The video below from TED is chilling in many ways. Michael Specter touches on observations about the resistance people have toward anything that seems to threaten their hobbit-hole view of the world. A little of this, as he rightly points out, is fine, even agreeable, but when it burgeons into matters that threaten lives and seek to derail all that has made this present era as wonderful as it is—and it must be stressed, in the face of overwhelming negative press, that we are living in a magnificent period of history—then it loses whatever quaint appeal it might otherwise have. We respect the Amish, but they don’t tell the rest of us how to live and try their level best to be apart from the world they disapprove. When you see people filing lawsuits with the intent to halt necessary, beneficial progress because they have bought into some bogeyman horror movie view of science or politics or morality, it behooves us to come to terms with a fundamental reality with which we live today.
First, though, the video. Watch this, then read on.
Okay, what reality? That many people are just idiots. I cannot think of a more tasteful way to phrase it. But when you consider the list, justifications and rationalizations fade.
The Tea Party. The Anti-vaccine Movement. The Birthers. Young Earth Creationists. Medjugorje. Deepak Chopra. PETA. Free Market Capitalism. Global Warming Deniers. Holocaust Deniers. Abstinence-Only. Just Say No. The Shroud of Turin. Astrology. Texas Board of Education. Evolution Deniers. Frankenfood Protesters. Homeopaths. Herbalists. Psychics. Scientology.
I could go on. The list above I chose because in each instance the movement in question lies to suit their own end; in each case evidence to prove them mistaken or flat wrong is not only available, it is widely available. In some instances the scientific evidence is so overwhelming as to constitute grounds for considering opponents of the scientific (or historical) view to be somehow malicious subversives if not outright loons.
But more pointedly, in each of these cases, adherents to the various subjects listed seem not to even bother with looking at contrary evidence. They don’t argue with the evidence because they don’t even know the evidence and when, under certain situations, they are confronted with it they simply deny its validity.
Underlying this is an unwillingness or inability to educate themselves—some because they have no time, others for less understandable reasons—and yet they embrace their cause and go off with it as if they had looked into the matter and found the position they advocate unassailable. Dialogue is often pointless because they either won’t listen or, in my opinion more likely, can’t understand a contrary point of view.
It is this last that I address here. We have seen many posts on DI talking about the deplorable level of education. Here is where it is telling. These causes, these institutions, these movements are not embraced by people in general (I believe) because they have made a good case but because they have either promised something their followers want very much or they have scared the hell out of them. The combination of wishful thinking and imbecilic fright is deadly. It is not a question of being skeptical of authority, it is a matter of people finding a hole and pulling the earth over it after they climb in.
If dialogue happened, something productive might emerge from all this.
The Tea Party is basically a Libertarian movement based on a complete rejection of taxes. Idiocy. No state, good or bad, can function without the support of its citizens, and taxes are necessary to maintain community. Who do they think will build the roads, maintain the water system, support the common defense? They assume, because some things are happening with which they disagree, that Washington is now a criminal institution and they wish to strip it of resources, not stopping to consider that their ability to protest itself is something that exists because we have a government that protects their right to do so.
Anti-vacciners. As Mr. Specter pointed, the research has been done, the numbers are in. Something may well be causing a jump in autism, but it’s not vaccination, and suspension of vaccination programs—he was nice about it—will open the floodgates to a world of hurt no one today under the age of 40 in the United States has clue one about. The research is rejected. Why? There may be many plausible reasons, but a major one, if not the major one, I think, is because these folks don’t comprehend the science.
Frankenfood? I have never understood this. Just what do people think crossbreeding is if not genetic engineering? Crude, hamfisted, perhaps, but genetic engineering. The potential to feed people and increase nutrition is inestimable, but—“I ain’t puttin’ that in my mouth, ’cause a guy on tv said it would have unforeseen consequences and it ain’t Nat’ral.”
(Forgive the snarky tone—on the other hand, the title ought to given indication of my attitude.)
Global warming? An island of the Indian coast which has been the subject of a territorial dispute since Partition has simply disappeared. The ocean swallowed it. No more dispute. Ice shelves are melting in Antarctica that have been solid for millennia. Among all the other perfectly sound reasons to cut back on emissions, we can add this one, and yet…an yet…as if arguing over the degree of change human action can claim makes any difference.
Here’s what I think. I think people, by themselves, singly, off alone with one or two others, can be brought to a condition of reasonable cognition in which the world and its vicissitudes becomes somewhat comprehensible. I think if you put these people back into large aggregates, they lose I.Q. along with perspective, and it becomes more important to identify with the group than to follow one’s own reasoning. I think people want desperately to feel they have some control over their own lives and maybe over the world. And I think people want to be attached to something heroic.
I also think people don’t want the ideological rug pulled out from under them.
There are many ways to achieve the feeling of control. Most are easy, moronic, short-term, and destructive. The hard one, the one that works, is to actually learn how to think and to learn how to tell the difference between nonsense and reality. This is hard to do and often, even the best thinkers, get it wrong. But it is the only way that leads to long-term success.
But I also believe that people don’t want to be responsible. Ultimately, when you look at the list of idiotic things people defend, as if they were defending the ultimate meaning of life itself, at the core of them is a free ride from responsibility. “Oh, I won’t know what I want Washington to do, so I’d rather they didn’t do anything. And to make sure I don’t have to be responsible about any outcomes, I want to make sure they CAN”T do anything.” “Oh, I don’t want to take responsibility for my life, so I’ll do whatever my astrologer tells me—after all, if it’s in the stars, it’s just fate, and I have no control.” “Oh, I don’t understand anything about genetics and all that, so I’d like to make it so none of those questions ever come up and I don’t have to think about it.”
If I thought most of this came from people who had given any reasoned thought to these matters, I might be more tolerant. But I don’t think so. Religion has generally been replaced, not by reason but by the closest Cause of the Week. Something to Believe In. Something to give the impression that you have a say in what’s going on, but really all these movements are about not wanting to have a say and not wanting anyone else to have a say, either. Even if some of these non-choices lead to unwarranted deaths, it would be “better” to live in a “natural” world than—than—
Than what? Understand the world? Find out that there are some things you just can’t do, but that there are other things you can if you only take the responsibility?
I didn’t mention health care. It’s more complex, but it ought to be on the list. The opponents to a national health care system reject it because, they say, it’s Socialism. Yet they will readily agree that the current system works poorly and costs too much. They would like it fixed. How? Not by law. Oh. Then how? Well, there has to be a way to do it without federal involvement. What might that be? The Market. But the Market hasn’t done anything but drive costs up and decrease certain services. The Market doesn’t work.* Gee. I guess someone has to bar insurance companies from certain practices and costs generally have to be brought in line. Who will do that? I don’t know, but if the government does it it will be Socialism and we’ll be doomed. There has to be a way to fix it without—
—without changing anything. Bottom line. Fix it but don’t change anything. A clearer expression of wishful thinking is hard to find. And they have been fed the line so long that anything the government does on behalf of its citizens is automatically Socialism that they cannot see through to a different solution—one that will indeed involve the government—no matter what.
Fix it without changing anything.
There is only one way to describe that. Idiocy.
Thank you for your patience.
* The Market…in fact, the Market does function on its own, but most people would be hard put to claim the outcomes are desirable. The way the Market would “fix it” would be to let bubbles grow like cancer cells and when they can no longer be supported, let them burst. Economies collapse, people die, chaos ensues. That is how The Market functions. I dare say, that is not what people want when they say they want the Market to decide.
The problem is people think that leadership is defined by a simple denial of the existing order if one is uncertain. The loudest, rudest, most interruptive voices are called leaders in the sate. Watch Dana Loesch talk over her opponent for most of the clip here. My mother would never have allowed such rudeness. I guess Ms. Loesch was raised by wolves, eh?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOykGUr8SDw
Your tone and approach are filled with anger and judgment – indicative of someone who doesn't like themselves very much and takes it out on others. Your list of things is interesting and in most cases correct.
With respect to vaccination you are absolutely wrong. I'm guessing you have not looked into this issue yourself. If you had you would know that the science is not 'in' – it is actually deeply flawed. In fact, if you choose to spend some time digging for yourself inside of listening to a couple of your koolaid drinking doctor friends or reading about some top level doctor (who if you dig deep you might realize is on the payroll) who laughs at those who question vaccination, you might – if you have any sense – come to the conclusion that any intelligent person would – that vaccination is an unmitigated travesty. But, hey, you are a musician and writer, so you must certainly be qualified to share your opinions about something you know nothing about. The real idiots of the world are those who speak unequivocally about things they don't know a damn thing about and have not bothered to check into in any real capacity.
Bard,
—"that vaccination is an unmitigated travesty."
Worse tragedies—epidemic diseases that can be prevented. Measles, smallpox, polio, dyphtheria, and on and on and on.
See, this is just what I was talking about. But never mind what the doctors say. Just look at the fact that communicable disease has been reduced dramatically in the West in the last 60 years, dramatically, and by any measure you care to name, that is a success. But comfort breeds contempt and leads to falling down on the job.
You know what, read Laurie Garrett's two books, "Betrayal of Trust" and "The Coming Plague", then talk about things people know nothing about.
Meanwhile, I like myself just fine thank you and I happen to like most of the civilization I live in. I don't care to see it go up in flames due to legions of the uninformed fanning the fires of ignorance because they have a friend who has a friend who knows someone…
Unmitigated tragedy…I suspect you also don't know the meaning of either word, in context or out.
Bard, one more detail. I see by another post that you are a photographer. I suppose that qualifies you in equal measure to pass judgment on my ability to reason, assess, and opine.
I am a writer. My main thing is science fiction—not Star Wars, not Star Trek, but actual science fiction. To me science matters. I take pains to understand it. I fall short a great deal, but I do understand process and causality and when someone tells me that X is an unmitigated tragedy, I expect some evidence to back that up. Psychoanalyzing someone you don't know and assuming something about the validity of their opinions based on a paragraph of biography does not constitute evidence on the subject at hand. Tit for tat.
I think we need to coin a word to describe those occasions when the type of person we are describing in a post actually shows up and comments in such as way that proves our point better than ever.
I suspect that the problem with the spat between "Bard" and you is that "Bard" doesn't believe in the power of double-blind studies.
I drew several angry people when I criticized homeopathy for completely failing double-blind studies. It's just like Michael Specter states in his video: How DARE you tell me that I am bound by real world evidence!
In general, I have to say 'preach it, Brother Mark'. I deal with quite a lot of ignorance every day; my students have the excuse that no one has ever told them better. That doesn't make it any nicer to deal with, but it keeps me from getting personally angry at them for believing and spreading ignorance.
However, I didn't post just to praise you. I've been thinking about this and watching people for a while, and I've come to an interesting conclusion. Some people do not like to think logically, and that's not in and of itself wrong. Saying it's wrong to dislike thinking logically is like saying it's wrong to dislike exercise, or to dislike sex, or to dislike any other near universally available activity.
While I think all of us understand that on an intellectual level, those of us who like thinking often forget that for some people, thinking is a chore. An evening of quiet logical contemplation holds as much appeal for them as cleaning out a cat box.
One thing that has helped skew our perceptions is that some people enjoy fashionable things. Thinking is, occasionally, fashionable. Every time thinking comes into fashion, there is a backlash period after it goes out of fashion when people who enjoy logical thinking believe that everyone would be happier if they would just put aside preconceptions and think instead of emoting on a regular basis.
That last, by the way, may be true, but the same is true of exercize, or sex, or even cleaning out the cat box. The truth of the statement isn't going to change people's personal proclivities. Especially about the cat box.
I've just finished reading the book "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.
It's an interesting book, covering many of the same topics I've often seen debated here on DI. In the book, Levitt and Dubner use regression analysis on large data sets to draw conclusions on a variety of social topics. The conclusions often contradict the "convention wisdom" coming from the expert community and also from the mobile volgus mentality that promotes the mistaken conclusions of the TEA partiers, Free market advocates, Birthers and most any group that are quick to adopt an idea based on "the Common Wisdom" offered by self styled experts.
However, the video concentrates on the vaccine-autism where the conventional wisdom held among many is that the connection has been thoroughly dis-proven. This is not the case.
Let me state at this point that I am the father of a 16 year-old son afflicted with the late-onset form of autism, the subtype that appears to be on the rise. I acknowledge that I have a bias, but recognizing that bias helps me strive for some objectivity.
Over the 14 years that I have followed autism research, I've seen dozens of ridiculous faux theories come and go. I have concentrated my focus on neurological and molecular biological research that is trying to determine the pathology involved in late onset autism as opposed the simplistic "theories" that seem designed to exploit the parents by selling a bogus "cures" for autism.
The sensationalism by the media where these bogus theories are first promoted and later demonized has created a lot of noise that hides legitimate research and also impedes the course of that research by associating any research that doesn't jibe with the theory of the day with all the previously debunked "theories".
The research I've been following for so long indicates that late-onset autism is primarily an auto-immune disorder, where the body develops antigens against a specific type of brain cells that regulate nerve activity in the rest of the brain.
There is a genetic factor involved in most cases. Most of the children with late-onset autism possess a genetic marker, the C4b null allelle in the major Histo-Compatibility complex, which suppresses the immune system's ability to distinguish between a group of virus proteins and the body's own proteins. The group includes measles, herpes, and possibly CMV and RSV. Since the unacceptability is protein based, it can be triggered by viral fragments as well as live-virus infections. This means that vaccines cannot be ruled out at this time.
The latest research, based on autopsies and immune assays of the brains of deceased autistic individuals has been independently replicated throughout the world. It indicates that that late-onset autism is incurable, and in most cases progressive.
Avoiding vaccines for everyone is a stupid knee-jerk response. however, since the genetic marker is found in less that 1 percent of the population, a simple test could determine the risk and an alternate vaccine schedule can be applied to those at risk.
The evidence that autism is caused by vaccination, which is the current cause celebre, needs to be put in some kind of perspective. It is anecdotal and after numerous studies found to be a nonfactor. Autism may well be caused by something, but it's not vaccination.
The common estimate, based on a 2002 CDC study (and of course if we're doubting all things governmental, why would we believe these numbers?), is a prevalence of 1 in 150, children aged 3 to 17, suffer autism. This applies only to children born in 1994, btw. So we're looking at less than one percent. If we care to use this as a base, and extrapolate overall, and compare it to rates of mental retardation caused by just one disease—measles—we have
The first 20 years of licensed measles vaccination in the U.S. prevented an estimated 52 million cases of the disease, 17,400 cases of mental retardation, and 5,200 deaths.
Taking the cases of mental handicap alone, that represents a .3% rate. Add in the deaths…
The causal link between measles and brain damage is established. There is no question there. As far as I know, no one dies of autism.
These numbers, btw, from the CDC do not take into account deformities and brain damage caused in the womb from mothers who come down with measles. That number is higher and so high in fact that it was considered an—wait for it—unmitigated tragedy.
This is just one disease that has been alleviated by vaccination. You can run similar comparisons for other diseases. Or you can look at the effects of such diseases in third world countries where there currently is no or grossly inadequate vaccination.
Here, where there is no excuse, it is regarded by some as a "lifestyle choice", little better than a fashion statement.
You can also run likelihood comparisons between the likelihood in the absence of vaccination of populations contracting certain diseases and the likelihood of any complication from the vaccinations themselves and the differences are profound, orders of magnitude different.
Even this might not be so bad, since public health policy has traditionally been that if a child is not vaccinated for certain disease, that child doesn't get admitted to school. But now we have parents suing on the basis of discrimination to have their unvaccinated children admitted into general populations of other children. So far it hasn't been a big problem because most of those other children are vaccinated. But as the trend continues, we're looking at increased likelihoods of outbreaks in school populations, so, yes, this is more than just a personal decision.
When terms like "unmitigated tragedy" are bandied about carelessly, generally what's lacking is historical perspective. While I find something like the moral debate that went on over the final eradication of the smallpox agent philosophically interesting, I unhesitatingly side with those who would kill it, because the flip side only has a truly tragic history attached and to, say, "rerelease it into the wild" would be, unquestionably, an unmitigated tragedy.
It makes me think of a novel I'm reading: Koestler's "Darkness at Noon."
The protagonist, who is a political prisoner in (presumably) 1930's Soviet Russia observes in an essay that a population's political growth is inverse to its technological growth. That is that the presence of new technologies and new ways of doing things make people feel ill-at-ease and unsure who or what to trust. In this era you'd see much corruption and confusion; while a society that is comfortable with it's technology will dedicate more resources to understanding the human condition and will be more politically advanced.
It's an interesting notion and fits with the prior observation of respect for the Amish way of life.
BTW: here's the wikipedia article on the book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness_at_noon
I could argue that vaccinations cause disease on the basis of the millions of people now have diseases who would otherwise have been healthfully dead, along with nearly a billion others.
Innumeracy is a marvelous thing.
As Tim, Kenny and Niklaus point out, there is a powerful social component to what one believes. That power was starkly demonstratedin the 1950's by psychologist Soloman Asch. http://dangerousintersection.org/2006/08/15/why-y…
Antonio Damasio has clearly demonstrated that rationality itself is permeated with emotion. Those without the ability to proper channel emotion through their thought processes lack the ability to generate a inner map representing the peaks and valleys of what is important. http://dangerousintersection.org/2006/05/04/star-…
What seems to make someone admirable and trustworthy as a thinker is the willingness to do the work of being skeptical, at least on occasion. We don't have the luxury of being skeptical about all things all the time–that would drive us crazy. But people I find to be trustworthy sprinkle their day with moments where they question what they believe, often going against the social and emotional grain in the process. In those moments that they are REALLY brave, they question the simple things, the unquestionable things, and the things on which they base many of their other beliefs. Talk about work!!
Could it be that those who tend to jump to easy wrong conclusions just don't want to do the necessary work? The dispute between creationists and first rate biologists comes to mind. http://dangerousintersection.org/2009/02/27/my-gr… Then again, when you hear the more highly articulate spokespeople from the so-called Discovery Institute, it seems like they need to do far more mental gymnastics to hold to their strange views than working biologists. For creationists on the street, though, I think that laziness and fear are big parts of the equation.
Niklaus spoke of the temptations faced by parents of autistic children (including himself)–it's hard to fathom going against what one wants to believe when there is so much at stake. But some people–I don't know how this happens–decide that there is so much at stake that it's really worth getting it RIGHT. Hence the intense skepticism to ensure necessary course corrections.
I wonder, though, whether those of us who tend to be skeptical (this post resonated for many of us skeptics), are driven to be SKEPTICAL by social pressures. We don't want to look foolish in the eyes of others, and we want our reputation to be that of someone who is trustworthy.
I'm wondering, then whether those same emotional/social pressures that can drive many people astray in their logic and fact-finding can also turbocharge the inner drives of skeptics and scientists to get things right. Maybe getting things right is about looking good to others, just like getting things easy and wrong might be about taking short-cuts to impress others. This brings David Hume's quote to mind: “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” [A Treatise of Human Nature, (2nd Ed.), Book II, Part I, Section III (“Of the influencing motives of the will”) (1739)]. My gut feeling is that most people have intact logic engines–they use them almost every hour of most days, because they are motivated to get hundreds of mundane things done every day. I think that the problem is one of motivation, which I would cash out in terms of emotion and social pressures.
The solution to powering one's intellect with the wrong KIND of emotions/social pressures? That is the biggest question we face as a society, in my mind.
Well worded Erich.
Mark, people do die of certain types of autism. As I wrote, those with the auto-immunity slowly get worse as the Purkinje cells atrophy. The process advances at different rates for different individuals, but at some point most reach an age where they have seizures eventually leading to stroke, heart attack and death. However, most autistics live into their 30s before they reach this stage. Some, with a slower progression may lead a normal lifespan. The problem is that the worst cases such as my son, will never experience a good quality of life and will never be able to live independently and contribute to society.
Then there are the "Cold Equations".
There is no doubt that vaccines have almost wiped out deseases like polio, measles and pertussis. No serious physican or researcher that I know of has suggessted we completely abandon vaccines althogether. Some have suggested waiving the measles vaccine for children with the genetic marker, since, as less than one percent, they may be protected by herd immunity. A more sensible approach is to develop a medication that can boost the C4b levels long enough for their bodies to develop a proper immunity to measles.
A lot of people like to consider themselves skeptics by basing their opinions, not on rigorous study of a subject, but as the result of what they feelare logical conclusions based on conventional wisdom, common sense, or common knowlege. The flaw in this way of thinking is that group dynamics changes.
It seems to me that a lot of people who think of themselves as skeptics are actually believers contraire. Most people on both sides of any controversy only see what they want to believe. A few people, however, are intelligent enough to consider the pros and cons of an issue before forming an opinion. They tend to get shotdown in the cross-fire.
I think you nailed it Mark!
My question is, why is it more important for people to stick with the herd even if it means denying their own ability to reason? Solve that dilemma and we move forward as a common body of humanity rather then in our current direction. A fractured, splintered, divided and dysfunctional society that solves nothing and will ultimately suffer the consequences for it.
Mike: I don't claim to have the answer to your question, but I do have an operating assumption. Before modern times, being part of the herd was a matter of life and death. Image being part of a smallish migrating community 20,000 years ago! If you pissed off the community, you'd find yourself fending for yourself, which can be a huge deal, especially if you want to raise children. I have this image of having one's children being eaten by wolves whenever I shake my head that so many people are concerned more about placating the herd than pursuing inconvenient truths!
Niklaus,
Thanks for the information. That is VERY interesting, and I had seen some (not a lot) discussion about that. But I didn't know the details. There is a great deal of information of the sky is falling variety, which makes it hard to find anything meaningful.
BTW, there is a novel you may be interested in. THE SPEED OF DARK by Elizabeth Moon. It's science fiction. The main character is autistic. It's a dynamite read.
Mark,
I need to pay a visit to Barns and Noble and I'll look for that book..
I suspect that most of the people who populate the fringe groups are not total idiots, but specialized idiots. They often profess their beliefs are based in common sense. They should really question the source of the common sense.
Mark: Here's more grist for your mill. "Most of the Texans in the survey — 51 percent — disagree with the statement, "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.'"
http://www.texastribune.org/stories/2010/feb/17/m…
Mark:
I'm going to weigh in again. I think that mental fatigue and fear of loosening up a simple and dependable world view both play a big part with the phenomenon you describe. Most people are good for one good intellectual trick and then they're done. Bible "says" earth is 6,000 years old, ergo the evil scientists are wrong–time to go watch American Idol. Here's another: Brown-skinned outsiders in the Middle East have our oil under their sand, ergo bomb them.
To hold up the mirror to ourselves and conduct a laser sharp critique on our own platitudes is too much work and causes too much pain.
I wrote earlier about our addiction to one-step analyses. http://dangerousintersection.org/2007/09/23/a-wid…
Pascal Boyer has spent many years working to convince people to fight off the temptation to analyze Religion is simplistic ways. http://dangerousintersection.org/2007/07/29/bewar…
Bottom line: As a general rule, it takes more work to get things right.
I suppose I could as rightly titled the piece "People Are Lazy" but I didn't feel that would have nailed the problem. People are generally not lazy when dealing with things that really matter to them. The problems come in when what matters to them runs headlong into an aspect of the subject they don't understand and wish not to deal with.
Penn Gillette of Penn & Teller once told about trying to explain a magic trick to some folks. They asked him how it worked and he actually began to tell them how it was constructed (something magicians are supposedly NEVER supposed to do!) and he said about two minutes in their eyes glazed over and he knew they had just stopped listening. They wanted the magic, not the engineering. I think many people approach politics, science, and religion the same way—they don't really want to know how this stuff works, they want the bright lights and neat sound effects.
What they really want is reassurance and the one thing I believe firmly is that you can't have it. You can be reassured by your parents, your spouse, your kids, your close friends, you can rely on the Law of Gravity, but for the rest you are not entitled to reassurance. It's all in flux, it's all hard work to understand, and we let it slide at our peril. We try, time and again, to set things up so that we as individuals don't have to walk around fully aware and conversant on EVERY topic that affects our lives—no one can do that and have anything resembling a normal life—but when those systems fail, it falls back to us and we get very, very pissed off at having to reinvent the world for ourselves to understand what went wrong.
What I wanted to stress was that idiocy comes into it when we willfully ignore what is already well known and abandon reason for platitudes or because some charlatan has an easy explanation that makes us feel good or at least validated in our frustration. There are things that can be relied upon (with a little work) and to turn one's back on them because we (a) don't understand it and (b) someone has told us that we don't have to understand it because (c) it's unAmerican or unChristian or un Natural…
And finally, usually the correct answers to a lot of the things we wrestle with end up putting responsibility on us—to inform ourselves, to work out the logic, to act sensibly—and that's just not sexy.
Mark,
I often describe such unquestioning acceptance of simplistic memes as "brain laziness".
Bill Maher takes on the "Tea Baggers" and the rest of us, for the utter lack of stuff we can't give up, including "The Empire" : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/24/bill-mah…
I like Bill Maher, but occasionally even he has his head up his ass about things he just doesn't like.
The space program has been one of the few things the government spends money on that in general returns several dollars per dollar spent in spin-off technologies and new applications, and the research it provides is priceless.
As for the "Empire"…well, it looks like one, but I don't actually think it is. Topic for another time.
However, his critique of the general American mindset—bang on. Cut spending, lower taxed, but change nothing. (This attitude is partly from a long conviction that money is always wasted by the government, that corruption and fraud are in-built and absolute, and no matter how often you might "show us the books" people won't believe that the government could do things for less without loss of quality.)
Are Tea Party advocates racist? They do seem to be more racist than the general population:
"A new survey by the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality offers fresh insight into the racial attitudes of Tea Party sympathizers. "The data suggests that people who are Tea Party supporters have a higher probability"—25 percent, to be exact—'of being racially resentful than those who are not Tea Party supporters,' says Christopher Parker, who directed the study. 'The Tea Party is not just about politics and size of government. The data suggests it may also be about race.'"
http://www.newsweek.com/id/236996
I'm really torn about this. A charge of racism today is not the simple thing it once was because for the most part I really don't believe most people are biological racists. In other words, I don't think the fact that someone is of a different skin color or has other non-caucasian markers (or caucasian markers) is the source of resentment expressed by folks like the Tea Party gang.
Rather, it's political racism, which is based on a resentment of perceived advantages supposedly handed to minorities. The anger is over the notion that BECAUSE someone is a member of a minority "my taxes go to pay for something I don't get, namely entitlements and so forth, with no perceived expectation of merit."
Now, mind you, this is a question of perception. But fuel gets added to the smoldering fire when we add in so-called Political Correctness which is seen as preventing polite society from discussing "certain aspects" of political realities that attach to race.
Do I think any of these folks would enact legislation to bar minorities from attending schools or making use of public services? No. Do I think they believe, just because certain people are born to certain ethnic groups, those certain people are granted special privileges? Yes, they do believe that. And they resent it.
What Tea Party supporters, like so many others around so many other issues continually fail to realize is that there is no such thing as a "naturally occurring" level playing field. If we don't act to compensate for inequities that arise spontaneously (or otherwise) equality is a pleasant fiction, a myth. But they cling to the belief that there is some sort of level playing field and that if the government would just get out of peoples' lives we would "naturally" achieve it.
Mark: I agree. I think the Tea Party gang believes in a "naturally" occurring idyllic political state. If only the federal government would get out of the government business, things would flow smoothly.
The PBS series "Nova" last night looked at two major schools of economic theory. The currently prevalent school of thought believes that everyone is motivated by greed and self interest, and base all financial decisions on subconscious calculations to determine the most desirable choice. This is the Chicago school of thought, and is known as rational economics.
The other school of thought comes from Harvard research and indicates that much of our economic decisions are driven more by emotion than reasoning.
The TEA Partiers subscribe to the rational school and make a lot of broad and incorrect assumptions. But the anti government faction is founded in the Libertarian movement.
However, when examined closely, the premises are flawed because they are shallow.
There is an assumption that the government is inefficient and corrupt. For examples they point to $600 hammers and $4000 toilet seats. When you examine these claims, however, it is not the government perpetrating the fraud, but private sector contractors who are guilty.
What's the solution? Cut out the middle man so the private sector can hide these fraudulent practices.
Niklaus: To be fair, the government has a well-deserved reputation for inefficiency in many regards. For instance, public schools are notorious for granting tenure to terrible teachers. Consider the image of the "typical" driver's license bureau employee.
I think, though, that your point is a good one, and that the free market fundamentalists tend to hold up the best examples of private enterprise (e.g., Microsoft) and the worst examples of government spending. When they talk about government inefficiency, they tend to avoid discussion American soldiers, who they adore, who are government employees. They avoid talking about the systemic corruption of Wall Street which, until recently, was considered private enterprise.