Every so often, I read something profound. Something that, for whatever reason, is incisive enough to alter my thinking, to change my perspective or opinion, to give me new focus and ideas. The most recent of these comes courtesy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Neal Starkman writes of the S-Factor:
The answer, I'm afraid, is the factor that dare not speak its name. It's the factor that no one talks about. The pollsters don't ask it, the media don't report it, the voters don't discuss it.
I, however, will blare out its name so that at last people can address the issue and perhaps adopt strategies to overcome it.
It's the "Stupid factor," the S factor: Some people—sometimes through no fault of their own—are just not very bright.
It's not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren't the people I'm referring to. The people I'm referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They're perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don't have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all—far above all—they don't think.
I'll leave you to read the rest of the article, and judge it as you will. I understand that Starkman needs examples, needs a focus for his argument. But I think turning the article into a somewhat typical anti-Bush screed ultimately ruins his larger idea, and is sure to give many an excuse to dismiss it as so much liberal ranting.
The greatest failure of American politics, and really of any American public dialogue, is citizens' inability or unwillingness to think critically. You can go round and round about a disengaged citizenry, low voter turnout, money corrupting politics, dishonest politicians, and any number of other things. But these are the symptoms, not the core of the disease itself. As you soon as you get a critical mass of people actually thinking about what's going on, all these problems will disappear.
The bottom line is, politicians and other officials at every level, in government and otherwise, have long since learned that simple lying is not the most effective way to get away with whatever they want. Better to twist reality, to mislead and obfuscate, and to trust a populace that's repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to not pay attention to the circumstances to continue right on not paying any attention to them.
There's your problem. There's your social issue. Figure out a way to make the average United States citizen think critically, and all the other problems go away.
Posted by slade at January 07, 2004 12:47 PM