Our Ignorant Leaders,
or: Agnocracy in Action?
Drum points us to this by Jeff Stein. It's a follow up to this. It's not for the faint of spirit. It is, to say the least, not going to increase your confidence in those who govern us.
If our elected officials really are this ignorant, then they are, in effect, governing us blindly. This is a very bad thing. Look, you don't--or at least shouldn't--pick a doctor primarily because of his bedside manner... An affable but ignorant guy poking around in your guts with a scalpel is just a friendly killer. But this seems to be how we choose our leaders--on the basis of the analog of their bedside manner.
I think we should demand that reporters routinely quiz lawmakers about this sort of thing. And the results should be tabulated and made public.
Stein indicates that some other agency officials and members of congress have known the answers. But he doesn't tell us what the actual percentages are like, and probably hasn't done enough interviews to know. But the preliminary data suggest(s) (damn quasi-plural terms) a fairly alarming and depressing hypothesis about how much our leaders know and how much they don't.
Look, this seems like an extremely serious problem to me. It's bad enough that those who are making decisions about Iraq and the GWoT/G-SAVE/PREFAB or whatever the hell it is now are too ignorant to make reliable decisions... But there's an even bigger, scarier question here, which is, obviously:
Is their knowledge of this subject representative of their knowledge about policy-relevant information in general?
Are we really being governed by the ignorant?
We need a term for this, but to my shame I don't read Greek [humiliating admission number 67,498] [though I can, um, like, order beer and stuff in modern Greek...so, um, there]. But--if we can extrapolate from words like 'agnostic' and 'agnosia'--my guess would be something like 'agnocracy'.
or: Agnocracy in Action?
Drum points us to this by Jeff Stein. It's a follow up to this. It's not for the faint of spirit. It is, to say the least, not going to increase your confidence in those who govern us.
If our elected officials really are this ignorant, then they are, in effect, governing us blindly. This is a very bad thing. Look, you don't--or at least shouldn't--pick a doctor primarily because of his bedside manner... An affable but ignorant guy poking around in your guts with a scalpel is just a friendly killer. But this seems to be how we choose our leaders--on the basis of the analog of their bedside manner.
I think we should demand that reporters routinely quiz lawmakers about this sort of thing. And the results should be tabulated and made public.
Stein indicates that some other agency officials and members of congress have known the answers. But he doesn't tell us what the actual percentages are like, and probably hasn't done enough interviews to know. But the preliminary data suggest(s) (damn quasi-plural terms) a fairly alarming and depressing hypothesis about how much our leaders know and how much they don't.
Look, this seems like an extremely serious problem to me. It's bad enough that those who are making decisions about Iraq and the GWoT/G-SAVE/PREFAB or whatever the hell it is now are too ignorant to make reliable decisions... But there's an even bigger, scarier question here, which is, obviously:
Is their knowledge of this subject representative of their knowledge about policy-relevant information in general?
Are we really being governed by the ignorant?
We need a term for this, but to my shame I don't read Greek [humiliating admission number 67,498] [though I can, um, like, order beer and stuff in modern Greek...so, um, there]. But--if we can extrapolate from words like 'agnostic' and 'agnosia'--my guess would be something like 'agnocracy'.
So, supposing provisionally that that's right, may I suggest that we do our best to out the agnocrats?
And then to demand that they educate themselves about at least the very most fundamental and absolutely indispensible facts the recognition of which constitute the absolute minimum level of understanding FOR RUNNING THE WORLD'S SOLE REMAINING (but perhaps nor for very much longer) SUPERPOWER?!?!?!?!?!?
And that if they remain thusly ignorant, that we kick their sorry, ignorant butts out of office?
posted by Winston Smith at
8:48 AM
10 Comments:
You should look up the letter from Duke Cunningham to the journalist he holds responsible for his getting locked up because of his shenanegans.
“Each time you print it hurts my family and now I have lost them along with everything I have worked for during my 64 years of life,” he wrote. “I am human not an animal to keep whipping.”
I do not really feel his pain.
Jebus.
Hmmm. You have a future in the mainstream media, as you buried the embarrassing lede.
I bet Alcee Hastings knows a Shia from a Sunni.
How's that the lede? Hastings was passed over for different reasons.
Now HARMAN probably knows the difference.
That we got Reyes instead of Harman b/c of infighting...now THAT'S embarassing...
Still, we might note, the Dems are less (ahem) *dim* in this regard than the other bunch, it seems, in case it's a partisan conclusion you're pointing to...
Though being better than the other bunch isn't good enough by my lights...
Well, as you know, I think one bunch is worse than the other depending on what day it is. The apparent partisanship I exhibit is usually in furtherance of that belief. The perspective thing.
You only see one side of me here. Both parties are coalitions, and I'm quite embarrassed by many of the bedfellows I end up with, and say so in other fora.
There are fundamental reasons why I vote as I do, none of them being that one side is "better" than the other.
We would have been a lot better off with Rush Holt. My $.02.
Incidentally, Tom, it's the fact that we only see one side of you here that often undercuts your credibility.
This is a widespread problem in discussions, esp. in politics.
Once someone starts sounding like a partisan, their utterances start being interpreted as, in essence, party talking points.
Not a criticism exactly, but a friendly and sympathetic observation.
And, actually, which guys are worse doesn't seem to vary from day to day, but go in longish cycles.
The other bunch has been the worst for a fairly long time now, in fact. I expect that to change in my lifetime...but there's a non-zero probability it'll change as soon as next year, IMHO.
Actually, WS, I spend most of my time on epistemological remediation. It just seems like partisanship because of the cognitive dissonance it evokes.
Nope. You spend most of your time--here, anyway--giving arguments for only one side of the issue...some good, some stretched beyond any limits of plausibility. I think you have many fair-minded bones in your body, but you come across as a fairly extreme partisan here because almost all your arguments are radically skewed to one side.
This is the kind of shit that happens even to very fair-minded people on the internets, though.
It's because I'm a Libra. Can't help meself.
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