sybok
people are kept ignorant
I think that as originally written, it can mean any of “by scheming of those in power” or “by their own unwillingness to educate themselves”.
Yesterday, I have discussed the issue of [civilised] people killing [civilised] people in the world and we agreed that though we may have noble goals in mind, our ability *AND* willingness to act upon them is limited by our comfort zone (not being breached from the outside yet).
when they have ready access to factual information
Sadly, *factual* is not that clear|sure anymore not only because of deep-fakes; it has somehow partly become a choice of believing in things* from certain sources – some decide to believe this and some decide to believe that thus strengheting the fragmentation and polarisation of public and its opinion.
That’s what the slogans|catch-phrases such as “post-factic era”, “alternate facts” point to.
I recall seeing a movie Thirteen Days (2000) and thinking that the US stood their ground firmly.
Later on, I have leart about secret negotiations involving R.F.K., see e.g. this section in Wikipedia or https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/19766-national-security-archive-doc-01-anatoly
I.e. the factual information (made) freely available may be (intentionally?) incomplete and therefore decieving.
* BTW, there’s a story about recording the song with the people in the studio interrupting the process to push the interpret into a more upset state resonating with the message of the song.