How did America reach this dangerous inflection point of being in a condition where it's national leadership could very quickly solidify into a pornocracy (Saeculum obscurum)?
It's a condition that the country has been sliding towards, with a few interruptions, since the early 1980's.
Functional illiteracy in North America is epidemic. There are 7 million illiterate Americans. Another 27 million are unable to read well enough to complete a job application, and 30 million can’t read a simple sentence. There are some 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate – a figure that is growing by more than 2 million a year. A third of high-school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives, and neither do 42 percent of college graduates. In 2007, 80 percent of the families in the United States did not buy or read a book.