Is America bringing stupid back?
Justin Timberlake alleged he bought sexy back, now there is a growing level of apprehension among observers that populist American movements may well succeed in bringing back a retrograde social and political ethos. The 2008 election saw a sea change; it brought to power a President of a new generation – young, connected and with a promise of some greater social liberalism. He was an unknown political force, and this article does not intend to dissect his political credibility, however Obama’s election certainly implied a generational shift. He appeared a man of the age, in his mid-forties, and implied the potential for a softening on pseudo-social/religious policies such as stem cell research, abortion and gay rights.
Fast forward 12 months, and the country seems to be recoiling in a counter-progressive manner back to a much more socially conservative collective psyche Take for example the report that dictionaries have been removed from some California schools as the definition of oral sex therein is deemed too graphic. While this level of censorship and intolerance may be expected in some parts of the world, it hardly fits with a supposed modern developed Western country. It is difficult to conceive that such behavior would be deemed normal in places such as Europe, but itis presented in the US as if this is business as usual for an advanced industrial nation in the 21st century.
Dictionaries have been removed from classrooms in southern California schools after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for “oral sex”. Merriam Webster’s 10th edition, which has been used for the past few years in fourth and fifth grade classrooms for children aged nine to 10 in Menifee Union school district, has been pulled from shelves over fears that the “sexually graphic” entry is “just not age appropriate”, according to the area’s local paper. The dictionary’s online definition of the term is “oral stimulation of the genitals”. “It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature,” district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the paper.
‘Oral sex’ definition prompts dictionary ban in US schools | Books | guardian.co.uk
This step backwards also has political characteristics. The health care debate in the US has effectively been hijacked by lobby groups, and the potential for societal development neutered. It is again difficult for an external observer to comprehend why a wealthy nation such as the US has an unwillingness to join all the other OCED nations that already have universal health systems. While the timing can be questioned due to economic questions, the fact that the debate is not even couched in any moral terms is to non-Americans all a little baffling. This is not the first time we have scratched our head in the absence of a moral dimension in the language surrounding the health care debate.
There are some issues that should transcend partisan lines, particularly in a relatively wealthy and developed country such as the United States. There are matters that require debate beyond economic rationalism and more as social ideals. Some things are above pure free-market considerations, and rather constitute obligations that a competent government is required to deliver to its populace. To demonstrate the point, there are no doubt cheaper options and functionally more efficient methods of government than democracy, but few would question its intrinsic value.
Some of the services a representative government should guarantee are unquestionable – potable water, personal safety, energy, road, transport, defense, and education to name but a few. What is included in this list in most advanced nations, and for some in the US this seems a surprisingly controversial issue, is adequate health services. A representative democracy has a moral obligation to ensure affordable access to high-quality health care service is an inalienable right for its people. However, it appears as if the healthcare debate in the US is missing the moral dimension to its analysis. The current argument, focused merely in terms of economics and free-enterprise’s supposed service delivery superiority, is an ethically fallacious and intellectually bankrupt method of understanding the issue
The Daily Clarity » The moral dimension of the healthcare debate
However, it was watching the coverage of the recent Massachusetts election victory of Republican Scott Brown that had us wondering about the potential for a ‘stupid’ boomerang trend in US society. It is not the fact that the Kennedy Democratic dynasty in the state was tumbled, nor even the fact that a populist Republican back lash saw Brown elected. What struck a chord for us was the advertisements purporting that as Brown drove an aged domestic pick-up this somehow made him one of the people. It raised the question are ‘we the people’, really so stupid as to buy that line? Despite the amazement the evidence leads one has to conclude that yes, despite the fact that Sarah Palin was ridiculed on the political stage in election season, ‘we the people’ still want ‘stupid’ in office. It is not so much whether Brown is a good choice or not, but the fact that his pick-up earned him votes that is problematical in the analysis. This dumbing down of the issues seems to be the whole raison d’etre of the Tea Party movement. A retrograde social and political movement somehow determined to return America to a halcyon age that no longer exists. An impractical objective packaged as dream and sold to nation in economic crisis.
To select a candidate merely because he is like us, or at least packaged thus, seems to be a failing of due care in a democracy. To put it in simple terms, one could conclude that the issues of modern day governance have become so complex (or as some cynics would contend the electorate so stupid) that the selection of a lowest-denominator candidate on Election Day is the single democratic responsibility of the average voter. Thereafter, it simply becomes an unwritten blind-faith contract that the elected representatives will do the best for the people. Now, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have the same first amendment rights as individuals so the democratic election process has now in effect become an auction. These are missteps for nation, failings of process and thought represented in simplistic formulaic media debates so as to lull the people.
Most political scientists understand that systems of governance actually need to change positively to adapt to society’s evolution. Even Marx, the architect of communism, argued that his concept of communism was the best available model he could conceive at the time, but that as society approached his imagined Utopia that a better system would be conceived as a paradigm. However, this development process seems malformed in the American democracy. The country has been sold a bill of goods rather than a bill of rights by populist movements. There is a cancer in the body politic and the people seem to be in denial as to the seriousness of the disease.
Some allege the moribund American political system has so many checks and balances that nothing can actually get done. This could in part be due to the origins of the nation, conceived as an antithesis to government interference, and designed so that absolute political control became nigh on impossible. By limiting control, it may have developed into a monster without self-awareness but only able to respond to external stimuli. The dream of liberty and freedom may have been sacrificed at the altar of consumerism and intellectual antipathy.
This grand democratic experiment however may have become paranoid. The desire to preserve liberty potentially the very cause of the failure in capable democratic governance. The constitution may well be sacrosanct, but it is flawed as every system authored by man is likely to be. It takes a great leap of faith to believe that the founding fathers were so wise that they described a system that would exist unchanged ad infinitum? Was the design they articulated reflective of the modern nation state complexities? What is apparent is that the system is failing. The current system makes the art of governance effectively impotent in modern day America. The thin line that separates of church and state is constantly under attack through lobbying of the evangelical activists. The removal of the dictionaries from California schools certainly ahs echoes of the book burnings in other nations. The one step-forward-two-steps-back pattern of American societal development is worrying. It means little to no progress is made, and an organism that does not evolve is likely to become extinct over time. There are real dangers that if America does bring stupid back, next time they might not be able to get it to leave. We are reminded of a quotation that we could do worse than bear in mind if we want to keep stupid from America’s door:
At worst, one is in motion; and at best,
Reaching no absolute, in which to rest,
One is always nearer by not keeping still.
- Thom Gunn, “On the Move”
