October 02, 2012

“Why is Everyone* So Stupid?” (*Except Me)


Note: If you are an oppressed person who has said something like this about your oppressors, this post is not about you. This is not an attempt to get you to alter your reaction to ignorant oppressive actions or statements nor is it an attempt to criticize that reaction, whatever it might be.

Okay, you forgot your anti-elitism hat today. It happens to me, too. I get it. It’s a heavy hat. It’s really very frustrating out there; everyone has been constantly lied to and too many seem to have bought into countless false narratives without much reflection. True, you’re probably privileged by a somewhat respectable education, but still, it can be hard to believe so many people don’t think the same way you do. And what’s worse, folks seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to disregard what you say, and after all, you’re (mostly) only trying to help them. “What the fuck?!” is right.  I wouldn't accuse you of having a similar knee-jerk reaction to what they think because well, you’re right and they’re not. Right? Okay, so take a breath, spend some time in front of the stupid tube, and take the rest of the afternoon off. You deserve it after all that truth-telling.


Just don’t forget to put your hat back on tomorrow.

Chances are, if you are relating to all this, you are a liberal complaining about poor GOP voters (though no one ideology has a monopoly on forgetting their anti-elitism hat, to be sure). For instance, when the election cycle heats up your liberal tweeps may start saying things like, “Why are poor folks always voting against their own interests?!” As brilliant as you are, you probably know the answer to this question, but just in case, I’ll remind you:

Because it’s impossible for folks to vote in their own interests. That’s why.

Oppressed folks are usually more aware, than even you are--in all your overly informed brilliance--just how much between a rock and a hard place they are. If you are able to look past all the partisan hackery, you see that hiding behind all those “R’s” an “D’s” are really just a bunch of class enemies who have one set of tricks or another to make life easier for rich folks and much harder for everyone else. And oppressed folks are usually really good at seeing past all the hackery; hell, they might even be better at it than you. Should I decrease government and get screwed over by unfettered big business? Or should I increase government and get screwed over by…government, and the big business that controls it? Whenever they can you let them get away with it, Democratic politicians demean poor folks and use government as a weapon against them. Is it really surprising that poor folks would vote against them or -- ::gasp:: -- not vote at all?

You may also from time to time forget how difficult it is to get factual information, even in this day and age. If you forget, you might slip and say something really ignorant like, “the information is out there is you just bothered to look.”

Well, if you’re anything like me, you have the privilege to sit at a computer at work and check the blogosphere more or less once an hour. You have news alerts sent to your smart phone and you have a nice, stimulating political argument on Twitter once a week. Maybe you went to college and got all read up on the social theories and economic shenanigans and know exactly how to parse out the truth from mainstream “news” sources. All these opportunities to get “oh-so-informed” about everything and anything can make it easy to forget that most people don’t have time to go scouring the internet for the details about Obama’s “Jobs Plan” and the latest analysis of the analysis of Limbaugh’s comments about that Republican governor who’s about to be famous for six days. Turns out a lot of folks don’t have easy access to a computer, even if they do have the time. And if they have a computer and have the time, they don’t know where to look, because they’re been actively being prevented from finding out. And to cap it all off, if they do manage to stumble upon the truth (maybe they have a reality splintering experience while perusing your blog), how much of that knowledge is going to lead to a real improvement in their lives? Maybe they don’t get a kick out of being a wonkish know-it-all on Facebook like you and me. Without a political movement to be active in (something you could spend some time building, you know), all that knowledge is just, well, depressing. This is where an understanding of self-efficacy is critical; people need to believe again that what they think, what they say, what they do, and what they know actually matters, and the means to make that matter is provided by communities of resistance, but by an individual’s lack of “stupid.”

Oh yeah, and...maybe folks are just really tired and stressed out and need what little spare time they have to unwind. That’s not a crime, you know. In fact, working class folks spending time the way they want to spend time might even be called revolutionary.

You may also be misled into thinking you are more informed that you actually are. Despite your noble resistance, MSNBC and the New York Times have been stroking your ego so vigorously that they may have caused you to forget that being well informed and being well-versed in the talking points is not exactly the same thing. For instance, you may have some vague opinion about QE3, being the supremely informed citizen that you are. But, you probably don’t have a very thorough understanding of what QE3 is. Almost no one does. In fact, most of the policy-makers, politicians, and even economists, pushing for it don’t know what it is or what it will mean. Not that you are stupid or uninformed. You are just a lot more like everyone else then you think you are when you forget your anti-elitism hat—you are being actively deceived and actively prevented from know what is going on.

And last but not least, you could maybe, possibly just be dead wrong.

I know, I know, super unlikely...but you have to admit: it’s a possibility. Regardless of how uber-left or fantastically intelligent and critically-mind you consider yourself to be, you grew up swimming in the garbage just like the rest of us. Despite your best efforts, you have absolutely swallowed some of that garbage. So maybe somewhere in your gut you have some ideas about what is properly “intellectual” for political conversation. Or maybe you have some sort of dogma that serves you so well most of the time, until it doesn’t (for instance, your reasonable affinity for science may have morphed in a militant faith in “Science!”). You have been programmed into unthinking respect for folks that have been trained to speak “the code;” you know, that collection of words and phrases that David Brooks and Thomas Friedman use weekly to make it seem like what they are saying is thoughtful or intelligent. Given all this, you are likely to make the mistake of thinking you know more about oppressed folks’ lives then they do. You don’t.

But I’m sure you knew that already.