Bureaucracies are not made up of robot-like machines. They are comprised of flesh-and-blood men and women.
That includes even the most important bureaucracies–such as those of the House, Senate and White House.
And as much as Americans like to believe their elected leaders always behave rationally and intelligently, they don’t. In fact, they can’t.
In a democracy, those who hold public office reflect the values of those who sent them there.
Consider the following:
On the eve of the 2012 Republican primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, a Public Policy Poll survey revealed a series of startling truths about the voters in those states.
Among the Republican voters of Alabama:
- Only 26 percent believe in evolution.
- Sixty percent don’t believe in it.
- Thirteen percent aren’t sure about it.
- Twenty-one percent still think interracial marriage should be illegal.
- Twelve percent aren’t sure whether it should be.
- Forty-five percent believe President Barack Obama is a Muslim.
- Fourteen percent think he’s a Christian–although he’s always attended a Christian church.
•Forty-one percent aren’t sure.
Among Republican voters in Mississippi:
- Only 22 percent believe in evolution.
- Eleven percent aren’t sure.
- Fifty-four percent think interracial marriage should be legal.
- Twenty-nine percent believe it shouldn’t be.
- Seventeen percent aren’t sure.
- Fifty-two percent think President Obama is a Muslim.
- Only 12 percent think he’s a Christian.
These are among the voters who vilified a black, Harvard-educated, rationalist Obama–first as a Presidential candidate, and then as President.
And they aren’t going to change. It’s easier–and more comforting–to believe we are fallen angels instead of risen apes.
Just as it was easier for Germans in 1920s Germany to deny they had been defeated on the battlefields of World War 1.
It was far more satisfying to believe–and assert–that they had been “stabbed in the back” by Jews and “slackers” and Communists at home. Out of this denial of reality came the Final Solution.
Now, fast-forward to the 21st century.
The winter of 2011-2012 was the 4th warmest winter on record, behind 2000, 1999, and 1992. Winter temperatures have increased by about 1.7°F per century.
Despite ever-mounting evidence that global warming is indeed a reality, millions of right-wing voters refuse to accept it. The largest portion of these are concentrated in the South.
In April, 2010, America suffered its worst oil-spill disaster. For the next three months, 4.9 million barrels worth of crude oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico from a BP oil rig.
BP tried one oil-capping method after another–and the country feared that nothing might work. Those who had cheered on Sarah Palin in her chant of “Drill, baby, drill” during the 2008 Presidential race suddenly fell silent.
The second anniversary of America’s worst environmental disaster–April 20–is fast approaching.
And the country’s oil- and coal-producing conglomerates are flooding the airwaves with billions of dollars’ worth of lying propaganda.
“Clean coal” ads promise that America can meet its needs for energy and protect the environment. These ads never mention that the technologies for supposedly doing this are still in the experimental stage.
But most of the people watching these ads take them at face value. They want to believe they can have all the cheap gas they can get–and not feel guilty about destroying the world for their children.
Once again, millions of Americans–including those who live in the still-damaged Gulf of Mexico–are loudly demanding that President Obama “unleash America’s energy resources.”
President Obama is easily one of the best-educated men to occupy the White House. Like John F. Kennedy, he believes in rationalilty as a problem-solving tool.
But smarts at the top cannot make up for irrationality at the bottom.
During the 2008 Presidential race, Obama made a near-fatal mistake: He said that many Americans “cling to their guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
The fact that this was–and remains–absolutely true did not help Obama. In fact, it threatened to cost him the election.
When an educated leader who believes in rationality must persuade a largely uneducated and irrational electorate, he must reshape his message accordingly.
That strategy must be the product of rational planning. But the arguments aimed at such an audience must appeal to emotions rather than reason.
Republicans learned the lessons of emotion-driven politics decades ago. Consider the words they routinely use to describe their political opponents:
Liberals…radicals…traitors…subversives…terrorists…socialists…communists.
In Mein Kampf–“My Struggle”–Adolf Hitler outlined his principles for the effective use of propaganda:
“…All effective propaganda must be confined to a few basic essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in sterotyped forumulas.
“Those slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”
Rationalistic politicians like Barack Obama believe they can attain their goals by appealing to the rationality of voters. They forget–or ignore–the bitter truth that most people decide with their emotions, not with their intellect.
Until Obama and other Democrats learn this invaluable lesson–and start applying it–they will continue to lose to their Republican enemies.
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DONALD TRUMP AND THE OOBLECK
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on June 26, 2017 at 12:01 amDr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) published over 60 children’s books, which were often filled with imaginative characters and rhyme.
Among his most famous books were Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.
Honored in his lifetime (1904-1991) for the joy he brought to countless children, Dr. Seuss may well prove one of the unsung prophets of our environmentally-threatened age.
Dr. Seuss
In 1949, he penned Bartholomew and the Oobleck, the story of a young page who must rescue his kingdom from a terrifying, man-made substance called Oobleck.
The story is quickly told:
Derwin, the King of Didd, announces he’s bored with sunshine, rain, fog and snow. He wants a new kind of weather.
So he calls in his black magicians and gives them the order. The magicians assure him they can create it.
“What will you call it?” asks the king.
“We’ll call it Oobleck,” says one of the magicians.
“What will it be like?” asks King Didd.
“We don’t know, Sire,” the magician replies. “We’ve never created Oobleck before.”
The next morning, Oobleck–a greenish, glue-like substance—starts raining.
The king orders Bartholomew, the royal page, to tell the Bell Ringer that today will be a holiday. But the bell doesn’t ring—because it’s filled with Oobleck.
Bartholomew warns the Royal Trumpeter about the Oobleck, but the trumpet gets stopped up with the goo.
The Captain of the Guards thinks the Oobleck is pretty and sees no danger in it—until he eats some. Instantly, his mouth is glued shut.
The Oobleck rain intensifies. The falling blobs—now as big as buckets full of broccoli—now break into the palace, immobilizing the servants and guards.
At the climax of the story, Bartholomew confronts King Derwin for giving such a rash order: “If you can’t do anything else,” says Bartholomew, “at least you can say you’re sorry.”
King Derwin refuses, and Bartholomew says, “If you can look at all the horror you’ve caused and not say you’re sorry, you’re no sort of king at all.”
In real-life, such a king would have instantly ordered Bartholomew’s execution. But this is a children’s story.
So, overcome with guilt, King Derwin utters the magic words: “You’re right, this is all my fault, and I am sorry.”
Suddenly the Oobleck stops raining and the sun melts away the rest.
With life returning to normal, King Derwin mounts the bell tower and rings the bell. He proclaims a holiday dedicated not to Oobleck, but to rain, sun, fog, and snow, the four elements of Nature—of which Man is but a part.
* * * * *
Flash forward to the following Donald Trump tweets:
November 6, 2012: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
December 6, 2013: “Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee – I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!”
January 1, 2014: “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.”
On May 5, 2016, as a Presidential candidate, Trump pointed to signs being waved at a rally in Charleston, South Carolina:in the crowd: “I see over here: ‘Trump digs coal,’ That’s true. I do.”
Donald Trump
Upon becoming President, Trump picked Scott Pruitt, a leading climate change denier, as director of the Environmental Protection Agency: “So no, I would not agree that [human activity] it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,”Pruitt said on CNBS’s program, “Squawk Box”
On March 16, 2017, the Trump administration released a budget proposal to eliminate $100 million in funding for the EPA’s climate work, including scientific research.
On March 28, 2017, Trump ordered his administration to rewrite the Clean Power Plan. His objective: To gut former President Barack Obama’s landmark restrictions on power plant emissions.
On June 1, 2017, Trump announced that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris climate-change agreement deal.
There are forces in Nature far more powerful than anything Man and his puny strength can defy—or harness. And we invoke the wrath of those forces at our own peril.”
In the world of children’s stories, it’s possible for a king to undo the terrible damage he’s unleashed by finding the courage to say: “I’m sorry.”
In real-life, tyrants almost never say “I’m sorry,” no matter how enormous their mistakes and/or crimes.
From 1936 to 1938, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin slaughtered the cream of his own Army and Air Force. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin blamed his remaining generals for the massive defeats inflicted by the Wehrmacht.
And as Soviet forces finally closed on Berlin in April, 1945, and Adolf Hitler prepared to commit suicide in his underground bunker, he blamed the German people for losing the war he had started.
Saying “I’m sorry” cannot reverse decades of rampant environmental abuse. To believe that it can is as ridiculous as believing that self-righteous tyrants will ever take responsibility for their own crimes and follies.
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