Everyone gets angry. It’s a universal human emotion. Newborns express frustration and anger. Three-year old children express anger, as do teenagers and fully-grown adults.
Psychology and child development studies show that each age and developmental stage has is own characteristic way of expressing anger. We even know what these behaviors look like, because they’ve been described in countless psychology, child development, and education books and periodicals. Dr. Spock and Jean Piaget are often quoted in this regard.
If we take a close look at the way some members of the present Congress have expressed their anger, we will see that their behavior, that is to say the manner in which they express their anger, does not match the adult behavioral model. There it is! The toxic and hostile atmosphere in Washington is the direct result of the inability of some members of Congress to express their anger and frustration as a normal, healthy adult. So . . . .
PART 1: WHAT I’M GOING TO TELL YOU
Their behavior resembles that of four-year old children. John Boehner’s outburst, ”Hell no!”, and Joe Wilson’s, “You lie!”, are perfect examples of childish, immature and inappropriate behaviors. It’s what you’d expect from an unruly fifth-grader. That kind of smart-aleck conduct is seen every day in elementary school classrooms all across the country. What a shame, what an embarrassment it is that we’re forced to witness it in Congress.
It is plain to see that the toxic hostility is the natural result of some members of Congress expressing their anger as children rather than as adults. They are adults behaving like children. Unfortunately, true bipartisan ship is unlikely to happen as long as one side behaves in an adult way while the other side continues to behave in an immature and childish way. Now that we see the toxic atmosphere for what it is, we can consider the problem in greater depth.
So far, we have a description of the problem, but a description is not a solution. We need to ask more questions, to make more observations. For example, it would be helpful to know how so many immature adults managed to get elected to Congress in the first place.
But everybody already knows how that happened. They were elected. Their constituents found resonance with their immature behavior and childish ways of expressing themselves, and these voters elected them.
Political supporters gather around politicians in the same way that people collect themselves around an entertainer or performer, and in doing so create what we call a fan base. Some people find resonance with punk rock or The Grateful Dead, some with Beethoven symphonies or West Coast jazz. A fan base expresses a shared taste.
Both a fan base and a political base are expressions of a shared taste. The dynamic is the same in both cases. The difference is that, in the case of a political base, it’s a shared belief, philosophy, prejudice or opinion that unites the base and not, as in the case of a fan base, a shared aesthetic or artistic taste or preference. Therefore, it stands to reason that the behavior of our elected officials is nothing more than a mirror of the belief, philosophy, prejudice or opinion of the voters who put them in office.
Again, that’s only another observation, and an observation is not a solution. But I think we’re getting closer. Let’s take the next step with this question: how did we get so many people who live, think and express themselves on the intellectual and emotional level of a child? More importantly, how did they manage to become a dominant voice in public policy?
When did we get so many people who not only think like children, but who are able to project their childish behavior onto so many members of Congress? As we can see, the result of this projection manifests itself as the toxic, partisan gridlock and over-the-top rhetoric that everybody’s talking about.
H. L. Mencken gives us a hint when he says, “As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
The moron Mencken foretold of is, of course, George W. Bush. It was during his presidency that the Teabag crowd began to coalesce around the moron who mirrored their views, values and inner soul.
The rightwing extremists began to build their political clout during the Bush administration. Don’t forget how George Bush bragged about being a C student. He wore his ignorance like a sheriff’s badge. Mediocrity was elevated, while excellence and learning were ridiculed as being ‘egghead’ or ‘elitist.’ And so, being ignorant and unpolished came into fashion.
In the same way that fans congregate around a musical performer and thus form a fan base, so too do the likeminded gather around politicians who share or reflect their opinions and prejudices. They flocked to George Bush like moths to a floodlight. In doing so they created the beginning of the political base that has come to be known as the ‘rightwing extremist fringe.’
Bush actually took pride in misusing the English language, and he glorified the average and below average, the under-achievers. He valued mediocrity over excellence. He contemptuously dismissed the lessons we can all learn from history. His stupid comment will live on forever. “History? Who cares? We’ll all be dead by then.” That’s the mind that the right wing found resonance with. George Bush reflected the ‘inner soul’ of the people who later morphed into the Teabag-Birther-Death Panel crowd.
Eight years of living under this kind of mindset has created a generation of people who can’t tell the difference between a buzzword catchphrase and a serious political dialog.
George Bush is gone, but his fan base lingers on. They have simply congregated around other floodlights, other politicians who will reflect and express their childish and immature behaviors, who share their simplistic and adolescent view of life. The names Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell come to mind. Each one is a floodlight, shining forth a beam of prejudice, ignorance and misinformation, and each one has attracted a base whose beliefs and opinions they mirror. That’s how so many children went from the kindergarten classroom to the halls of Congress.
The reflection works both ways. For example, everyone agrees that John Boehner’s behavior is childish, rude and bullying in the extreme. Therefore, we can expect to find a large number of childish, rude bullies among his supporters. Mitch McConnell embodies and expresses the homophobic, xenophobic, rigid and prejudiced opinions of enough of the voters in Kentucky to get elected and re-elected to the Senate. Therefore his supporters are most likely also homophobic, xenophobic, rigid and prejudicial individuals.
PART 2: WHAT I JUST TOLD YOU
So how close are we now to actually getting to a solution? Let’s go back for a moment and retrace our steps and see if we can determine where the next step should be.
We began our line of inquiry with an observation on the toxic hostility that we all see in Washington. We saw that the angry gridlock is simply the result of some members of congress behaving in clearly immature and inappropriate ways. We realized that these childish politicians are not themselves the problem. They were all put into office by people whose ignorance and prejudices they mirror. They were put there by a population, significantly large enough to win an election. Therefore, fighting the individual politicians is not the ultimate solution. The problem is the kind of people who put them in office in the first place.
Then the question became, “How did we get such a large population of immature people, short-term shallow and gullible thinkers, and how did they end up with so much political clout?
We saw that they came to power and prominence during the eight years of an administration that glorified mediocrity and ridiculed excellence. It was an administration that reduced all issues to black and white, for-or-against choices. Eight years of being fed dumbed-down, simplistic framings of complex issues has left us with a population who have learned to reduce complex issues to slogans, knee-jerk buzz-words, labels and signs, and whose memory fades with each new news cycle.
PART 3: CONCLUSION
But then, isn’t that exactly the kind of population you’d expect to find in a country that cuts funding for education, that will not support its schools, who vilifies teachers because they belong to a Teachers’ Union? When you constantly cheap out on education, then you can expect a population of ignorant and ill informed voters, people who are the short term shallow, illogical thinkers, the quintessential ‘C’ students.
And so, finally, the solution appears. Here it is: We have to start taking education seriously. I mean all education, the whole gamut, from early childhood to post graduate school. Education is always an after-thought, something Congress and local governments might take care of if more important things don’t take up all the money in the budget.
Education is not high enough on our list of national priorities. That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of talk about how important education is, but if you look at the behavior of our elected legislators, you see that it’s all empty rhetoric. Undeniably, the talk is at variance with the action. Education is still never fully or adequately funded, and it is always one of the first things to be trimmed when there’s a budget deficit, or if we need more tax breaks for big corporations and rich people.
P. T. Barnum characterized the situation when he said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” By neglecting the education of this constant stream of suckers, our legislators have allowed ignorance to flourish, and now it threatens to take over the legislative process and tear it down.
Or perhaps this quote, attributed to H. L. Mencken, frames the problem properly, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
But maybe Pogo nailed it when he said, “We have met the enemy and they are us.”
That’s the kind of electorate you should expect when you neglect education. That’s the kind of electorate we have.