Is Accurate Thinking in Politics an Educable Trait? - Democracy Fails if It Is Not

© 2010 Peter Free

 

20 September 2010

 

Is there a flawed observation in my three-part series on education reform?

 

Crisis historically tends to motivate Americans to act with more wisdom than they might otherwise have.

 

Or so I thought in Parts I, II, and III of a conversation with a friend regarding laying the cultural groundwork for effective education reform.

 

However, the historically-demonstrated motivating power of crisis may be a wrong assumption in today’s Avoidance Era.

 

These days, crisis appears to heighten political oversimplification, deceit, and dysfunctional public emotion ─ at the expense of truth, intelligence, and national effectiveness.

 

An insight from columnist Robert J. Samuelson

 

We are currently in an economic recession of magnitude.  This is a crisis in most people’s estimation.

 

Yet, as Robert J. Samuelson, wrote:

 

In an election dominated by the economy, the campaign discourse is strangely disconnected from underlying economic realities. The simplicities of the right collide with the simplicities of the left.

 

In textbooks, elections clarify complex issues and help resolve social conflicts. In practice, they often sow confusion and create unrealistic expectations, as politicians peddle phony solutions and make unattainable promises.

 

Americans face crucial economic choices. How to cut long-term budget deficits without threatening the present recovery? How to control health spending without damaging health care? How to adjust to an aging society and still retain a powerful economy

 

On these and other hard questions, the silence is deafening.

 

© Robert J. Samuelson, The ritual of sound-bite economics, Washington Post A15 (20 September 2010) (paragraph split for online readability)

 

So, what now?

 

If crises today actually motivate us to run around like crazy chickens, its utility in forging solutions to real problems is nil.  And my hopes for cultural and educational reform would, therefore, be unrealistic.

 

Questions that we might ask

 

Three questions arise:

 

(1) Is accurate thinking an educable trait?

 

(2) Can political thought be divorced from destructive emotions?

 

(3) Can effective leadership harness people’s ability to think, even in emotionally difficult times?

 

Answers to these questions

 

(1) Accurate thinking is educable.  Our schools turn out tens of thousands of people who succeed in professions in which the professional matter itself mandates thoughtful accuracy.

 

(2) The second question, divorcing destructive or clouding emotion from political thought, is more difficult.

 

Politics seems to lure our wishes for magical security and oversimplified ease.  The political arena turns back into tantrum-prone two-year olds.

 

This emotional regression may not be surprising.  Politics, in some ways, is about harmonizing that which cannot be brought together.  Like trying to put electrically positive and negative poles into the same space.  We cry when we can’t have our way.  Complexity and ambiguity frustrate us.

 

The most easily frustrated or frightened people are usually the loudest squawkers.  Today, they draw much more than their share of attention.  Their antics are apparently entertaining.  Their outrageous imbecilities sell.

 

We divert ourselves at the nation’s expense.

 

(3) Leadership is the key to transitioning accurate thinking from the workplace into the toddler’s political paradise.

 

Truthful leadership.  Leaders who teach that most things require compromises, which detract from the imagined ideal.

 

Leaders who tirelessly explain that some solutions are painful, and, even when attained, not at all seamless.

 

Effective leadership is about making political two-year olds face Reality’s facts.

 

The honesty requirement may reduce courageous politicians to one term in office.  At least, until the cultural momentum for truth and thinking gains hold.

 

So, I stand by my observation that crisis provides the opportunity for change ─ but I emphasize that courageous and effective leadership is the key to successful change

 

That was the point of my conversations with my Republican Party friend.

 

I was exhorting him to lead.  To rise above the cowardly standard that most of today’s politicians set.

 

Somewhere buried in us is still the fabric of a determined 1776.

 

Americans will come to sanity’s flag.  Just raise it clearly.  Visibly.  Over and over again.

 

Teach.  Motivate.  Impress.  Insist.

 

Enough of us will wake to what we individually need to do to keep the momentum of national greatness and spiritual humility alive.

 

Lead.