The ruling class wants you to be literate enough to understand their written orders. And nothing more. True literacy is punk. True literacy is revolutionary.
If you look at this article and think “this is too long to read” you’re part of the target audience. Make the time.
Nice wordsmithing, quite self indulgent while presenting to be benevolent. I do agree with a lot of points but conclusions are a miss. I would say that the biggest issue here is that the world is accelerating more and more. Information barrage is intense and squeezing books for entertainment is a non-trivial task. While author talks about US, similar trends are present globally without the force of spooky “imperialistic hand”.
To be fair… Where in the world isn’t there an imperialistic hand?