Leveraging the fact that the 20th century opened up numerous avenues for shaping and controlling the population, the ruling elite contributed new ways of obscuring useful facts while peddling useless ideas to the American people. In addition, fundamental changes in education produced a population of non-thinkers, whose false understandings of basic concepts instilled in public schooling led generations of people who feel they are magically endowed with the ability to somehow obtain knowledge without first observing the landscape of available credible evidence.