There was already a precedent for all this. After the Second World War, American jumped right into the Cold War with the Russians and wanted to take the lead in science, technology, rocketry, space and engineering. They quickly realized that their country at the time was ill equiped and not well trained or educated for all this ... so they took the shortcut of using former Nazis to head their science and technology fields for a few years. Then to take up the slack, the government heavily invested in education and training to pump out the scientists, engineers and professionals they needed to gear up their technological war with the Soviets.

So the 50s, 60s, and 70s got filled with a lot of bright well trained, well educated and informed young people. They were able to power the American war machine but a side effect to all that was all these insightful young people became the backbone of a counter culture that fought against war, capitalism, inequality, conservatism and racism and supported black rights, Native rights, women's rights, minority rights, animal rights and environmentalism.

Then they had to bring in people like Reagan and Thatcher to reign in these counter culture movements and swing the pendulum back again. Once they defeated the Soviets in the Cold War, conservative America had all the incentive to break everything down again and dumb down the population until it was a just a compliant pulp that could elect a clown.