Where do we go, now? Where do we go?
Countezero said:
By that I mean, people continually are being misled and mismanaged by the governing class -- regardless whether it is educated or not. It was the governing class and its experts at fault for the recession, the subsequent bank bailouts, the massive mismanagement of federal and state funds (see California) and the inane policies that continue to alienate people. In response, people have just decided to stop listening to them, based on their poor record of performance, and adopt positions opposite whatever said class has adopted. It's not logical, it's very knee-jerk and it's not a solution. But I can understand why it's happening.
There is definitely something to that. However, I think part of that particular problem still comes back in certain ways to education. I still wonder what ever happened to the idea of a
well-rounded education. One of the challenges facing our society in general is that while Americans can be very, very smart, that intelligence is often overspecialized.
It is easy enough to recall the computer scientist who can design an application worth a billion dollars in the marketplace, but who can't order a pizza without help. But that sort of extreme conflict only describes the problem in acute relief; for most people it's much more mundane.
People often rely on suggestions and theories that sound good; my father makes a reasonable example. He truly believed all that noble capitalism stuff that marked the Reagan years, and was repeatedly shocked during the nineties. For years he genuinely resented my presumptions about capitalism and corporations. And then one day his business partners screwed him over in order to consolidate the company under the family name, putting the personable but hapless younger brother in an executive position. And over the subsequent years, as he nursed his wounds, he started seeing that behavior all around him. The biggest blow, I think, was to his ego; he wrestled with the idea that this sort of conduct wasn't a sudden or new aberration. He previously clung to theory despite the details constantly defying him. He voted for years based upon those theories. And when the cooked books started wrecking people's pensions, he finally came to terms with reality.
In business and politics, even here at our own Sciforums, it's an easy process to see. Various theories and claims make attractive suggestions, but the details confound people to a certain degree. I'm very accustomed to hearing people say, "That's just too complicated," or, "If it takes that much effort to explain ...."
In consideration of the wreck that is our governing class, there is some burden that belongs to the people. We might consider that it is not so much the
educated class that people resent, but what a given segment of the educated class believes. For instance, given a choice between listening to a social studies professor and an MBA, many people will choose the MBA, because the subject or argument will have to do with making money, and that's a fairly simple concept to understand, especially insofar as wealth has a certain emotional appeal. If the complex argument doesn't carry a snappy emotional appeal, it confuses or puts off many people.
Consider in this context the gay fray. On one side is a simple argument about morality, derived from the Bible. On the other side is a complex argument involving the Constitution, history, psychology, sociology, and even anthropology. Given that the political argument asks a majority of people to give up a certain legal and philosophical superiority they have long enjoyed, the snappy, empowering argument against equality is going to be
very popular.
Or the bailout. CitiGroup announced something like a $7 billion loss for the fourth quarter. Some would criticize this as suggestive that the bailout has failed, but the early note on that loss is that the majority of it comes from paying back federal funds granted in the bailout. Not that bad loans are not a significant portion, but where is the argument about the economy today? It hangs out among the simpletons. Hell, sometimes it seems the only difference between sound fiscal policy and evil socialism is the party designation after the politician's name. While economists are saying that the bailout worked, except it was too small, the opposition screams about the failure of socialism. The latter is an easier argument to comprehend regardless of its inaccuracy. The real facts are more complex than most people want to deal with.
I know very few people, for instance, who actually read the Voter's Guide that comes around each season. Likewise, I know very few Christians who, despite having read the Bible, actually know what's in it, or how its parts work together. This isn't necessarily because people are stupid; they're overspecialized. Life demands other priorities. In the 1980s, experts pled with parents to spend at least a half-hour a day of "quality time" with their kids. In my daughter's lifetime, I encountered an article in which that period had been cut to fifteen minutes. For the majority of Americans caught up in that microdrama, it wasn't that they were out playing or coking or whoring, but that they were
working.
One of the reasons some of the homeless are so enlightening to talk to is that they have the time to
think. What counts as too complex these days seems to be a lot simpler than it was twenty years ago.
It's not that I disagree with your outlook, but rather that I think that, in certain ways, it embodies the problem. Educated, governing, and business classes: yes, there is overlap, but they are not always the same. Still, though, people lump them all together, and take it out on the most obvious and traditional target: government. We have low expectations of government; we get what we expect.
Yet outrage at business isn't yet mainstream. Sure, some have tried to make it so, but public anger at business is often aimed instead at government. The health care debacle right now? We wouldn't be having this debate if the insurance companies behaved according to the basic principles of capitalism my father used to preach. Instead, the private sector has pushed society to a decisive point, and it's somehow the
government's fault.
In a way, it's kind of like a cheating husband, caught red-handed, addressing his wife: "Well, if you weren't such a bitch!"
That only works so far. Any closer, rational examination would probably show that infidelity has long been in the making. But that's too complicated for many, if not most.
And, likewise with your point. I, too, can understand why it's happening. But that doesn't help the situation until we figure out what to do about it. And, in the end, whether Democrat or Republican, left or right, Christian or atheist or Jew or Muslim, or whatever divide we might establish, the fundamental difference is more often than not one of education, or, at least, information.
Brooks' prospect, that the coming decade will be significantly shaped by the low end of our political intellect, is a bit disheartening, to say the least.
