What happens to your politics when people slept through civics class?

Horace Mann was right. An educated citizenry is necessary to the preservation of democracy. There’s a reason the free public education movement waited until the age of Jackson and wasn’t an important consideration in the Federalist Papers. As long as the country was being run by a few thousand of Jefferson’s yeoman farmers and a few thousand of Hamilton’s merchants and manufacturers, who cares if the masses are educated. But once they get the right to vote, God help us if they’re not well educated.

And here we are. With surely the most civically ignorant generation since the democratization of the vote. Even most of the angry old white men denouncing the fact that “they don’t teach history anymore.”

There may be no dumber comment, and no clearer indication of the ignorance of the average citizen, left or right, than the following charmers:

  • Government is corrupt and does nothing, or the alternative version

  • Biden is senile and does nothing. (Republicans add “and the Democrats are going to use Article 25 to get him out of office”.)

  • Social security would be totally fine if XXX hadn’t stolen YYY trillion 

You hear these three about equally from left and right. Then these two comments, mainly from the right.

  • I worked for everything I got, I never got a dime from the government

  • Biden’s “open borders” policy … 

There’s no stronger demonstration of the inadequacy of civics education, now and in the past 50 years, than the fact that probably a third of the adult population would agree with two or more of these remarks. Open borders first. I know it’s a favorite GOP mantra, like “federal takeover of healthcare,” “federal over-reach,” and “tax and spend Democrats.” Just a clue here: if borders are open, nobody needs to pay $5000 to a coyote to pack them like sardines in a windowless, airless truck. Nobody needs to walk across the Arizona desert. If the borders are open, they just walk in and CBP just waves them through. I don’t expect conservatives to make sense, but, really, have some pride. Don’t say things that are demonstrably wrong.

But the real prize, goes to the “I never got anything from the government” guy. I’m sure somewhere there is someone who never owned a house, drove on a road, used the Internet, went to school, took a medication, flew, bought meat or drugs, listened to a weather report, a, went to a park or beach.

We all depend on a professional government workforce to:

  • Fight wildfires and help recover from manmade and natural disasters

  • Administer student grant and loan programs

  • Provide funding for schools, highways, housing, nutrition, mass transit, and farmers

  • Preserve land and operate national, state, and local parks

  • Keep a fleet of weather and navigation satellites modernized and operating

  • Continually modernize the Internet backbone

  • Administer Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid

  • Administer the immigration, citizenship, and border protection systems

  • Perform homeland security, law enforcement, national intelligence, and national defense functions

  • Administer foreign policy; negotiate treaties AND replace our passport if it’s been stolen

  • Promote exports and international tourism

  • Administer safety regulations and inspections

  • Perform medical research, control disease, develop new pharmaceuticals

  • Provide a safe and efficient air traffic control system

  • Enforce civil rights laws

  • And many other things.

You get a lot from the government. The fact is, most of it is pretty good. And you count on a system where, if you’re eligible, you get it. Nobody says “Your daughter won’t get a Pell grant because I see you wrote a letter to the editor criticizing President Trump” or “Massachusetts isn’t getting SNAP and housing funding because the state voted for a democrat.” Or at least, you never did.

We actually took a huge step in that direction under Trump. Holding up disaster aid for blue states. Kirshner’s “it’s a blue state thing, let them suffer.” Changing the tax code deliberately to transfer massive amounts of money from blue states to red states. Rubber stamping disaster aid requests from red Florida and Texas, slow rolling New Jersey and California.

The hell of it is, over that awful four years, it took a while for Trump to get down to the level of John Eastman and Mike Lindell. The scary thing about a second Trump administration is now he knows who will do his bidding. There won’t be any John Kelly’s or Jim Mattis’s this time. Weak as “the adults in the room” turned out to be, they still were a check on Trump’s worst impulses. No general Lilley, who realizes promptly what a mistake the “walk in Lafayette Park” was and promptly apologizes to every person serving in uniform: think there aren’t MAGA generals? Think there aren’t MAGA lawyers to run the FBI? The checks on his orders to prosecute “Shifty Schiff” and Nancy Pelosi won’t be there. We’ll start with the freak show from January 20, 2025. It’s doubtful we could survive a second Trump term.

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This series is written to promote political discussion and organizing. Permission is given to use this in fact sheets, talking points, letters to the editor, etc. We’d appreciate if you notified Gettysburg DFA (leonsreed@gmail.com) of any uses. Written by Leon Reed.

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