was we had in 1942 that we don't have now back. If we can't get it back (and who knows if we can but I doubt it) then at least let us know what it is we let go.

Those Americans--who did not protect the voting rights of blacks in all the states and the women in the population had only been voting for two decades--demanded a president who solved problems and talked to them like they were grown ups. They demanded it and they got it because they *deserved* it and would settle for nothing less. We want a president who--I don't even know if WE know what we want but whatever it is, talking to us like we're grown ups and assuming that we could take bad news certainly aren't high on the list of they are present at all. They got the government they deserved in 1942. We have, I suspect, the government that we deserve--not the one we need--in 2010.

Cheers
Aj


Cheers
Aj

Strikes deep chords for me as well. Very deep.