Many don't know what they need to know and so believe they know enough.
This leaves them vulnerable to more determined opponents.

Guess I am an unreformable curmudgeon. I happen to agree with Decius, which seems to be a sin among conservatives who cannot, will not support Trump - even if that leads to a Hillary victory. Well, I yam who I yam.

Decius is right on regarding the educational quality of our teachers. I am 77 and while in college in the mid 60's took several courses from men I considered the smartest on campus at the time. Paul Evans was born in 1890 and fought in WWI. After the war he stayed on in France for 3 years to study in the french archives, then returned to get a PhD from Cornell. His lectures on the French Revolution were priceless, worth much more then the tuition I was paying at the time. Another was Leonaidas Jones, a gentle southerner who walked with a limp because of shrapnel he received in the lagoon at Tarawa. He could make Faulkner come to life in the front of the classroom. I am forever indebted to such men, and have never achieved their level of erudition and wisdom. But as I hear accounts from the universities today, I fear we have lost much. The level of erudition and wisdom is much lower than 50 years ago when I was a student and comes at a much higher financial cost. I also fear that my generation has failed to preserve and pass on what was laid before us at so a great cost.

Funny, I wrote (at long length, I'm afraid), of this very topic in my second installment of my series, "Ignorance is power for rule makers" of my series, "The empty abyss of emotions and feelings."

No wonder that the generation born after 1980 has been called the most narcissistic ever, including by journals such as Time ("Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation") and Psychology Today ("The Narcissism Epidemic," and "Meet the most narcissistic generation ever").

They have no deep sense of historical location or history compared to their ancestors. That is why, for example, they are dismissive of the time-tested traditions and teachings of the Church, my particular field of expertise, and seek even from worship mostly to be entertained ("worshiptainment," as we call it) or emotional highs - which is to say experiences and feelings, not knowledge or wisdom.

They have not been taught that they are members of something greater or that there is a calling higher and holier than personal feel-goodism. They grew up in the self-esteem movement that assured them they were special (you know, just like everyone else!) and they got sports trophies just for showing up for practices and games. ...

Not only is there no such thing as Truth, it is unforgivable even to speak as if there is. You have your truth and I have mine, and can't we all just get along?

We are almost at the point achieved by the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union, when everyone knows that they are being fed lies and distortions but no one knew how to do anything about it and the price for trying to do so was much too high, anyway. So everyone went along because they saw no other avenue.

Former Soviet spy Victor Suvorov wrote what this was like in Inside the Soviet Army, in which he served as a tank officer before entering Soviet military intelligence. One day he and his commander spent an evening making sure that their soldiers on liberty in a nearby town obeyed the rules and the law. Suvorov pointed out that uniform regulations called for brown gloves, but brown gloves were simply unobtainable either through the supply system or on the market. Nobody could get brown gloves, including himself and his battalion commander. So everyone wore black gloves; after all, it was winter and gloves were essential.

Nonetheless, the two officers spent the evening citing soldiers for fines for wearing black gloves rather than brown, all while wearing black gloves themselves when writing the citations. And not one soldier or NCO blinked an eye. Everyone knows that common sense and rational thinking are completely useless in navigating Leftist systems. There are layers of power and control that are not questioned. Had Suvorov and his commander encountered a more senior officer who cited them while wearing black gloves himself, they would have thought nothing of it, either. The objective of these systems is not to persuade but to control.

"....comes at a much higher financial cost...."
=======================

That's pretty much true with everything these days.

There are no deals, just cons.

If you're not paying 4 times what you believe it is worth, it isn't worth it.

Yeah, that makes sense, and after you've been burned a few times it might start to sink in.