By Bob Gaydos

A typical after-school scene in many cities in the United States.

I took a mental health break from writing about the news for a week because, well, just because. But it does go on, so …

The good news this week is that we’re not yet at war with Venezuela. The bad news is that a lot of Americans aren’t even aware that this could happen because they don’t read or don’t understand what they read and the whole thing is giving me and a lot of people a pain in the neck. Literally.

Let’s try to connect the dots.

As far as we know (because the Trump administration  routinely lies about everything), 19 or more people have been killed in the Caribbean Sea by missiles fired from American military vessels. The Trump “War” Department claims the victims of these attacks were Venezuelan drug smugglers, part of a gang Trump has declared “terrorists.”

Typically, no evidence of anything claimed has been produced, either in advance, to justify arrest and proper legal proceedings, or after the fact, to at least verify there were drugs and get an accurate body count. We do know that some of the victims were fishermen. Also, that such unprovoked, unverifiable attacks on the high seas are generally considered to be war crimes and that Trump likes to play make-believe warlord even though declaring war on a country is a power the Constitution gives to Congress. Republicans, who control Congress, don’t seem to care about this indiscriminate killing on the high seas because they are too scared of Trump to do their job.

Now, the only reason this is even a story is because Trump was elected president for a second term. He was chosen by an electorate that has been systematically dumbed-down by Trump/Republican assaults on the legitimate news media, schools, libraries, universities and any source of reliable written information. (I feel pretty confident saying Kamala Harris as president wouldn’t be attacking Venezuelan fishing boats in the Caribbean just to prove to supporters that she was being tough on drug smugglers.)

This assault on intelligence started in Trump’s first term. “Fake News!” he declared repeatedly about legitimate journalism. Combined with the growth of rightwing media outlets spreading actual fake news and the spread of social media on the Internet, Americans have been bombarded with “information” but no clues on how to sort it out, real from fake, important from trivial. Local newspapers have disappeared. Many people, especially younger people, now get their “news” exclusively from tidbits they see while scrolling on their phones. TikTok is not yet The New York Times.

According to recent studies from the National Literacy Institute and the National Center for Education Statistics, the average reading age of adults in the United States is at a 7th- to 8th-grade level. More than half of adults read below a sixth-grade level. As of 2024, 54 percent of American adults ages 16–74 have literacy skills below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. This is about 130 million Americans. Of those with low literacy skills, an estimated 45 million adults are functionally illiterate, meaning they read below a fifth-grade level.

Data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies shows that the average U.S. adult literacy score declined between 2017, Trump’s first year in office, and 2023, the last year tested. The percentage of adults at the lowest literacy levels increased from 19 percent to 28 percent in that span of Republican assault on literacy and increasing reliance on social media for information.

The connection? Higher literacy levels go hand in hand with greater civic engagement, including voter turnout. Boosting literacy can strengthen democratic participation. And vice versa. Trump once famously boasted: “I love the poorly educated.” And, through lies and fear-mongering language, persuading just enough of them to vote in targeted states with just the right number of electoral votes can steal an election from the majority.

All is not lost. New York State, behind Gov. Kathy Hochul and a Democrat-led state legislature, is trying to, among other things, reverse this illiteracy trend by banning the use of cell phones during school hours. It can only help. Kids might have to look at something other than games. Teens might have to tear themselves away from TikTok and Instagram and who knows what else and maybe even learn how to tell what’s true and what’s BS. And maybe they won’t feel the need to constantly stare at their phones as they walk home from school.

That’s where the pain in the neck comes in. I asked a chiropractor about the effect of constantly walking and viewing cell phones among young people. He said that the neck/shoulder stoop that typically occurs in adults past age 50 is probably going to arrive with this group of teens in their 30s. Well, you read it here first so pass it on to your kids. Maybe give them a book, too.

The other good news during my hiatus was that the chiro did a really good job on the right side of my neck. No more pain. The insanity will continue, but at least I’m trying to cut down on the games and look up more often from my writing tablet.

Oh, and I’m still waiting to see those Epstein files.