The following text was intended as a response to MikeM's comment to the previous post. It may be of wider interest, hence I'm offering it as a separate post
MikeM: I've been reflecting on what, for want of a more elegant label, I call Lack of Application. It lies at the heart of a newish form of ignorance manifest in the result of your recent presidential election and is even more overt in Trump's progressively insane pronouncements. But it isn't at all confined to the USA; Brits too suffer from this ailment.
At its lowest stratum (ie, those who failed to profit in any way from mandatory formal education) it is represented by a total lack of useful data. Such that when these bottom-feeders utter observations they do no more than repeat sentences (more often slogans) previously uttered by celebrities, and often repeated. These nuggets are complete in themselves, they are not related to each other in any way. The sequence of words is never altered.The next stratum concerns those who passed comfortably through school education and may even have gone on to college, albeit to take subjects where rigour of proof is unnecessary (Media studies is a good example). They have - willy nilly - accumulated data but these facts lie like pebbles on a beach, separate and incapable of manipulation. Their owners have, to some extent, been educated by rote. I can't ever remember any quantification of this group but I suspect - gloomily - that it is larger than most would imagine and may even be the majority.
The final crust is very thin. Data is accumulated via controlled selection and is used to arrive at home-baked conclusions. From this, certain skills - often not always recognised as skills - emerge. Such as an ability to recognise national or even global contradictions or to make allowance for bias in the sources of data suppliers.
That's the thesis. Obviously it needs examining, preferably via dialogue with like minds. If I can recoup the energy - very much in short supply these days - I used in creating this once-over-lightly categorisation I may resume. Otherwise I shall continue to study discs in my boxed set of The West Wing, a TV series that amazingly ran for seven years and was based on a very close examination of governmental and political processes.
And yes I am aware that "data" is a plural noun and that associated verbs should conform. I have written about this and in my view I think the pedants got their arses kicked. the battle for "datum" is lost.