Mitt Romney is more stupid than the supremacist who killed Sikhs in Wisconsin Temple.
Mjolnir, the western world is in decline, and what you have done is created a strawman about this being an intelligent discussion. Who said it was intelligent? You did, but it would be fallacious of me to say that this is a sign that critical thinking is on the decline in the US based on this one case, but quite right to say that high school education in the US is on the decline, given the evidence and the fact that most of your best college students in the sciences are foreign, because as Carl Sagan and Michio Kaku have both said, American kids have a problem with being smart.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.