It appears that the Republican Party is in the process of rejecting Democracy because the party has failed to gain power through that normal political process.  So now it appears they only seeks to win elections by changing the state primary voting rules to gain power for little purpose other than welding power for their plutocracy backers.  The United States political problems came from vast child poverty.

I plan to try to prove to you that the problem is not just the Republican politicians but also the American public.  I will attempt to prove to you that income inequality leads to poor education for a vast number of our citizens.  Then those under educated citizens might fail to comprehend what is really taking place in the political sphere.

For example, the Republican Party is failing badly for a number of factors:

• How is it that so many voters fail to recognize that the Republican candidates are now telling lies and still support a failed president?
• Why do so many Republican politicians support the big lie that Donald Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election?

A possible significant factor is that the public have not received a significant education so they can properly understand the democratic process.  Let’s attempt to present to you some proof of this happening:

The need for civic education in 21st-century schools:

“… limited civic knowledge of the American public, 1 in 4 of whom, according to a 2016 survey led by Annenberg Public Policy Center, are unable to name the three branches of government.”

Let me show you an example of what happens when education really hits rock bottom:

“The greatest defect in the working of democracy lies in the fact that the masses in whom the power is vested are mostly uneducated, in the third world countries. They do not properly compre­hend the political problems of their country and the value of their votes.”

So what exactly causes a lower level of education?

“… every other country that outranks the United States on the PISA test, have in common: lower rates of child poverty.”

In the chart above, only five countries perform worse than the United States: Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Mexico.

The best and worst performers on child well-being

“Overall, the countries that performed best across the indicators on children’s well-being were the Nordic nations, Germany and Switzerland. At the bottom of the league table were Chile, Bulgaria, Romania, Mexico and the US.”

“… every other country that outranks the United States on the PISA test, have in common: lower rates of child poverty. And poverty is a major factor in how well students perform on the tests.”

“October 2020 data analysis by the Center on Poverty & Social Policy (CPSP) at Columbia University monitored monthly poverty estimates, which showed that an additional eight million Americans—including 2.5 million children—have fallen into poverty since May 2020.”

“Socio-economically disadvantaged students across OECD countries are almost three times more likely than advantaged students not to attain the baseline level of proficiency in science,” PISA reported in a 2018 paper.

“A 2013 study by Stanford University researchers found that the U.S. would rank much higher on the PISA test if it weren’t for its higher levels of socioeconomic inequality.”

“It is only possible to understand higher education in the United States in light of the intensified concentration of wealth in the country during the last thirty years. During that time the richest one percent of Americans have come to own more private wealth than the bottom 90 percent; the top ten percent of Americans own 71 percent of all private wealth.”

Summary:  The American public embraced one of the worst presidents in history and many still do follow Donald Trump.  Why?  One possible reason is that a vast number of the American public have been disadvantaged by poverty.  Studies have shown that the United States has one of the highest rates of income inequality.  Individuals and families with low income seem to be getting a poor education as a result.  Studies seem to have proven that students who suffer from having low income do poorly in school.  Doing poor in school then might set the individual up for possibly a less paying job and then: 

“They do not properly compre­hend the political problems of their country and the value of their votes.”

This then results in a lower educated voting population that may  fail to understand the advantages of having a Democracy over having a dictatorship.  There seems to be a current threat that the United States may be shifting away from being a true Democracy.  

Recommended Reading:

Starting Strong 2017.  Key OECD Indicators on Early Childhood Education and Care

Posted:  May 15, 2021
Updated: May 20, 2021