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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:12 pm Post subject: How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington |
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How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington
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The degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies
How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist?
Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.
There have been exceptions over the past century - Franklin Roosevelt, JF Kennedy and Bill Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived - but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan's response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said: "There you go again." His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.
It wasn't always like this. The founding fathers of the republic - Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others - were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin?
On one level, this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves round the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD. But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so stupid, and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.
One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:25 pm Post subject: |
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FDR and JFK as intellectuals? I like these two presidents. But come on.
William J. Casey once remarked that guys with brains cannot get elected and must content themselves to remain behind the scenes. Very true. And that also makes my objection to this author's perspective: it merely looks at presidents and it foolishly premises its position on the belief that presidents dominate Washington. What could it possibly tell us about the American govt, then?
It is an antiAmerican rant. "Stupid Americans" variant with a little distraction in the beginning. In any case, someone ought to count how many times "ignorant" and "stupid" appear in that piece. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason gave me a hard-on, and I decided to base this entire article on explaining what's wrong with American politics on it |
Her book is a bit controversial and not a little overblown.
American politics is in the shithole, but I'm not really convinced that this is a new phenomenon. GHWB and WJC gave us a respite between the characteristic madness of Carter and GWB. We've forgotten that this shit is normal. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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| The article is over the top. We do have an anti-intellectual streak in our society and it has been successfully manipulated politically from time to time. But it isn't the whole story. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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| "Series of interlocking tragedies?" Does this pass for elite thinking in Britain, Big_Bird? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Does this pass for elite thinking in Britain, Big_Bird? |
Its the GUARDIAN. As much as I like to take potshots at the British, we cannot possibly stain their whole society with the one-sided dreck from the Guardian editorial pages. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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On one level, this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves round the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD. But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so stupid, and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.
One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing. |
The above is unfortunately true. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 8:01 pm Post subject: |
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Religion makes you stupid? I must have missed that part.
Can I have a peer-reviewed scientific study showing that religion makes people stupid? I mean, I believe in science. Let's see it in action. |
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canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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The national average for obesity is 25%.
Overweight and obese school children--32%
Sloth of the body includes sloth of the mind. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
Religion makes you stupid? I must have missed that part.
Can I have a peer-reviewed scientific study showing that religion makes people stupid? I mean, I believe in science. Let's see it in action. |
It said "in particular fundamentalist religion". Sure, maybe that doesn't make you stupid, but you have to be dead stupid to believe it. |
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bangbayed
Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 8:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Gopher wrote: |
| Does this pass for elite thinking in Britain, Big_Bird? |
Its the GUARDIAN. As much as I like to take potshots at the British, we cannot possibly stain their whole society with the one-sided dreck from the Guardian editorial pages. |
Got to give the Guardian their props. In 2002-03, it was the only fair and balanced media publication while all others were joining in on the march to Iraq. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 8:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Its the GUARDIAN. As much as I like to take potshots at the British, we cannot possibly stain their whole society with the one-sided dreck from the Guardian editorial pages. |
I see two processes here: (1) this British writer is playing on sweeping antiAmerican stereotypes that originated at least as early as G. Greene's Quiet American; and (2) you are objecting to my stereotyping British elites through this British-elite mouthpiece. All we seem to have here, and all over this messageboard, is a collection of essentialized stereotypes, one after the other.
And actually, you are right. There are other British elites, people such as A. Badger and C. Andrew in the historical profession, for example, who I know for a fact do not share these views, such as this writer's, G. Greene's, or C. Hitchens's, to cite but three, one iota.
But my point remains as valid as this writer's, a guy who condemns us as ignorant and stupid based on a selective review of presidents, a C. Hitchens-like disdain for religion, and some Americans' scientific-knoweldge shortcomings. This is an ignorant and stupid article, Kuros. And it might be more significant than that. Someone wrote it, an editorial staff and an assistant managing editor, or whatever the British call them, reviewed and approved it, the Guardian published it, and millions of eager Britons eagerly bought it and gobbled it up.
What does this say about them? |
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daskalos
Joined: 19 May 2006
Location: The Road to Ithaca
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Its the GUARDIAN. As much as I like to take potshots at the British, we cannot possibly stain their whole society with the one-sided dreck from the Guardian editorial pages. |
Someone wrote it, an editorial staff and an assistant managing editor, or whatever the British call them, reviewed and approved it, the Guardian published it, and millions of eager Britons eagerly bought it and gobbled it up.
What does this say about them? |
I'd say, given that the UK is the nation on this planet most like us in attitudes and culture, that it means there is just some shit the average Briton will not eat, and one of those indigestible varieties includes the anti-intellectual drum-beat that has so often, in recent years, been sounded and responded to in American politics.
Your dismissal of FDR and JFK as intellectuals shows your Freudian Slip, I'm afraid. You've decided that you agree with the current American disdain for having the smartest person in the room leading the meeting. You've raised the bar on what constitutes an intellectual so as to weed out two well-educated, thoughtful men, which, once upon a time, could have served as the definition of intellectual. Now the word seems to mean, in American political parlance, Ivory Tower Marxist.
In American politics today, a conservative cannot appear to have any significant intelligence or education. The only thing that saved GWB from defeat, in spite of his Yale education, is that he seemed to be averagely intelligent. Once upon a time, this country wanted the best and brightest to lead it. Now, in the beginning days of our decline (which we may yet recover from), we grow reactionary, yearning for certainties that no longer apply.
Interesting. When we were on the ascendant, we seemed to insist mostly on the excellence. As we slouch toward mediocrity as a nation, we have insisted on leaders who reflect that mediocrity.
Here's to the hope that by electing Obama, we've decided, as a people, against the average, that we insist, once again, on excellence, on someone more intellectually equipped to deal with steering us through a world in which the black-and-white certainties of willful ignorance aren't the basis of policy. |
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bangbayed
Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:40 pm Post subject: |
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It's a really bizarre situation, and very noticeable in Amerian politics. If you have a miltary operation, do you not want to send in your elite troops? If you are running a successful business, do you not want to have an elite executive? Americans will want the smartest and most knowledgeable elites running their businesses and military, but not their governments? Democracy means choosing someone you want to have a beer with? What kind of perverted mutation of public and private discourse is that?
If someone can explain this to me, it would be great. |
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Juregen
Joined: 30 May 2006
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
Religion makes you stupid? I must have missed that part.
Can I have a peer-reviewed scientific study showing that religion makes people stupid? I mean, I believe in science. Let's see it in action. |
Not religion per se. the stress is on Fundamental religious believe.
Fundamentalist take the word of God as finite and see no reason to explore any further. The role of man is set est voila, no one knows any better.
Modern Society thrive on asking questions and changing perspectives, otherwise defined as growth. Fundamentalists will fight against any change imaginable. |
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