"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." -- H. L. Mencken.
"We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all." -- Pericles
Before it was adopted as the logo for a popular web portal, Yahoo was the name given a legendary race of cruel and brutal creatures in Jonathan Swift's novel, Gulliver's Travels (1726). We are not meant to like the Yahoos: they are disgusting, degraded, greed-driven troglodytes, who have some remarkable affinities with the human race. The heroes of the story are the Houynhnms, a society of agreeable and sensible horses, much preferred by Lemuel Gulliver for their calm and rational take on things.
Swift's book was, of course, a satire on humankind: we all have some Yahoo in us. And nowhere is this more in evidence than in the behavior of the American voting (and non-voting) public, who habitually ignore local and national politics until a gaping abyss yawns before them and the country is brought to the very brink of disaster, then scream bloody murder because things have gone wrong, which they usually do when no one is paying attention.
But putting aside for the moment America's chronic indifference to political events, we have another unfortunate distinction, and it is summed up in H. L. Mencken's famous observation that the American public isn't very smart; in fact, according to Mencken, most Americans are, politically speaking, stolid, indolent, gullible, unregenerate ignoramuses, with the intellectual curiosity of tree sloths, incapable of entertaining any but the most elemental ideas. In short, Yahoos.
Now the same can probably be said of, say, Spaniards and Frenchmen. But Spain and France are not superpowers, and neither is considered the last, best hope of mankind. If The French put a corrupt politician like Jacque Chirac in office, it is a misfortune rather than catastrophe; but if America populates Congress, and the White House, with incompetent and unqualified hacks, things can go to hell in a hand basket with alarming ease. I give you the shambles of America (and the world) circa 2011.
It is to Yahoo politics that we owe our craven fear of invented bugaboos (so-called 'third rail' issues) like entitlement, education, and tax reform; our inability to enact simple curatives like a gas tax, or eliminate 'waste, fraud and abuse.' The Houynhnms would be astonished at our paralysis and cynicism; based on the following, they would rightly conclude that the American political system is run by Yahoos:
The fascination with chimerical and crackpot presidential candidates, e.g. odd ducks like Ron Paul, Donald Trump, and Michelle Bachmann, not to mention the perplexing popularity of their whacky, simple-minded ideas. Where is Mitch Daniels when we need him?
The visceral appeal of swagger and charisma, e.g. good hair, vulgar bravado, and the trash talk one associates with UFC cage fighters and other products of American slob-culture. Consider the boundless confidence of bumptious, largely ignorant provincial hicks like John Edwards, and hair apparent Rick Perry. Can you imagine an Abe Lincoln strutting and preening himself on the political stage with the chutzpah of these prehensile morons?
The success of demagoguery, over-the-top hyperbola, and outright lying (why check the facts when it's easier to trust your gut?), including sophomoric debating tricks, like setting up straw men (an Obama favorite). There are lies of commission and lies of omission, but mostly there are lies of over-simplification. Lying by oversimplification (framing complex social issues in binary form, as two false alternatives) is an Obama specialty, e.g. his presentation of deficit reduction as an either-or choice between higher taxes on the rich, or increased Medicare co-pays for indigent seniors; blandly ignoring obvious remedies like tax reform and means testing of entitlements.
It's groundhog day every day at the Obama White House. No matter how urgent the call for common sense economic reforms, like those of the Bowles-Simpson Commission or the Paul Ryan plan, the President, using the power of the bully pulpit, managed to bring back the discussion to his stale talking points, lecturing Americans ad nauseam on the need to tax hedge-fund millionaires, and decrying that perennial symbol of CEO excess, corporate jets. Not only did Obama reject the reforms of Paul Ryan, he rejected those recommended by his own bi-partisan Budget Commission. When asked about this on "Morning Joe," Mark Halperin, a respected Time Magazine columnist, responded by saying the President was 'being kind of a dick.'
The President is well-versed in the tactics of distraction, diversion and fear-mongering: posturing as the adult in the room, he warns seniors their social security checks might not arrive on time. Meet Barack Obama, Yahoo-in-Chief.
Campaign managers and their staffs of statisticians cynically factor in the Yahoo effect in their election strategies, holding voter apathy to be one of life's eternal verities. Rather than use an election as an opportunity to educate their benighted constituencies, the political parties spend millions of dollars on media ads that play to the passivity, intellectual laziness and naivete of the voter, e.g. a 30-second TV ad showing a Paul Ryan look-alike pushing an old woman in a wheelchair off a cliff.
Media events provide a rich treasure-trove of Yahoo behavior. The recent imbroglio over who said what at the second GOP primary debate is an interesting example. Liberals were shocked -- shocked! -- by what they heard (or thought they heard): members of the unruly audience cheering the hypothetical death of an uninsured patient in a coma (probably the same group that applauded the high rate of death row executions in Governor Perry's state).
But a careful reading of the discussion reveals that what they were actually cheering was Ron Paul's statement that in a free democracy we are responsible for the choices we make, which in the case of the unfortunate patient might mean he would not get the premier health care he would have gotten had he had the foresight to invest in adequate medical coverage. The Yahoos weren't the members of the audience, but the talking heads of the liberal press, like Eugene Robinson and Chris Mathews, who used the incident to smear the Tea Party. Yahooism is catching.
The high-water mark for Yahooism came when Nancy Pelosi suggested we needed to pass the omnibus health care bill to find out what was in it. In short, the Yahoo index is so high, i.e. Congress has become so lazy, distracted and fundamentally inept, this august body no longer bothers to read, or contemplate the consequences of, its own legislation.
Some cases combine more than one element of Yahoo politics. When Rick Perry claims that Social Security is a criminal Ponzi scheme, he is employing over-simplification and off-the-wall hyperbola to manipulate and mesmerize his gullible audience. It is not entirely clear whether he staked out this position to burnish his states' rights bona fides, or because he is what he seems -- a populist know-nothing and a philistine. (It's Medicare and Medicaid that are killing us, dummy).
What makes this discussion somewhat nebulous is that stupidity is inseparable from American political theater and is regularly confounded with legitimate political opinion. Americans love eccentricity and picturesque characters like Ron Paul and Rick Perry, and we live in a society where the free expression of opinion is held sacrosanct. Unfortunately the noble belief that every idea deserves a respectful hearing often leads to an excessive tolerance of errant nonsense.
For example, when Rick Perry says U.S. Senators should be elected by the state legislatures, rather than laugh him off the stage, there is a tendency in American audiences to give him the benefit of the doubt. Likewise, when Michelle Bachmann claims she would not raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances, come hell or high water, her loyal fans swoon. Never mind that such an decision could seriously damage America's financial standing in the world.
And when Ron Paul asserts for the 110th time that America should go back to the gold standard, his claque of righteous ninnies gives voice to fervent hosannas. Unfortunately, there are not enough gold reserves in Fort Knox or in Bill Gates' strong box, to monetize the economies of the world. Maybe we should go on a diamond standard, or a rare earths standard. Anybody got any moon rock?
Some of these ideas are not only silly, they are downright dangerous, like Ron Paul's belief that the mullahs in Iran, who preach that earthquakes are caused by male sexual arousal, should have their jerk-off hand on the levers of weaponized nuclear technology. Where was Ron Paul when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the Middle Eastern map?
And it is just as conceivable that Rick Perry's lecture to a young student that there are two theories for the origin of man, and that there are gaps in evolutionary theory, is perpetuating a category error and a fallacy that may have set back Texas education ten or twenty years. (I realize I have just used hyperbola here.)
It may seem illiberal and pompous to dismiss these ideas out of hand, but they are not just stupid, they are willfully stupid. That the authors of these dimwitted beliefs are considered serious contenders for public office, let alone the Presidency, boggles the mind. Not even after Michelle Bachmann's campaign manager quit, claiming health issues, did she back off of her tendency to fire RPGs from the hip, claiming that the HPV vaccine, which prevents a cancer-causing STD in women, also causes mental retardation. Apparently she discovered this testing the vaccine on herself.
And why are Americans so defiantly and stubbornly complacent about their own ignorance? How did we become so insular and oblivious to the momentous political events taking place in the world around us? We could quote Thomas Gray, who said, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." But I think there's a more persuasive explanation: our educational system, possibly the worst (and certainly the most expensive) in the industrialized world.
"What up with that?" as the rappers say.
Ask the NEA and the AFT, and the Congressional hacks they bribe with lavish campaign contributions. The last thing doctrinaire liberals want is educated voters. In fact, liberal activists have championed suffrage for convicted felons, illegal aliens and extraterrestrials. But if it's against the law for felons and mental defectives to vote, shouldn't it also be illegal for ignoramuses to cast a ballot? Isn't this why the Founding Fathers limited the franchise to land owners?
True dat. On the other hand, it might be unwise to eliminate dummkopfs from the election rolls. After all, there are worse things than stupidity, e.g. consider where the ideological obsessions of the current Harvard-educated President have led us.
Maybe Thomas Gray was on to something.
William Fankboner
Wm. B. Fankboner's Website
Copyright 2011 William Fankboner
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