So we fund our schools through lotteries ‘cause that lowers our tax bill. And we commit our children’s future earnings by borrowing to spend today, again to avoid paying our share in taxes. And we give the president a blank check for fighting whatever war he wants ‘cause thinking about whether an invasion is justified takes time and energy. And we drive Hummers ‘cause ... well, I don’t actually know why any fool would drive a Hummer. But surely it’s not because he’s carefully thought through the implications of environmental destruction.
I’m quite sure that the same Americans who would assure you of what solid patriots they are were just like George Bush in not knowing on the eve of the Iraq invasion, that, for instance, there are Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and that there is no shortage of historical tension between them. How can you put a magnetic ribbon on the back of your car, but not take the slightest bit of time to learn some basic facts about the living and dying hell to which your tax dollars and your votes are committing American troops? Bush’s case for the war, even based on what we knew then, fell apart with the slightest application of knowledge and thought. But people don’t want to learn and they don’t want to think, because it can be difficult. It’s far easier to be anesthetized by yet another episode of Desperate Housewives.
The solution to all this begins with accountability. So much of what passes for politics in America today is only possible because of the style of our discourse, and because of the absence of sustained questioning of members of our political class. George W. Bush had to avoid at all costs any meeting with Cindy Sheehan, let alone a public one, for the simple reason that he knew she would not be deterred from asking the difficult, probing and sustained questions that would immediately expose the lies surrounding his Iraq adventure. The media is equally capable of asking these questions, but refuses any sort of serious grilling of presidents or members of Congress (unless, of course, they’re Democrats). We need to reinvent the rituals of American politics so that candidates and officeholders will not get our votes unless they can defend their ideas against prolonged critical inquiry, and we need to demand with our remote controls that our media provide us with that.
I’m more hopeful than I have been for a generation that young people get this. The New York Times is reporting this week that younger Americans are thinking about politics in ways we haven’t seen for a very long time. Fifty-eight percent of that cohort said they are paying attention to the presidential race today, more than a year before election day. In the 2004 cycle – an election of pretty intense engagement relative to those which preceded it – only thirty-five percent were following the presidential race at the equivalent time in the campaign. That is a huge difference, the likes of which you don’t often see in polling on any question or attitude. And what is more, not surprisingly, these 18 to 29 year-olds have more progressive views than their elders on a raft of issues, as well as very negative views of the Republican Party, which has probably lost them for life. I say this is not surprising – not because it vindicates my own personal politics – but because of the relationship between information and ideology discussed above. Time and again, regressive politics simply fall apart under any sort of thoughtful examination. The more engaged you are, the less Republican, as these young folks are proving.
There are other reasons to be hopeful as well. Who could not be excited by the group of high school Presidential Scholars – including, I’m proud to say, the daughter of two of my colleagues – who hand-delivered a letter to George Bush demanding that he stop torturing in their name, and in doing so thereby demonstrated a wisdom, patriotism and courage most Americans twice or three times their age would envy if they were smart enough to recognize it for the wonderful act it was?
All in all, it has in fact been the public these last years that has been the (unhurried) vanguard when it comes to confronting the atrocities of Bush and his band of regressives, while the institutional actors in the system have repeatedly failed in just about everything but drawing their paychecks (thank goodness for direct deposit, eh?). They continue to do so today. The only reason a do-nothing new Congress could have come to be so despised by so many Americans in so short a time is because of their failure to be responsive on the major issue of our day – Iraq. The public already gets it, and has done so without much help from a fully coopted media, either. They look at Congress and wonder what the heck those folks do all day long up there on that hill, anyhow.
But, notwithstanding these clear signs of life in the comatose patient, far more needs to be done. Far more. Especially if we are to make the institutional changes to the foundations of our political culture that are necessary to avoid returning to this dark, dank place we’ve haunted of late.
It may sound ridiculously platitudinous, but the fact is that there is really no substitute for our hands-on engagement in the governing of our society and our world. It all comes back to that – Congress, the Democrats, the media – all of it. The genius of democracy is in its responsiveness to the public will, and unfortunately that is precisely what American democracy is doing right now – responding to our collective indifference. But until Dick Cheney cuts to the chase already and anoints himself emperor, there’s just enough democracy left in America to bring this thing around. It will require considerable effort, though. We have to tend to our garden. We have to support the seedlings and purge the weeds.
We cannot, fundamentally, delegate this one. We cannot hire someone to do our thinking for us. Not, at least, if we expect to be happy with the results. Not if we want to grow roses instead of weeds.
(Oh, now I get it. That’s what the W stands for!)
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