The real idiocracy

Because I write children’s books, I meet a lot of children’s book writers, especially at book festivals. During such an event last March, politics dominated the Monday night dinner conversation (as it had all weekend). I usually keep my mouth shut about politics, or offer only mild demurrals. But when one of my companions spared a good word for Donald Trump’s declaration, on the debate stage, that we couldn’t have people dying on the street (supposedly distinguishing himself from his opponents), I had to speak up.

“Nobody wants people to die in the street. Not even Republicans.”

That led to a brief discussion of better ways than Obamacare to broaden medical coverage. I didn’t think much about it until one of my tablemates apologized to me later: “A lot of us in academic fields, we just assume that everyone in the room has the same views.” No need to apologize. I was a little testy about her assumption that Republicans love kicking sick grannies to the curb, but why can’t we simply discuss ideas?

That’s my most recent experience with the attitude Emmett Rensin, on the Vox website, describes as “the smug style in American liberalism.” Rensin’s main point is that his fellow liberal elites have adopted “a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of [their] consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.” Certain bromides are accepted as inarguable facts: “Real elites might recognize each other by their superior knowledge. The smug recognize one another by their mutual knowing.” They “just know” that liberals are smarter, less biased, more evolved with better brains—the latest scientific study proves it!

To the smug, there’s no such thing as alternate ideas.

To the smug, there’s no such thing as alternate ideas, just bad facts vs. good facts, knowledge vs. ignorance, sensible solutions vs. reactionary hate. Ideology is a fiction; liberals simply favor what works, and conservatives have no views worth arguing about. Rensin blames this attitude for alienating the white working class, once the Democrats’ core constituency.

Meanwhile, on the right, instead of liberal sneers we hear conservative snarls. Ideology? The likely Republican nominee doesn’t have one, other than winning. Conservative elites shake their heads at every Trumpian gaffe and make comparisons to Idiocracy, the 2006 movie about a thoroughly average Joe (named Joe) who volunteers for a government study that puts him in hibernation for a year. Forgotten by the bureaucracy, Joe doesn’t wake up until 2505, when he learns that human intelligence has declined so much he’s now the smartest man in the world. Is this the United States today, five centuries early?

Idiocracy is an actual word, meaning “personal rule or government.” The root form in Greek, idio, has an interesting pedigree. Originally it indicated a private person, as opposed to public citizen. Meaning expanded from “private” to “ignorant” or “unlearned”; Paul used idiotes to mean “one without understanding” (1 Corinthians 14:23-24), while the adjective form, idios, is usually translated in the New Testament as “personal” or “one’s own” (carried over today in words like idiosyncrasy). By the late Middle Ages, an “idiot” was someone mentally deficient from birth—an actual medical term by the 19th century.

Now “idiot” is a tag for someone who doesn’t agree with the speaker or writer, and in a way the meaning has come full circle. The path from “private person” to “mentally deficient person” isn’t as disjointed as you might think. Both are cut off, from public life or from honest public debate. Both are outsiders, taking up residence in their own minds or with like minds, and can’t or won’t communicate with those outside the bubble. A true idiocracy is rule by the personal: each doing what is right in his own eyes and refusing to alter his view of the facts, or even admit there is another view.

No wonder we face the most polarizing election of our times. The public square is empty, or ignored, while armchair pundits retreat to their smug bubbles (or snarl bubbles) and launch snarky opinions into cyberspace. Let’s hope the smoke clears in time to try some actual conversation.

Email jcheaney@wng.org