@cstross Penicillin used to be a good prophylactic against gonorrhea though.

If we substitute “less academic vote for anger and and disruption” in the phrase “vote for Trump” we might learn stuff.

@cstross

As long as the schooling includes education in critical thinking, history and behavioural sciences; not just job training, especially for an “AI” world.

@Christo_459

@cstross
It's a cycle. Without education, your nation becomes an easy prey, and that's expensive, so you give it to the people. But with an education, people demand rights and redistribution. So you take it back.

Round and round it goes.

But. Education has never been as high. Information, however...

@cstross I think the "know nothing" title of that group was less about an anti-intellectual stance than denial of awareness of the group.

I agree with you as to the value of education and the impact of anti-intellectualism on the current mess.

@cstross I despair at the idea that some people are saying “We’ll turn it back around in 4 years.”

You don’t bounce back from this level of destruction. Societies take hundreds of years of selfless work by altruists and visionaries and activists - and less than a decade to destroy.

Putin accomplished what Bin Laden only dreamed of.

@cstross

#PhilMoorhouse has a poor grasp of #USPolitics but xe was accidentally on the money when xe pointed out that Republicans ignored the "Trump is a crook/liar/racist." rhetoric just as the Democrats ignore the "Lying Kamala is the Devil" rhetoric, and voted for whom they *thought* would improve the economy; and the problem is that they didn't understand why the pre-COVID economy under Trump was better than the post-COVID economy under Biden, even though it's obvious stated that way.

@cstross @codebyjeff @DemocracyMattersALot

Education is a proxy for income and social class