See, the great human tragedy that leads to the glorification of minds like Sarah Palin and Phil Robertson, and the hideous damage such minds do to themselves, is a complete misunderstanding of some of the great virtues. Being plain-spoken is a fine thing as long as it means you cut the bullshit and say exactly what you mean with no obfuscation in your language; it is a bad thing as long as you think it means dropping your g’s in favor of apostrophes and gazing with suspicion on those who use words like “obfuscation.” Firm convictions can be a great thing if you refuse to waver in the face of opposition; they can be a bad thing if you refuse to ever subject your thinking to the cold light of reason. Directness can be a fine thing if it makes you honest; it can be a terrible thing if you believe that no difficult issue is complicated, that understanding can always be boiled down to a bumper sticker, and that knowledge is an inherently suspect thing that makes you inherently less trustworthy than people who “just know what they know.” These are misunderstandings that lead to the demonization of expertise. These are beliefs that hobble lives, that enshrine prejudice, that fool millions into hero-worship of the inane and distrust of those with data, deadly to the prospects of the human race at a time when almost every important issue threatening our survival requires understanding deeper than the sound-bites that John McCain’s people were famously so horrified to discover were the only curriculum Sarah Palin was capable of absorbing. They are beliefs that make people think “What books do you read?” is gotcha journalism. She is not actually a stupid person, I think; I think she’s every bit as cunning at serving her own cause as she needs to be. But she is something worse: a person who distrusts education, fetishizes the simple, and is willing to pursue the “plain-spoken” well into the realm of the dangerously ignorant. Here, she sits next to an educated suburban man and successful entrepreneur for most of his life well-acquainted with razors who in his guise as a swamp hick whos only recently emerged from the backwoods into the harsh light of civilization spoke hurtful and bigoted words that made him an instant hero to the kind of people who think the world can be boiled down to the willfully blind perspective of a Sarah Palin. Listen to this conversation and you will find an exchange devoid of self-examination, bankrupt of contemplation, barren of nuance and empty of any conclusion other than a defiant, “Because it’s so!” The great danger of our time is that this is the kind of dialogue one of our great political parties considers genuine and real, in the country founded by leaders who could express their ideas in great soaring prose; no, Jefferson and company weren’t always right, but by God they were real, and their ability to think made them more genuine, not less, than those not interested in any thoughts more complex than what Mel Brooks in BLAZING SADDLES called “authentic frontier gibberish.” By contrast, Palin and Robertson put on at least some of what makes them risible, because they know its what also makes them popular. They are acting. They are being even more ignorant than they actually are, for profit. They are instant caricatures of themselves and thus the very opposite of authentic anything. They are both exactly what they seem to be and dangerous frauds.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 13:44:33 +0000
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