In which I wonder where to begin

I'd prefer to leave politics out of this blog... but they seem to be the only fly in the ointment these days. I believe that people get worked up over little things because they don't have big things to worry about, and so perhaps it's the truly astounding, almost embarrassing level of domestic tranquility that's making me get so worked up over political things these days...

But then again, maybe it's the notion that my son will have to live in the world we're making today.

I try to be sanguine. Hatred and stupidity and fear were not invented in 1982, after all. There were ignorant and small-minded people voting and electing their own kind then, as now. But I find it increasingly hard to laugh off the public idiocy of others these days.

There are certainly people with whom I can respectfully disagree. That's not the issue. Reasonable minds can differ on questions like, what's the best way for people to have access to health care, and what's the best policy for ensuring a well-educated populace, and how to maximize economic prosperity. (Of course, I'm right, and they're wrong, but nonetheless, it's not an unreasonable sort of wrong...)

But people say it's OK for the police to spy on political dissidents and for the president to place himself above the law. What do you say to someone like that? You can't have a rational discussion with those people; you need to send them back to the third grade and have them relearn everything they were supposed to learn about civics, social studies, history, and political science.

People say that they won't vote for a black man because he's black, that money spent on urban schools is wasted because "they" can't learn, that cities should be allowed to burn because they are full of "animals." They use the term "illegals" as a euphemism for "Hispanic" and feel obligated to place weapons in their vehicles if, by chance, they have to drive into an unfamiliar part of their area where they might (gasp!) see someone who doesn't look like them. And, in the interest of equal injustice -- what do you have to do to a child so that by the time he's in the 5th grade, any classmate who does well in school is "acting white"? How do I consider myself as a part of the same body politic as people like that? What is our common frame of reference, from which we can compromise and reach practical solutions to problems we both face? I'm not sure that any amount of education can fix that. I think for something like that you need those shock collars that they put on dogs to keep them from running out into the streets. (And chemical castration -- 327 generations of idiots is enough.)

There is the notion that dissent is treason; that we must surrender freedom for security; that to question war is to disparage soldiers; that those who do not do our bidding are our enemies; that it is better to die in a losing battle to maintain the status quo than it is to accept and manage change. That all science is suspect and unreliable. That everything can be expressed in terms of dollars. That we do not need to think about the consequences of our lifestyles, multiplied by 6.7 billion, on one another and on the planet. What message does any responsible politician use to get people like that to support intelligent governance?

I have been reading lately about the Marquis de Condorcet, a Frenchman who lived in the late 18th century and who was Girondist during the French Revolution. He was a well-regarded mathematician outside of his interest in politics, and his writings on societal reform. He also believed in universal education, and -- very rare for his times -- the same education for men and women. This was a man who was very deeply concerned (for obvious reasons) about making the transition from a monarchy to a republican (small r) form of government. He believed that an education should not be simply literacy and mathematics, but should include a lot of both the hard and social sciences, reason, logic, and ethics. (He was also famously opposed to the Jesuit education system that dominated France, and that was indeed the source of his own education).

Condorcet felt that it took an education to transform someone from a subject to a citizen -- from someone who acts according to belief to someone who acts according to reason.

I look around me and I read the newspapers and I wonder where all of these subjects came from. And I fear what happens when you give uneducated, unprepared, unreasoning "subjects" the powers of citizens -- from Condorcet's example. He was imprisoned during the Terror and died in his cell, either from poison or murder.