I greatly understand the topics you speak of, most recently, the financial crisis of ’07. My husband and I were just celebrating our 4th year owning & operating a small-town cafe/restaurant, our own little slice of the “American dream” in ’08 when we had to eventually close up shop and lose everything. We were the middle class Americans who got nothing but lost in the flames and smoke of the big bailout.

You allude to intelligent, wise folks as becoming such due to finally “waking up” to the fact they were lied to all this time. But here’s the thing: Intelligent people already understand that what they’re presented with through the filter of a TV screen or social media account always has “spin” put on it.

Intelligent people are aware that history textbooks in schools have completely whitewashed the massive, ongoing role of systemic racism in America, like mass incarceration of black men (the new Jim Crow). Intelligent people are aware that history textbooks have reduced occasions like Thanksgiving into convenient stories for white Americans, rather than recognizing it as the day of somber remembrance that it is for many Native Americans.

Intelligent people also recognize that American politics have always — even among the best of intentions — been corrupt, and they don’t have to “walk away” from one political party or another in order to recognize this.