It Isn’t Just Me

I know I sound like a broken record on the subject of civic knowledge, but I’m not the only person despairing of the consequences of our civic deficit. A recent article in Salon by C.J. Werleman describes the civic landscape and its implications.

A few of the author’s more trenchant observations:

The health of a democracy is dependent on an educated citizenry.  Political illiteracy is the manure for the flourishing of political appeals based on sheer ignorance.

So let me introduce you to House Majority Speaker Eric Cantor’s Republican Party vanquisher David Brat (R-VI). First thing you need to know about this far right-wing political upstart is he’s a university professor, which means it’s highly probable he’s not an idiot. He also identifies with the Tea Party strain of conservatism, which, paradoxically, means it’s likely he is, indeed, an idiot. And by idiot, I mean wholly ignorant of U.S. history and constitutionality.

In fact, in his victory speech delivered last week to his supporters, Brat demonstrated that he sits among the majority of Americans when it comes to political and cultural illiteracy.

“I wish to restore America to its Judeo-Christian roots,” declared Brat. “God acted through people on my behalf.”

Ignoring the self-delusion of the latter part of the above text, Brat now joins no less than 200 million Americans, according to a number of polls, who believe the U.S. Constitution and our laws are based on Judeo-Christian values. On any given Sunday you will hear Christian-right politicians claim absurdly that U.S. laws are based on the Bible. Spoiler alert: they’re dead wrong. The Constitution’s secular provisions came into being thanks to the Founding Fathers, who shared a deep suspicion of both organized religion and the supernatural. The Constitution was framed with a conscious omission of any mention of God and a prohibition of all religious tests for public office. Moreover, the First Amendment’s declaration that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” embodied the founders’ view that religion has no place in the political domain.

That not a single major media outlet bothered to correct Brat’s ignorance represents America’s continual decline in American civic and cultural literacy.

The rest of the article is equally scathing, and well worth reading, but I want to focus on that last quoted paragraph, because I think it points to one of the major reasons Americans are so uninformed, and so easily manipulated.

We have lost journalism.

What used to be called “the journalism of verification” has disappeared into a sea of Kardashian-watching, Faux News “reporting,” hate radio, consumerism and internet conspiracy theories. The few actual reporters who remain–and I mean few (a couple of years ago I used a textbook in my Media and Policy class titled “Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights”)–simply do not know enough to ask what should be obvious follow-up questions, or to provide readers with background and context that would allow them to properly evaluate what political actors are saying or doing.

Werleman is dead-on when he concludes:

In other words, when Republicans say there is no such thing as gravity, and Democrats reply that gravity is real, CNN and the like say, “Look, Democrats and Republicans are fighting again,” which not only exacerbates the nation’s anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism, but also increases the likelihood of extremist views and falsehoods taking hold in the national electorate.

We’ve replaced fact-checkers with “he said/she said” stenographers, and in the process, we’ve created a political world in which there are no facts–only opinions.

It’s a recipe for disaster. Ignorance isn’t a survival strategy.

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Correlation is Not Causation

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Indiana’s Governor has been emphasizing the importance of strong families, and promising that measures taken by his administration will be “family friendly.” (Well, to be accurate, they’ll be friendly for heterosexual families…)

Family is a key indicator of success and we’re looking for ways that we can encourage more young people to get married, to stay married, to wait to have children until they’re married is very important,” he said.

Very nice. Unfortunately, the Governor’s cart is in front of his horse.

There is a raft of research showing that people who enjoy financial security are more likely to stay married. There’s a reason for the statistic the Governor shared, to the effect that upper-income folks and college graduates are more likely to have stable marriages–people who aren’t sweating the rent are more likely to stay married.

The Governor also said that his administration has been putting “the interests of strong families at the very center of our policies on development.”

Sorry, but without policies that help the working poor make ends meet, that’s just blowing smoke.

A living wage is what enables and facilitates stable marriages. It isn’t the other way around.

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Mortgaging Our Civic Future

You’d think Indianapolis lawmakers might have learned something from the Goldsmith Administration. (For those of you new to Indy or too young to recall, Goldsmith was blessed with a growing national economy and low interest rates, and he was able to avoid raising taxes by using the municipal credit card–refinancing everything in sight, and incurring lots of additional debt, all of which  we’re still paying off. )

The lesson isn’t that cities should never incur debt. There are all sorts of reasons–good reasons–to bond for civic improvements. Think bridges, sewer systems, public buildings. As with so many issues in public administration, the issue isn’t whether to do something, it is under what circumstances and how.

Right now, the Mayor and Council are arguing about the Mayor’s proposal to issue thirty-year bonds for “Rebuild Indy II.”  The City–that’s us, the taxpayers–would essentially be taking out a 30-year mortgage on an asset with at most a 10 year life.

That is profoundly stupid.

Think about your house. You may have a loan with a twenty or thirty year term, but at the end of that period, the house will be yours and it will still be standing. If historical trends persist, and you’ve taken care of it, the house will be worth more than you paid for it. That mortgage was for an investment, and it made sense.

Would you take out a 30-year loan to purchase a tent? How about a car? Why not? Because the tent and the car depreciate. Those aren’t investments, they are consumer goods.

Paving city streets is maintenance.

Do our streets need paving? Are you kidding? Of course. Should tax dollars pay for that maintenance? Absolutely.

But a 30-year loan for maintenance that has to be redone every few years?

That’s like taking out a mortgage to pay the plumber for fixing your toilet.

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Your Assignment for Today…

…is to read Don Knebel’s most recent post at the Center for Civic Literacy blog.

You need to read the post in its entirety, but here’s the lead-in, to whet your appetite:

When some American reporters described the recent election in India as a victory for the Hindu Nationalist Party, an Indian comic tweeted that Indian reporters should begin referring to the Republican Party as the “Christian Nationalist Party.” The tweet was sarcastic, but nonetheless close to home. As the primary defeat of Virginia Representative Eric Cantor emphasizes, the current incarnation of the Republican Party is increasingly both Christian and nationalistic.

Don notes that today’s GOP is most popular among citizens with the least education and the lowest incomes, and posits that those are the Americans who are also the most fearful– those most threatened by immigration and social change in general.  He also notes that those citizens are also more likely to be Christians. (I would add a few descriptors: older, white, male, heterosexual…). And he concludes:

Ironically, the Republican Party, long considered the party of the rich, seems increasingly to be the party of the poor or at least the working poor. While Republicans continue to advocate for lower taxes and less government spending, because of the correlation between a state’s poverty and its likelihood of voting Republican, eight of the ten states most heavily dependent on federal assistance also voted Republican in the 2012 Presidential election. Who would have thought?

Read the whole thing.

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It’s the Culture, Stupid!

One of the many ways we might “slice and dice” humanity is to describe the wide gulf between people who understand the importance of systems and those who see the world entirely as a creation of individual actors and actions.

I don’t want to minimize the importance of leadership, because ultimately it is leaders and those they persuade who move the culture, but folklore to the contrary, that kid who stuck his finger in the dyke did not singlehandedly avert the deluge.

I understand the temptation to attribute social ills to personal failures. Saying “that guy is poor because he’s lazy,” is a much more satisfying analysis than one that tries to quantify the role(s) played by an inferior education or economic shifts that made his skills obsolete or bankrupted his employer–let alone public policies with unintended consequences.

There are two possible responses to a recognition of the immense influence of culture and social systems: you can shrug your shoulders, accept the brutal truth that you cannot change the world or even a small portion thereof, and spend your days cultivating your own garden (a la Candide); or you can join with others working for systemic changes, recognizing that life offers no guarantees. If and when change comes, its form will be unpredictable, its trajectory uncertain and its emergence maddeningly slow.

A lot of us struggle with that reality, and that choice, every day.

My garden is pretty appealing….and the magnitude of the cultural change we need is pretty daunting.

Withdrawal is tempting.

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