“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” – HL Mencken formerly of the Baltimore Sun, who also coined the term “the boobocracy”
There were tricorn hats at the beginning of the republic and there may be tricorn hats at the end of it too. At the end of the revolution England believed that America would fall apart, as too much democracy would lead to anarchy; while, if the events of the last few months are any indication, it might have taken two hundred and fifty years to get there but they might have had a point.
For years some conservatives have gleefully danced on government’s tomb while repeating the mantra government is evil and is falling apart. In 2010 the tea party helped elect candidates who seem destine to make those words into a reality as they attempt to bring us back to 1776. These politicians have set the country on a path that may lead America out of the law enforcement business, the fire protection business, and the educating of their next generation business. It’s a brave new world: in which we can longer afford to fix our roads, have public lending libraries, or even make sure that our planes don’t run into one another in the sky. Oil gushes onto our beaches from a hole that our representatives have allowed to be drilled and one of them from an effected state, which he supposedly represents, apologizes to the company who perpetrated the disaster. America might as well put a going out of business sign on the front door. The president can tell everyone that we’ve had cutbacks and now we are really only in the business of destroying other countries which we know little about, stealing their resources, and streamlining new methods by which we vacuum money out of ordinary citizens’ pockets and giving it to multi-national corporations who have no allegiances and which bear little cost, to this country, except for the dozen or so bribes they have pay to the local officials to continue conducting business as usual.
For years most Americans have played by one set of rules; while the corporations have played by another. Americans are nationalistic by nature; while their corporations sound a similar chord in public, while acting completely different in private. One station, Fox, has played a monumental role in America’s slide into ignorance and anarchy. Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda station daily sows the seeds of distrust for any one or any institution that smack of intellectualism. Why listen to them when, if you follow your gut, you probably know more than they do anyhow and have just as good a chance of being right. Throw in the reflex simplicity of flag waving and you have a recipe that comedians, like Stephen Colbert, have used in the ascent of their career.
America loves ignorance. This is how you go from teachers who aren’t respected just because they claim to know “things.” Or economists, who aren’t believed because they claim to know “economics.” Or leaders who are shouted down and aren’t followed because they claim to know how to “lead.” This is a major attitude shift that a country takes on its road to anarchy and ruin. It is a triumph for Fox in the short term, a disaster for the nation in the long run, and a boon for a recently defunct tricorn hat industry. Look at the history, the country was on the verge splintering into chaos after the Articles of Confederation. We have one question to ask ourselves: are we going to conduct ourselves like rational citizens or are we just going keep partying like its 1799.
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