Mrs. Obama really has almost nothing to do with what I’m thinking here aside from the fact that she recently said something that points in this direction.
I’m afraid I can not even set the stage for you, but speaking to some group or other she said something like, “I’ve now had the opportunity to sit in with, and listen to, many movers and shakers”…………….gov’t?….. business? ... Both, I think…………..”And I’ll tell you something; they’re not that smart”. I’m sure I haven’t quoted her perfectly, merely going by memory, but that was the gist of what she was saying.
There was a time when I would have been doubtful. Even forty, forty five years ago I had seen cases where someone who had attained some pretty high place in society made some incredibly dumb mistake and lost all. Richard M Nixon is certainly a fine example.
Yet I would have thought that the fools were a very definite minority. I believed that the Attorneys General, the business leaders, the Secretaries of State, the private civic advocacy leaders and so on were of a measurably and demonstrably higher level of general intelligence than us ordinary folks.
I had come to have doubts well before Mrs. Obama stated it so succinctly. Perhaps I said it, or would have said it myself, in private conversations or debates.
But we probably ought to just face it and recognize it as a phenomenon that we must deal with in some constructive way; Those darned leaders of ours are not nearly as brilliant as they want us to think they are. (This includes a lot of the people who are leading our own party. Our employers, too. Bummer. But pretending otherwise ain’t gonna help.)
Are some of them genuinely highly intelligent people? No doubt. But probably in similar proportions to a mere random sampling of any population.
Some of them do have talents of various useful sorts, it’s true. Some can speak to us and inspire a passionate response somehow. That can surely be useful. But I suspect they’ll come and go no matter what.
Some have the talent of finding, and mining, dispersed wealth, gathering it together, distributing a very good chunk of it into their own accounts plus those of a few enablers and praising the free market. Very nice for them. It’s benefit to society in general eludes me.
I could probably speculate on other talents of the people who make decisions for us. But I doubt it’s needed. These folks can likely be classed as something like ‘savants’. People who are quite good in some relatively narrow specialty……………..sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent…………...but who are, on average, really not a whole lot smarter than you or I.
So I’m suggesting we recognize something that I don’t hear people saying; The folks in charge are nothing more than mediocrities! And I guess it’ll take more than merely acknowledging it. We need to internalize it and always remember that it probably has to be this way forever.
And we need to seek a strategy that will counter the worst effects of this.
I have not been able to come up with even the vaguest outline of a plan for increasing the average intelligence of the people in key positions within our society. My gut tells me that such a thing is not possible.
But I can suggest something that could work as a counter-balance. Let’s try to make sure that these mediocrities are at least kindly and sincerely wishing to do the best they can for as many people as they can. If they become corrupt, then end their careers.
So……….should Ralph Northam lose his job over a stupid photo from 35 years ago? That’s difficult because I’m not sure I’ve seen undeniable evidence of cruel intent. But I’m inclined to say, now, that he ought to lose his job because we can’t afford to give him the benefit of that doubt. If it’s possible that there’s something mean still lurking in that man’s soul, then he needs to be dealt with in a way that safeguards the rest of us.
Imagine that he is either innocent or a completely changed man. Is losing his job a pretty harsh sentence over that yearbook slip? Yes, it is. And it won’t be the first time it’s happened. Consider Alger Hiss. You’ll still hear right-wingers state as fact that he was a definite Soviet agent within the State Dept. It’s garbage. What he was was a young man, in the 1920s, who did join the American Communist Party for some short time. A lot of the young were open socialists at that point in time. Many of them drifted away soon after because they perceived Bolshevism as being a bit too extreme for them. Others turned away in disgust when Stalinism became as insanely evil as it did in the 1930s. When the cold war got into full swing these folks perceived that admitting they ever had any flirtations with communism was professional suicide. So they strove to keep it quiet and avoid admitting it. For very good reason. That was Hiss’ crime. And he shouldn’t have been metaphorically crucified for it.
So Northam, like Hiss, could possibly be a victim of an essentially harmless mistake in his youth. No, that’s not good. But maybe these things will happen less if the people who like to point fingers and blow other people’s cover were in danger of losing their careers for it?
Amy Klobuchar? The jury is still out, yes. But evidence is mounting that she’s one of those who puts on a smiling face for you and I but, behind closed doors, browbeats those who she judges are not powerful enough to fight back. If true, then I don’t trust her with public policy and I think she should go.
Could we find a way for those accused to clear their name? Could be. I can think of one right now, though it’ll be a difficult climb. Folks like Ralph and Amy could get their jobs back by campaigning for election to the jobs they lost. The campaign would surely give them opportunity to show us they’d turned over a new leaf. But I’ll admit that I’d like to find a trustworthy way that wouldn’t be so agonizing for the candidate involved.
So I’m suggesting that we quit trying to choose our candidate based on their ‘competence’. We already know, on average, just how competent or not they’re going to be.
We might as well choose our candidates based on their good intent. It’s likely to get us further in the long run.
Oh!…..and how do we impose this “be nice” rule on our business leaders? The only thing I can see offhand is that we’ll need to empower our well meaning elected leaders to force the ‘nice’ rule on our unelected business leaders. Perhaps the level of scrutiny should be calibrated to just how much money they make plus just how many people they are capable of harming?
That’ll be a complicated subject and I doubt if I’m capable of coming up with better detail. I’m not very interested in doing so at the moment, either, because I’m enjoying the far off ‘gurgling’ noise of conservative blood boiling.
It’s a sweet sound.
