Plato, in case you didn't know it, had a lot of rather, shall we say, strange, ideas. For example, he wanted all the poets expelled from Athens, because he thought poetry caused disordered thinking. But that's a digression. He didn't trust democracy -- even such as it was in Athens, with voting rights restricted to free male citizens. He didn't think the people generally had the wisdom to rule themselves, so he advocated for rule by philosophers -- philosopher kings. There were to be two other castes, warriors and "producers," such as farmers and artisans. Of course, women and slaves aren't even considered.
A major shortcoming in his theory is that he didn't seem to have any idea of how the philosopher kings were to be credentialed and selected for office. But the problem liberal democracy now seems to be facing around the world -- that the people don't seem to possess the wisdom even to choose their own leaders, let alone rule -- is also for real. They certainly aren't voting for philosophers. For your amusement, I refer you to this Daily Kos story, which includes the Latino who voted for Trump because he had no idea Trump hates Mexicans; a Medicaid recipient who voted for Trump whose family is now telling her that Trump wants to cut the Medicaid budget and she can't believe it; the Palestinian-American who voted for Trump because he was going to stop U.S. support for Israel; and the Trump voter whose boyfriend is losing the job he expected to get because of the hiring freeze - it apparently never occurred to her that when promised to cut the federal budget by $2 trillion, it might mean there would be fewer federal employees.
I don't really have any magic bullet for this.
2 comments:
I understand that Athenians viewed politics as a form of entertainment. That got me thinking about how informed Americans are about their own preferred entertainments. It seems to me that the answer is, "very". Entertainers make jokes about celebrities that assume their audiences know far more about them than they divulge. Sports announcers quiz each other about absurd details of the sport they cover. I know you'll immediately think of more examples.
Is there a way to make politics more entertaining? That might get more people to pay attention to. Maybe contests to see who could give the most evasive answer to a question. Perhaps a hypocrite championship. Possibly a challenge to determine whose policies have the best chance of achieving a goal. Or perhaps the most outrageous unintended consequences.
I don't think we can shame folks into paying more attention, but there might be a way to lure them into doing it.
Wow ... it appears that we have become so incredibly stupid as a country, in general, that people have less of an idea what they're talking about they ever did. Television and Fox have succeeded.
Holy crap. The land of advertising has found a way to pollute people's minds that is as lethal as Russian-style censorship: inundation by misinformation.
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