Great Heros! Geh!

[Kralizec]

Not stupid - uneducated.

It suits governments of modern democracies to minimise the education of their citizens whilst manipulating the information to which they do have access. Thus, government by sound bite and celebrity culture becomes ever more possible, and a populace untrained in debate and thought easily confused to the point of apathy.

Putin's nurturing of the myth of Stalin is merely a few steps along the road from what already occurs in much of the West. A dumb, blonde clothes horse is as effective a "hero" for the consumerist UK as the hard, ruthless, end-justifies-the-means "hero" is for the KGB-led Russia.

Education is perhaps the most important right of all, after the right to life. Yet how far down government's budget priorities - far below war, bankers, and "security" - do we see it every year?

Ironically, Soviet Russia had a world-leading education system, the recipients of which were repressed from exploiting. Now the citizenry has some kind of democracy, the state education system has been left to rot into a pitiful condition.

Perhaps this is the natural end-state of liberal democracy. By definition, government seeks to govern, and rarely recognises the concept of limits to its power.

As an inhabitant of a modern democracy who has major gripes with the education system, I don't think that the burden of fault falls entirely on the government, much less that it's a conscious effort to turn the electorate into sheep.
When I was in high school I resented the fact that I had to learn things wich were of absolutely no relevance to the occupation I intended to fulfill later - yet now I regret that I forgot a lot of them. Personally I always liked history and even in my time the timeframes and material covered were poorly selected, but I imagine that a lot of people don't acknowledge historical knowledge as being useful either.
Most politicians aren't so much out to screw people, but they screw things up when nobody's paying attention to what they're doing.

(I vaguely remember an editorial wich lambasted Tony Blair for practically deifying princess Diana for his own political purposes, if so that's seperate)

Really; who else do these people have to choose from? Stop looking for the best person and realize the least worst wins.

They could have picked Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Gorbachov, two men wich I both admire but wich obviously stand no chance. They also could have picked Yuri Gagarin or even marshall Chukov, who unlike Stalin actually was instrumental in defeating the nazis. Lack of choice is not the problem.