Ignorance is a Prison - by Michael Smith

Those who choose not to know are slaves to those who do. - Michael Smith 

I wrote a post recently that proposed conspiracy theories were caused by lack of information - well, that is for people who try to pay attention to events, both current and historical.

• Then I read a link from X about school officials and police in Houston, Texas, reporting and detaining a middle schooler for passing counterfeit currency and warning his grandmother, who gave him the money, for using counterfeit bills. The counterfeit money in question? A perfectly legal $2 bill. Produced until 1966, paused, and then re-issued beginning in 1976, it is rare these days, but is legal.
• Shortly thereafter, I ran across the "controversy" about how Pete Hegseth, Trump's putative SecDef nominee, is a known white supremacist. How do they know? Well, he has tattoos of a swastika on his chest and a well-known white supremacist phrase on his arm. The problem is the "swastika" is a Jerusalem cross and the phrase "Deus vult" (God wills it) are common Christian symbols originating at least a thousand years ago. 
• Then there are the "man on the street" interviews that show people don't know who the sides were in the Revolutionary War, WWI, or WWII or even the Civil War. Some people who were interviewed about the recent election didn't even know who was running...

A century ago, a high school diploma signified an important educational achievement.
Fifty years ago, the mark of achievement was a college degree.

• Today, a college degree is a mark of nothing other than a person who made it through some ill-defined four-year curricula at a specific location and was released, seemingly unharmed...