The flaws of democracy
Oct. 3rd, 2008 01:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrIf you haven't read ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dduane's post that I linked to in my previous post, go do that first.
The reduction of "democracy" to "I'm as good as he is" (read that as "How dare he be better than I am") has deep roots in the US.
Anti-intellectualism goes way back. Simple example, go read Tom Sawyer and see what Tom and his friends thought of the smart kid at school. And at how the author portrayed him.
That sort of thing persists to this day. The whole "jocks vs nerds" thing for one.
It's led to the difficulty candidates have getting elected if they look or act "smarter" (or more knowledgeable) than their constituents. Which has led (especially in these days of media consultants and pollsters) to candidates acting dumb to get votes.
Which has resulted in candidates who *are* dumb and "good ol' boys" getting elected.
Alas, breaking this would require a generation or more of actually educating children. And teaching them to think means that all adults would be confronted by kids who could spot the bullshit being spouted by adults. Which the kids, (lacking tact as most kids do) will cheerfully call the adults on.
This why attempts to do something like that in the 50s were quickly halted. It's one thing to have the kids able to pick apart communist propaganda. It's quit another when they start doing it to our propaganda (which we usually won't permit ourselves to think of as propaganda)
Add in the fact that a populace that examines things logically and can spot the sort of misleading BS that most campaigns *rely* on these days and you have the folks n power not wanting a thinking population either.
dduane's post that I linked to in my previous post, go do that first.The reduction of "democracy" to "I'm as good as he is" (read that as "How dare he be better than I am") has deep roots in the US.
Anti-intellectualism goes way back. Simple example, go read Tom Sawyer and see what Tom and his friends thought of the smart kid at school. And at how the author portrayed him.
That sort of thing persists to this day. The whole "jocks vs nerds" thing for one.
It's led to the difficulty candidates have getting elected if they look or act "smarter" (or more knowledgeable) than their constituents. Which has led (especially in these days of media consultants and pollsters) to candidates acting dumb to get votes.
Which has resulted in candidates who *are* dumb and "good ol' boys" getting elected.
Alas, breaking this would require a generation or more of actually educating children. And teaching them to think means that all adults would be confronted by kids who could spot the bullshit being spouted by adults. Which the kids, (lacking tact as most kids do) will cheerfully call the adults on.
This why attempts to do something like that in the 50s were quickly halted. It's one thing to have the kids able to pick apart communist propaganda. It's quit another when they start doing it to our propaganda (which we usually won't permit ourselves to think of as propaganda)
Add in the fact that a populace that examines things logically and can spot the sort of misleading BS that most campaigns *rely* on these days and you have the folks n power not wanting a thinking population either.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-05 09:55 am (UTC)