Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis.

http://www.slate.com/id/2243797/

Down With the People
Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis.
By Jacob Weisberg
Updated Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010, at 7:07 AM ET


In trying to explain why our political paralysis seems to have gotten so much worse over the past year, analysts have rounded up a plausible collection of reasons including: President Obama's tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, the blustering idiocracy of the cable-news stations, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for any important legislation. These are all large factors, to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit in our current predicament: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.

Anybody who says you can't have it both ways clearly hasn't been spending much time reading opinion polls lately. One year ago, 59 percent of the American public liked the stimulus plan, according to Gallup. A few months later, with the economy still deeply mired in recession, a majority of the same size said Obama was spending too much money on it. There's nothing wrong with changing your mind, of course, but opinion polls over the last year reflect something altogether more troubling: a country that simultaneously demands and rejects action on unemployment, deficits, health care, climate change, and a whole host of other major problems. Sixty percent of Americans want stricter regulations of financial institutions. But nearly the same proportion says we're suffering from too much regulation on business. That kind of illogic—or, if you prefer, susceptibility to rhetorical manipulation—is what locks the status quo in place.

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The politicians thriving at the moment are the ones who embody this live-for-the-today mentality, those best able to call for the impossible with a straight face. Take Scott Brown, the newly elected Senator from Massachusetts. Brown wants government to take in less revenue: He has signed a no-new-taxes pledge and called for an across-the-board tax cut on families and businesses. But Brown doesn't want government to spend any less money: He opposes reductions in Medicare payments and all other spending cuts of any significance. He says we can lower deficits above 10 percent of GDP—the largest deficits since World War II, deficits so large that they threaten our future as the world's leading military and economic power—simply by cutting government waste. No sensible person who has spent five minutes looking at the budget thinks that's remotely possible. The charitable interpretation is that Brown embodies naive optimism, an approach to politics that Ronald Reagan left as one of his more dubious legacies to Republican Party. A better explanation is that Brown is consciously pandering to the public's ignorance and illusions the same way the rest of his Republican colleagues are.

I don't mean to suggest that honesty is what separates the two parties. Increasingly, the crucial distinction is between the minority of serious politicians in either party who are prepared to speak directly about our choices, on the one hand, and the majority who indulge the public's delusions, on the other. I would put President Obama and his economic team in the first group, along with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Republicans are more indulgent of the public's unrealism in general, but Democrats have spent years fostering their own forms of denial. Where Republicans encourage popular myths about taxes, spending, and climate change, Democrats tend to stoke our fantasies about the sustainability of entitlement spending as well as about the cost of new programs.

Our inability to address long-term challenges makes a strong case that the United States now faces an era of historical decline. Our reluctance to recognize economic choices also portends negative effects for the rest of the world. To change this story line, we need to stop blaming the rascals we elect to office and start looking to ourselves.

as long as Obama was the dictator.

Am I wrong?

Regime -- then yes it would be easier.

That reagime looks a lot like the democratic partys version
of Reagan.

The people pulling the stings that have power, influence, and control over the mediums of communication?

We could read and learn if we chose. We are not helpless pawns. We are just lazy.

We don't have to give into the system. You are inherently already part of it. Few have the experience and the abilities (due to the self-perpetuating system) to recognize this and act accordingly. I can not fault you if you do not see this.

We are so spoiled. We are a bunch of ignorant babies who pass on responsibility for our lives to the politicians while simultaneously blaming them.

I've been critical of Obama sometimes and even I wouldn't do that.

The average person has less discretionary time than people did a generation ago. They have tow work 2 shit jobs apiece to stay afloat at all, they're scared, they're fed misinformation, disinformation and just plain lies, they're kept angry, they're chronically fatigued and depressed, they feel trapped, and then for some reason they don't seem to have carefully thought-out, well-informed opinions about things over which they see themselves as having no control.

Duh.

I hear ya.

They have a radio in the car. Instead of listening to NPR, how many listen to Rush?

They have a television set. Instead of finding something on the dial to stimulate their minds, they watch junk.

Maybe they have a computer. Is that for surfing the Net for information or playing mindless games?

These incurious people aren't helpless. They choose fill their minds with poison, or they choose not to think at all. And they're the victims?

Bullshit.

I have siblings who refuse to google facts-they prefer to spout the mindless talking points of rush and hannity. And they have computers. They are willfully ignorant imo.

Who works for Slate (Washington Post). Journalists wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot. If the media explained to us in detail why Republicans are almost always lying, our people would be much smarter and ready to make the right choices.

a whole lot more than that. And I agree with you about how the media is failing all of us in informing instead of pushing agendas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Weisberg

Jacob Weisberg (born 1964) is an American political journalist, serving as editor-in-chief of Slate Group, a division of The Washington Post Company, and a columnist for the Financial Times. He served as the editor of Slate magazine for six years, until stepping down in June 2008.<1> He is the son of Lois Weisberg, a Chicago social activist and connector celebrated in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point. Weisberg's father, Bernard Weisberg, was a prominent Chicago lawyer and, later, judge. His parents were introduced at a cocktail party by novelist Ralph Ellison.

Weisberg is a frequent commentator on National Public Radio and also writes a weekly column for the Financial Times. He previously worked for The New Republic in Washington, D.C., was a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. Early in his career, he worked for Newsweek in the London and Washington bureaus. Weisberg has also worked as a freelance journalist for numerous publications.

The creator and author of the Bushisms series, Weisberg published The Bush Tragedy in 2008. He is also the author, with Robert Rubin, of In An Uncertain World (2003). Weisberg's first book, In Defense of Government, was published in 1996.

Weisberg chaired the judging panel for the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for excellence in non-fiction writing.

Weisberg graduated from Yale University in 1986, where he worked for the Yale Daily News. When a junior, he was offered a membership in Skull and Bones by Senator John Kerry, but declined the offer, citing the club's exclusion of women.<2> Instead Weisberg was persuaded by The Washingon Post's Robert G. Kaiser to join Elihu Society instead.<3> After Yale he attended New College, Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.

I know there are heroes in this drama, and I recognize there are villains.

For one thing, most Americans don't have any clue how our economy functions, and I know you know that.

And secondly, nearly all Americans don't know the difference between the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, and they don't care, and they don't even watch the hearings that involve these crucial issues.


So I am at a loss. I think the U.S. is in a downward spiral, not as a result of our politicians, but just exactly as you suggest, because most American citizens are so entirely ignorant, they have no clue what is going on at any given moment.

Thank you for posting this.

A majority of them elected into office the very people who orchestrated the economic crisis. They also elect the people who crap on and demonize our public school systems to the point where it's impossible to keep them funded enough to actually educate American citizens. Look at all those who are actually PROUD of their ignorance, and call educated people "elitists." It's sickening.

make great posts here, and everything you say has value.

And politicians have nothing to do with that, right? Because they are so consistent to principle and message, right? "Mandates are like trying to solve homelessness by making everybody buy a house." Followed by "I support mandates". Think about that one, and look me in the eye and tell me that a man who has both supported equality and opposed equality is then, not among the ignorant mind changers.
I remember Obama during the Primary. In SC, he used anti gay preachers to pander to religious bigots, and he called such people 'family' and 'good decent moral people.' Then, in PA, religious voters did not like his hate preacher style pandering, so about them, he said 'they cling to God and to Guns and to mistrust of those unlike themselves.' Ok. So a bigot in SC is God's own man, but in PA, a bigot is clinging to God and guns.
So any person who wants to make a mess on the rug like this piece better be ready to do this all the live long day.
The people are willing and able, it is the craven, waffling, pandering fear based leadership that is ignorant, and unable to do their jobs.
I find this piece to be right wing crap, posted to defend cowards.

We are being moved about like pawns in The Great Game. We buy w2hat they want us to, live as they want us to, vote--well, they count the Diebold votes. How can we escape when we (most of us, for the most part) don't even realize we're being used? TRILLIONS are being spent, and the most cunning of "perception management tools" employed to fool us into thinking we have "freedom." Who could compete with that? Nobody perhaps but the most bloodthirsty revolutionary leader--and then, how could we ever be sure that leader was sincere and not a construct of the neocon elite? (read UBL)

To quote a DUism: we are screwn! And who are "they?" You tell me...

Do I have to do anything else besides read DU to be highly informed?

In my life I kind of feel like the guy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers trying to warn of aliens disguised as normal people.

-90% Jimmy