WE WANT WORKERS STUPID! Reagan and the Origins of the Student Debt Crisis! | Thinking Out Loud

In this episode of his "Thinking Out Loud" series, Double D discusses a recent article from 'The Intercept' which outlines how former President Ronald Reagan colluded with the intelligence community to enthrall working Americans with the student loan debt crisis.
Opening the video, Double D quotes Roger Freeman, former adviser to Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan who said: "Free college would create a dangerous educated proletariat." He then goes on to outline the current state of the student debt crisis, and dismisses President Joe Biden's paltry $10,000 student debt relief as a band aid on terminal economic wound.
Reading from 'The Intercept' article, Double D outlines how Ronald Reagan coasted to victory in his re-election bid for the governorship of California by playing on the fears of "campus protest" which was ongoing and militant at the height of the Vietnam War. Double D points out how Reagan went on to weaponize this rhetoric in his Presidential bid, which was then in turn adopted by conservative politicians throughout the country.
Taking a step back, Double D dismisses the criticisms of reactionaries condemning student loan debt relief, pointing out that the cumulative debt consist of nothing more than fabricated numbers on a screen that represent predatory loans. He insists also, that given the nature of the U.S. monetary system and the petro-dollar, that any and all fears of would be government spending is a fallacy; as U.S. financial hegemony allows for an indefinite amount of deficit spending.
Jumping back into the article, Double D scoffs at adviser Roger Freeman, who claimed that having a well-educated but unemployed proletariat was what led to the rise of fascism in Europe. Double D points out that the entire premise of "liberal democracy" is centered on the idea that a highly educated population will elect representatives of their interest to administer the government. He questions Roger Freeman's claim that, "an educated proletariat is dynamite" asking why working people would be dangerous if their elected representatives are actually serving their democratic interests. He sardonically asks the question if we are actually governing ourselves through elections, or if a ruling class is appointing "leaders" over us instead, and that a well educated working class would become keen on this fact and resist their domination.
Going on, Double D quotes the article in pointing out that the ruling class only wants certain people educated, and that this does not include the sons and daughters of the lower levels of the working class. He asserts that the ruling class wants to use higher education to engage in their own "social reproduction", that is to say that they want to reproduce their own ideas and ways of thinking in the upper classes, while also reproducing an intermediate class of "complex-system-managers" who use their administrative positions in the political, economic, and military systems to maintain the status quo.
Next, Double D discusses the interwoven nature of the intelligence community with Ronald Reagan's anti-education rhetoric; pointing out meetings between him and the CIA and FBI regarding suppressing "communist influence in universities." Double D points out that anytime the state department or political puppets start using anti-communist rhetoric, you can know that they're about to take something away from you. That they will either privatize your public services, or strip away another one of your constitutional rights. He elaborates that the Red Scare and anti-communism has been used to completely hollow out not only the institutions of liberal democracy, but also the unions, churches, and our very communities; leaving us with confined parameters of social and political thought that leave us atomized, amnesiac, and powerless to resist domination. With the same tenor, Double D ridicules suburban liberals who have been made to idealize the intelligence community, pointing out that the FBI and CIA are the extralegal paramilitary wing of the ruling class which as been responsible for the complete desecration of liberal democracy.
Rounding off the video, Double examines the manufactured monster of student loan debt, pointing out that it has had a "two-birds-one-stone" effect on the working class. He claims that student loan debt has one, barred working people from pursuing the education that will give them the power to resist their subjugation, and two, has saddled them with an oppressive system of debt that diminishes their political and economic power. He then ruminates on his own past experiences struggling to get through college while raising a child and working fulltime, stating that he decided not to finish pursuing his Bachelor's degree due to the mountain of debt he would accrue just to earn a low paying position as a public school teacher. He then asks says, "this is just my story, how many more millions of stories are their just like mine?"