Actually, my thesis isn't that Americans are too uneducated for democracy. It's that they are being manipulated by modern technology, which education in the US has failed to keep up with, resulting in the age of misinformation and "fake news."

We live in a new era, the most stark difference being mass communication accessibility. This helps smart people become smarter, but it also helps smart people manipulate uneducated people.

My personal thesis on the issues the US is facing involves far more than the systemic defunding of education, but also on economic issues, like how our monetary system has exported labor, leading to a larger class divide and the polarization we're seeing, as well as social media companies (and news companies) having an incentive to promote inflammatory content to generate ad revenue.