The Age of Anger

As the Great Communicator would say “here I go again”. Most everyone knows I am no fan of religious and political ideologues and I am highly skeptical of much of our national political leadership and their cynical, manipulative and self-interested approach to policy making. On the other hand, being completely fair and balanced, I know it is far too easy to criticize and that one really must travel a while in someone else’s shoes to know the complexity and contradictions that govern our individual circumstances and judgments, so we may sometimes imagine betrayal and failure because of our own ignorance, or arrogance, and not as the result of rational and objective assessment. On the other, other hand, some things are as obvious as an infected eye, and I’m not the only one in America, apparently, who feels that way.

Anyone who has ever taken an inferential statistics class probably still has a headache and blurred vision from it, unless you actually understood what the hell was going on, in which case it is likely you are a soulless cyborg bent on the destruction of humanity; nonetheless, statistical analysis of opinion polling data, while suspiciously beyond the comprehension of the average American, may actually yield some insight into fundamental truths about, well, opinions. Right now, the truth is that many Americans are pretty dissatisfied with the performance of their government and the general state of the nation. RealClear Politics is a website (RealClearPolitics.com) which, among other things, compiles polling data from a wide variety of sources from all points on the political compass with the stated purpose of allowing the reader to sort it all out for themselves. A brief perusal of the data on the site reveals we don’t much like the people we voted into public office.

For the most recent polling period analyzed, the average approval rating for the President is 51.9 percent, with 43.6 percent disapproving of the job he is doing. The other 5.5 percent presumably didn’t understand the question or didn’t give a rat’s ass. A 52 percent approval rating may be enough to win an election, but it probably won’t get you a Noble Prize; however, under present circumstances, 52 percent approval might be viewed as outstanding, especially since 56.1 percent of Americans simultaneously think the country is on the wrong track. Apparently 22.3 percent of those holding that opinion don’t hold the President responsible for any of it (do the math).

Congress, conversely, appears to be only slightly more popular than vaginal itch with an average 25 percent approval rating, and an outstanding 66 percent of Americans surveyed disapprove of the job Congress is doing. But still, one in four adult Americans think Congress is actually doing a good job, which is not so bizarre when you consider that (according CBS News Polls) 48 percent of Americans believe in ghosts and (according to Reuters News polling) 35 percent believe in Bigfoot. A CNN poll tells us that 64 percent of adult Americans believe humans have been contacted by alien beings and 50 percent think aliens have abducted people (unfortunately none from Congress), so maybe a 66 percent disapproval rating isn’t as impressive as it sounds. While the Democratically controlled Congress gets the stamp of approval from only one in four, only one in five identify themselves as Republican (Pollster.com), so I guess that a lot of people who actually voted for the useless dung-buckets in Congress are no longer satisfied with their own judgment just eight months down the line.

Which brings me to where I was meandering to begin with; we Americans are just a tad bit conflicted when it comes to governance of the last, best hope of humankind. We started this experiment in democracy with a deep mistrust of authority and the attitude that we classless outcasts could do better than a bunch of wig-wearing, out-of-touch fancy-pants five time zones away. In that respect, we were probably correct, but our first swipe at national management was too tepid and sucked worse than King George’s haughty bureaucracy. We finally hit upon this wonderfully balanced compromise that allowed for both efficacious government and individual liberty, and which in my mind still ranks as one of the all time great products of human wisdom.

Unfortunately, this compromise is based upon a few problematic preconditions, foremost among them being the notion that the individual citizen will actively participate in the process of self-governance, up to and including actually making some personal effort to educate one’s self with respect to significant public policy issues. It then logically follows that we will select our representatives based upon the extent to which we believe they are properly informed and disposed with respect to such issues. I know I’m repeating what I’ve written here previously, but it is repetition for emphasis; if the Congress sucks and the President is ineffective and the economy blows and the environment is collapsing, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

We have everything backwards if we are looking to L'Enfant’s swamp in northern Virginia. for answers. We currently have access to more information from more sources about any and everything in the world than ever before and we are more educated as a nation than we have ever been. We have more leisure time to devote to self-improvement, if we choose, than any generation in history, but we spend most of our time looking at Internet porn, getting facelifts, Facebooking, tweeting, twittering and twatting while we leave the management of our hard won empire of justice and reason to professional narcissists and sociopathic ideologues. And then we whine about how unfair it all is.

In case you haven’t noticed, humans can be a real rational and moral contradiction. Whether you ascribe this to original sin or evolutionary randomness, our imperfection is a pervasive fact of our existence and blaming stuff on the devil or soulless corporations or the Trilateral Commission or the Media just constitutes further moral and intellectual failure when, in fact, all of these things are really just us. Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying "The qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training." In other words, if you want the benefits of liberty for yourself and your posterity, then get off your ass and be the “self” in self-governance. We probably do need to storm City Hall in an angry mob, but instead of torches and pitchforks, we need to bring bricks and mortar and trowels and maybe a book or two, because we can’t do shit until we liberate ourselves from the shackles of self-indulgence and the tyranny of ignorance.