Just How Stupid Are We?

JUST HOW STUPID ARE WE?
By Rick Shenkman

The year was 2009, which means I’m discussing the paperback edition of this book, with its epilogue concerning the election of Barack Obama. Should 2008 have made us feel better? Rick Shenkman thinks not. Obama simply presented better than John McCain. “Everywhere he went he drew enormous crowds who seemed attracted as much by the spectacle as by anything else. What most people in attendance at his events seemed to crave was an emotional experience.” Now that sounds familiar.

In hindsight, the degeneration Shenkman describes here was not going into reverse but was in fact getting worse. He began writing the book because “many wanted to know how such a thing as [George W. Bush’s] election to the highest office in the land had come to pass.” Only the name has changed, while the astonishment has increased.

The question Shenkman addresses in his title is a controversial one. Intelligence takes many different forms, and I’m always wary of those who limit it to people who read a lot of books. What Shenkman means by it though is an understanding of basic civics, of being smart enough, or knowing enough, to be able to cast an informed vote. Questioning the wisdom of The People is sacrilege in America, but Shenkman doesn’t shy away from his conclusion that the greater involvement of “the masses” in politics has been a net minus. “We have put our fate in the hands of The People, the same folks who by and large (1) find politics boring and (2) are ignorant and irrational about public affairs.” No cheerleader of democracy he.

Even the media, those Chomskyan master manipulators, are let off the hook, as they merely cater to the appetites of Alexander Hamilton’s “great beast.” “Just as a people get the government they deserve, they also get the media they deserve.”

As Shenkman observes, several times, such a stance is pretty much taboo in America, or really any democracy, but it does draw attention to what is a perennial problem: the call for The People (the capitals are his) to perform a civic duty they are mostly uninterested in and almost entirely unequipped for.

But this was, as I’ve said, 2009. Was there no sign of hope?

For those who live on hope — and don’t we all — several developments of the last decade or so are promising.

I find the Internet promising

I find blogging promising.

Where they may lead is anybody’s guess. But one can hope that they will give the intelligent the tools needed to take political campaigns to a higher level rather than merely empowering, as sometimes currently seems the case, nitwits, extremists, and the obnoxious.

Well, blogging is dead and we know where the promise of the Internet led. I don’t think the question of how stupid we are is as concerning now as how stupid we’re going to get.

Notes:
Review first published online June 22, 2020.