And I remembered.
Not far away, probably torn down, probably only a greasy ghost sharing the fourth dimension of some new structure with a marquee and a doorman, was a hall bedroom within spitting distance of the curved rails of an extinct elevated railroad where I'd made my abode for a year. Not far away, the loft in which I'd earned my eighteen simoleons a week with the other sweated youths. The counters of that department store where, with the stupendous poor, I'd cut yard goods. Far away, though, the farms I'd labored on and farther still the crewmen of the freighter. In time, however, Rushford was near—the American rustic who will not call himself a peasant because he drives a Ford. Cruel, unwashed, suspicious, insanitary louts and ugly lasses—poor.
Salt of the earth. Savor of dung.
Backbone of the nation. Spineless.
In a properly informed electorate, the majority will make intelligent decisions.
Agreed.
Then, gentlemen,
shall we not inform the electorate that this is the age of knowledge? Shall we not rectify the schizoid discrepancies between these people on the fire escapes, bumpkins, and the inhabitants of penthouses? Give the good-natured fornications of the poor back to the taut middle classes? Inform the poor of the ways of children? Release the entombed libido of them all? Having done that, so they may vote sanely—having revealed the democracy of desire—how shall we set about to teach them advanced algebra, genetics, relativity, and bacteriology—so that their acts will be in some small measure relevant to the exigencies of our times?
Freedom of the mind is immured in the vaults of the Navy and the War Department and the Air Forces.