The Triumph of the Idiocracy
Forget plutocracy and oligarchy- a future fascist America is in the hands of the ignorant
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We have gone from performative politics to performative hysteria to actual performative ignorance. - Former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman commenting on X(Twitter) about House Republicans’ behavior during Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, September 20.
Let’s stipulate that some form of anti-intellectualism has always been part of American society. Issac Asimov, the scientist and well-known author of science fiction books, described it succinctly:
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
The most prominent work on the subject is historian Richard Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opus Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), a sweeping survey of attacks on intellectual elites in America from the colonial era through the mid-20th Century when he was writing. Hofstadter focused on what he subsequently called “the paranoid style” in American society, tracing its lineage through the nation’s history:
Anti-intellectualism has been present in some form and degree in most societies… It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals, for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been for the most part either an outsider, a servant or a scapegoat…
(More recently, the writers Kurt Andersen and Tom Nichols, reacting to the emergence of Trumpism in American politics* have also explored aspects of this topic.)
Let’s also stipulate that political choices are more often based on emotion than on reason. In The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, (2007), psychologist Drew Westen explored the thesis that emotion precedes reason in most of our decisions, in effect rejecting the view inherited from the Age of Reason that politics should be a dispassionate endeavor.
When the eloquent Adlai Stevenson was running for president against Dwight Eisenhower, a woman gushed to the Democratic candidate after a rally, “Every thinking person will be voting for you.” Stevenson supposedly replied: “Madam, that is not enough. I need a majority.” - Drew Westen, The Politcal Brain
The disconnect between passion and reason is especially fraught in a democracy that requires an informed citizenry to elect its leaders. It was on the mind of the Founders: as early as 1765, John Adams expressed the idea that “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people“.** In 1822 , James Madison, the principal architect of the Constitution, reflected on the first three decades in the life of the new nation, writing to a friend, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.”***
With the election of Donald Trump, the prediction made in 1920 by Baltimore Sun columnist H.L. Mencken that “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron” was realized. The election of the most ignorant President in our history opened the way for the farce and tragedy Madison warned about. Given his detached relationship with truth and reality, Trump’s election was a fitting culmination to the long period of propaganda and narrative warfare, involving both foreign adversaries and domestic power-seekers, that contaminated the nation’s politics. An all-out assault on objective reality was spearheaded by such entities as Fox News and by talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, and this effort was abetted by disinformation campaigns such as the one Russia waged on social media. Opinion and knowledge have become interchangeable in the minds of many, manifested in the proliferation of bizarre conspiracy theories that find widespread acceptance.
In a democracy, playing upon people’s fears and ignorance is standard political practice for those who wish to remain in power or who harbor autocratic ambitions. Promoting divisiveness among the electorate, pursuing policies of voter suppression, and populating the judiciary with loyalists are the playbook of authoritarians. And people “without popular information, or the means of acquiring it” are easy prey for this type of cynical manipulation. The goal of power-seekers is to denigrate existing institutions and sow confusion and fear. Discrediting government and fostering uncertainty about objective reality, creates the opportunity for a dictator or minority to take power. And this appeal is cynically aimed at the unsophisticated among the electorate, the cohort most likely to react emotionally rather than rationally.
For any group wishing to take power in American politics, the challenge lies in the principle that democracy manifests the will of the majority through elections. To that end, power-seeking minorities leverage the anti-majoritarian nature of our political system (e.g. the Electoral College, the Senate, gerrymandered Congressional districts), to assemble an electoral coalition. For the elite classes (plutocrats or oligarchs) wishing to have government serve their ends, it is necessary to cultivate and co-opt the groups in the citizenry susceptible to the same mechanisms of propaganda and misinformation we observe in other authoritarian regimes (e.g. modern-day Russia and Hungary, the Nazis and Italian Fascists of the 20th Century). The peril of this approach is that members of these groups- the Christian conservatives of the 1980s, the Tea Party-types of the 2010s, and today’s working-class whites- are seduced by their proximity to power and come to believe they have a share in it. As in ancient Rome, where the Praetorian Guard was created to protect the Emperors, but eventually played a role in replacing them, the American plutocracy does not exercise full control over the people they help to elect. The result is the inmates have taken over the asylum.
Idiots on Parade
We are at the point where an implacable minority within the House of Representatives’ Republican majority (the ‘Freedom Caucus’) is composed of extremist ideologues and nihilists. They have little interest in governance- their understanding of how government operates is more along the lines of reality TV than the tedious work of crafting legislation. I would like to think my views of some who have achieved political power are descriptive and not disparaging, but doing so would mean not being honest with myself. Can you truly regard people such as Representative Lauren Boebert or Senator Tommy Tuberville as serious minded public servants, rather than small-minded panderers unburdened by deep thoughts or high principles? That such intellectual nonentities sit in our national legislature is both a poor reflection of ‘we the people’ who elect them and the plutocracy’s lack of full control over the political process despite the money they spend on campaigns, lobbyists, and think tanks.
The traditional conservative project entails cutting taxes, minimizing regulation, and shrinking the Federal Government, but the exremists have moved beyond this to complete governmental dysfunction. Having failed to shutdown the government, this week the radical clique ousted Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy as punishmenr for making a deal with Democrats to pass a Continuing Resolution**** by the October 1 deadline. The radicals had been harboring a grudge against McCarthy since his previous deal with the White House to avoid a default on government debt earlier this year. Until a new Speaker is chosen, the House is effectively out of business. It is not soley the consequence of the power of a determined minority, but of the destructive power of an inept minority. Examples abound.
In the week before the demise of the McCarthy Speakership, the House Oversight Committee held irs first hearing of their ham-handed impeachment inquiry into President Biden. In lieu of doing the people’s business, the House Republicans have busied themswlves with a series of performative political stunts, the impeachment being the most recent. As they have done with their other investigations, they beclowned themselves with another display of breath-taking negligence: After claiming they had evidence implicating President Biden in the corrupt business dealings of his son Hunter, their first 3 witnesses stated there were no grounds for an impeachment. Ooops..
The hearing also gave Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fl) the opportunity to embarrass himself by producing an image of a purported texr message he claimed implicated the President in corruption. To his chagrin, Democratic Rep. Alexdrandria Ocasio Cortez quickly pointed out that the image Donalds produced had been edited to change its content: AOC’s staff had found the original among the evidence the Oversight Committee had collected during its investigation.
And this is only the mosr recent blunder by the Oversight Committee. Earlier this summer,, Chairman James Comer was proclaiming that an informer had provided alleged evidence of payments to the Biden family by Chinese interests. “Oversight” is a very appropriate name for this Committee since their “investigation” failed to discover the fact the ‘informer” was already under indictment for various crimes including violations of the foreign agent registration act. Worse yet, he was a fugitive.
The prelude to this opera buffa of the impeachment circus was last Spring’s House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government investigation of alleged abuses of federal authority. The subcommittee conducted several hearings into the Department of Justice and the FBI without producing any solid evidence: the “whistleblowers’ who testified as witnesses were not credible. We would not be wrong if we were to question the rigor of these investigations; it may be we are not sending our best and brightest to Congress.
These are not the familiar antics of partisan politics, but the inevitable result of dumbing down political issues in order to appeal to the emotions of a poorly-informed cohort of voters. It should be no surprise when some of these low-information persons end up in public office. They are the clueless attention-seekers, the Boeberts, the Gosars, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, people who lack the knowledge and character required to govern a large democracy. They are the leaders of the Idiots Parade.
These chaos agents are a minority in the Republican House but are positioned to obstruct the workings of government because of the cumbersome and idiosyncratic of its structure. In the Senate, the filibuster and the rule allowing a single Senator to block a bill from coming to a floor vote (as the afore-mentioned Senator Tuberville is doing with military promotions) are essentially minority vetoes. In the House, given the narrow majorities each party faced in the last two Congresses, a minority of the majority party has the power to block legislation.
And while national politics may be an obsession of the large media outlets, the oozing spread of ignorance and nihilism is affecting state and local governments, too. Consider this: Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is actively rejecting the advice of the Centers for Disease Control that people over 6 months of age should get the latest Covid vaccine booster shot. The state’s Surgeon General is advising people under 65 not to get the booster. Nationwide, the number of school boards banning books is increasing. More concerning, book burnings are also on the rise.
There are many explanations for these trends, but one thing is certain: The United States has been sliding towards a populist, authoritarian-seeking future for decades. It will come not in the blatant seizing of power by the monied elite or the military, but in the election by the people of Donald Trump or someone like him. Who better to lead an idoceracy than incurious narcissist?
This is a warning.
Bonus Link: Check out this YouTube video by CGP Grey for simple explanation of how political power works: The Rules for Rulers
*Kurt Andersen: Fantasyland- How America Went Haywire (2017) Evil Geniuses- The Unmaking of America (2020) Tom Nichols: The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (2017)
**Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, John Afsms (1765)
***James Madison to W. T. Barry, 4 Aug. 1822
****Continuing resolutions are temporary spending bills that allow federal government operations to continue when final appropriations have not been approved by Congress and the President.
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Tour de force explaining the negligence, ignorance, anti-intellectualism and dumbing down of voters heading for the voting booth today. Families and individuals pursuing their own interests in life are not paying sufficient attention to politics and electing good representatives to DC. Those who are more attuned to politics are referencing social media data subject to prevarication and misrepresentation. Proliferation of charter schools and homeschooling plus local education boards controled by elected citizens, not appointed experts produce regression to the mean education standards and poor curriculum and teaching practices adoption that ordinary citizens recognize as not up to standard for their children and communities. And politicians campaigning for office are providing not promises for improving the lot of the majority but pandering to emotional needs du jour of voters who view elections as beauty contests.
I regret the lack of school teaching by former women of middle class standing who emphasized kitchen table needs for skillful grads; teaching has devolved into a fairly safe haven for socially promoted students with a modicum of presence and knowledge to pass licensing tests and routine dispassionate yearly ratings to get satisfactory approval for lifetime credentials. Teacher colleges strive to maintain high attendance with lack of aligning coursework to classroom practices, little presentation of rigorous instruction of discipline content and societal needs and attention instead to licensing requirements and high GPA production.
It's also lamentable that classrooms are poorly stocked with up-to-date textbooks, supplies to aid student understanding of content, and are devoid of instruction to create more critical thinking of students at any level. Teachers buy their own supplementary texts and basic teaching supplies in urban classrooms. Students are given lists of supplies for parents to purchase regardless of home finances or resources because schools don't have enough money for various reasons. Teaching methods emphasize discipline meaning standardized seating rows, silence of pupils during class time, group instruction ignoring individualized needs of many with holes in their prior learning experiences. Alternate schools, vouchers, declining tax bases and poor supervision/leadership have reduced per pupil revenues hence expenditures.
Leadership of schools, disciplines, levels of instruction (primary, middle, secondary) has little initiative, incentive to improve (beyond standardized test results) and locality/community/business connection for accountability. Superintendents cater to whims of board members; principals shut parents and residents off from affecting school decision making and interaction whenever possible. Teachers don't living in their teaching communities or have so much homework that they don't participate in community activities for interaction. Inservice instruction is reduced to a principal reading prepared agenda items to assembled teachers instead of derived from expressed needs of teachers. Workshops are presented with hired experts and generated from distant supervisors who guess at teacher needs rather than visiting classrooms and talking to teachers. Innovations like schools-within-school, open classrooms, multiple teacher cooperative teaching and lesson planning, mastery learning, even the old individualized instruction are not allowed or not initiated by teachers. Regional standards are falling away as groups like Southern Association of Colleges and Schools(SACS) are no longer wanted. Local school board and individual school mission statements are ignored rather than stimulating working toward college prep and knowledgeable citizenship goals.
It's easier to evade accountability than insure and measure it--also cheaper. But our national survival is slipping away as America dumbs-down so individuals retain more of their income and independent living at the expense of a stronger nation for most citizens/students.