Chris Hedges describes the divide at TruthDig [1], in his article entitled “America, the Illiterate [2]“:
We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.
If you are insisting on statistics, consider these numbers offered by Hedges: “A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.”
What does this illiteracy mean for politics? Modern political campaigns “do not require cognitive or self-critical skills. They are designed to ignite pseudo-religious feelings of euphoria, empowerment and collective salvation.” In this post-literate half-society, politicians “no longer need to be competent, sincere or honest. They only need to appear to have these qualities.”
And do consider the slide in reading levels of the language used during presidential debates [3] over time. Here’s the bottom line: Abraham Lincoln spoke at an eleventh-grade level, while George W. Bush speaks at a sixth-grade level.
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