What it boils down to is honesty, or dishonesty. Have you ever heard the expression, "you can't cheat an honest man?" It's true, in that a truly honest man won't sign up for whatever get-rich-quick scam of the day you're pushing, because honest men know that there's no free lunch or easy ride.
The sad truth is the vast majority of Americans are fundamentally dishonest people. The fact that they won't admit it, and will argue vociferously against it, is part of their dishonesty. And how could it be otherwise, when the entire so-called 'leadership' of this nation is fundamentally crooked and dishonest itself, and has been for over a hundred years, since long before the great grandparents of anyone commenting here were even born?
This article is dead accurate, and its observations apply even and especially here, on this site of learned intellectuals. You see it particularly on Slashdot though, where there are certain loud mouthed regulars there, who despite perhaps knowing quite a bit about their individual niche, sometimes expose themselves as total fools in larger discussions about politics and such, getting sucked into the same R vs D, red vs blue, or whatever other 'bread and circuses' B.S. the rest of the serfs are so mesmerized by.
Really, 'mesmerized' is the key word. All of this stuff is the work of pro propagandists. The book "Propaganda", published in the 1930s, is the seminal work on this subject, and quite enlightening to read, in light of everything in the U.S. media today especially, which is all lies.
Attempts to bring victims of this system of lies to real, hard-won, life-saving knowledge are of course met with all the same rationalizations, equivocations, extreme skepticism, dodge tactics, etc as would be encountered in the typical 'trailer park' setting (to name an easy target), only at a much more higher and refined level. No qualitative difference exists; it's the exact same thing, at a different level of refinement; the same total lack of awareness of one's own lack of knowledge, and apparent inability to even believe that one could even be incorrect.
I've heard the opinion that human brains are essentially the same as they were 40,000 years ago. It seems that's true. I can just imagine that if you took all of these people, wiped their memories, then put them in a cave banging rocks together with new fake memories of it all being normal, just "The Walking Dead" living in a cave somewhere and battling against other caves, most folks would love that life and be happier than a pig in shit. Probably more so than they are today, having to deal with all this magical and scary technology. Even the tech people. They would just get into scroll making or rock carving or invent IP over smoke signal/carrier pidgeon/giraffe or something, and be perfectly happy.
It reminds me actually of some people who live in jails. Did you know that some frequenters of jails and prisons actually like that lifestyle? You and I think of it as a horrid place, but to them it's HOME. Imagine that. And look where you are, right now. Any Silicon Valley dwellers here? Is that home to you?
Put yourself in the shoes of a typical, average person. Not a 140+ IQ rockstar C programmer. Not a 110 IQ typical Python programmer. (Haha.) I mean the 98 IQ guy who couldn't write 'Hello World' in BASIC to save his life, if aliens were attacking and he was the last hope for man.
All of this stuff we're doing on a daily basis seems magical and extraordinary and totally unreachable to him. How can he possibly understand this world, and make wise decisions, when even a tech elitist, the cream of the society, sometimes feels overwhelmed? How can he understand the world, when he has been raised FROM BIRTH to NOT understand it, by people much more intelligent, learned, and EVIL than most?
If you asked the fool if he wants to be lied to by a slick guy in a suit, he'll say no, but if you put the two of them together, he ends up buying the jalopy, or the $60k pickup he can't afford. Why? One is a predator in a position of power over the other, and the entire society is oriented to tricking and deceiving him, and has been arguably from day one. He has been literally bred to be an idiot, like so many others, then in his life trained and rewarded for stupidity and punished for intelligent thought. How can he be anything else?
Do you think "Brave New World" was really fiction?? How about the Georgia Guidestones? You think the people running the world really have our collective best future in mind, given the evidence, and given what they have created this society to be?
How can a learned person, having learned the truth of all this, make progress in spreading education, in an environment where everything is tilted toward anti-intellectualism and stupid "tin foil hat" jokes, by design, because that's what the dark evil masters pulling the strings in the background desire, for sinister reasons?
The word 'sinister', by the way, implies left handed. There's a lesson there, for those who study details.
Sorry to go all "In the Beginning There Was the Command Line" on you here..I'm rambling.. I'll close by saying I think the Balkanization of society, everyone being split into all these little niche 'specialties', has contributed greatly to the general ignorance of society. It could be there is much to be learned from the example of the old farmer running a homestead with every art and craft being practiced, and to a high level of skill.
Actually, I heard so many computer programmers these days are quitting to move into the hills and become farmers, that it's become something of a meme. Could be something to be learned by studying that trend, also.