T-H-I-N-K

I have my differences with Thomas Friedman, but there are a couple of issues on which we agree. One is America's need to develop alternative energy sources and gradually relinquish its reliance on oil, foreign or otherwise. The second is our preference for Barack Obama, if for no other reason than the repugnancy of the Republican alternative.

To be fair, I am biased toward the far left. I would like to see universal health care; the dismantling of the hegemonic insurance and pharmaceutical industries that simultaneously market illness and provide poor health care coverage; widespread public education reform; investment in alternative energy; less xenophobic immigration procedures; budget surpluses; less military spending; and of course, an end to our recent imperialist quest to remake the world in our image. Given the alarming evidence that America is a democracy in decline, I seriously doubt that the world would be safer from terrorism should every country adopt our model of self-government.

To be fair, I am not coming into this election season with an objective attitude toward the two parties. I already favor Obama because of his positions on foreign and domestic policy, and dislike McCain's emphasis on aggressive military engagement, Alaskan oil drilling, tax cuts, and a culture war campaign style that cultivates a politics of stupidity.

But it is this latter issue--McCain's encouragement of American intellectual laziness--that really upsets me. In last week's New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert wrote, "While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail." To support this fear, Herbert recounts TV commentators' defense of Palin's inability to explain the Bush Doctrine, during which they argued that very few hockey moms could explain what it is. Alas, they are correct: very few hockey moms could explain the Bush Doctrine. This is an indication that most Americans (for after all, the sports mom in her SUV minivan is the iconic image of the normative American family in the 21st century) don't pay enough attention to current events, even when those events are shipping their sons and daughters off to a preemptive and baseless war. Their correct appraisal of Sarah Palin's ignorance of Bush's foreign policy as the American norm is also an indication that Palin is a poor choice for second-in-command. Do we really want a leader who can't explain why we went into Iraq in the first place? How is she supposed to help end the conflict when she can't self-critically confront, assess and correct the mistaken ideas that led to anticipatory self-defense on foreign soil?

But I can't just target hockey moms and Palin for their political stupidity. The fault lies equally with the McCain campaign; the Republican base; the quasi-Democratic feminists who are so desirous to have a woman in the White House that they willingly ignore Palin's actions against female reproductive rights and other minority groups like gays and lesbians; the media, which instantaneously fostered a cult of celebrity around Palin, without noting that this cult was exactly what the McCain campaign wanted to deflect scrutiny of the presidential candidate (and could I just add that a month ago McCain was criticizing Obama's celebrity status?); and with Americans in general, who--for some reason that I have failed to find--JUST DON'T THINK.

After eight years of trite justifications for fiscal and political disasters like "we're fighting the evil-doers" (who are we, Batman?) and "America is not in a recession, just an economic slow down," you would think that Americans would want detailed answers to difficult questions. That Americans would be tired of the way someone "like us" runs the country. That we would want an "elitest" leader, with 8 years of experience teaching Constitutional Law, with 8 years as a State Senator, representing a district with more people than live in Alaska, with a Harvard law degree, and an understanding of foreign cultures, with four years as a U.S. senator, again representing more people than live in Alaska, with a reputation for erudition, critical thinking, and speaking his mind. Not to mention someone without a laundry list of ethics violations.

I don't want to idealize Obama, whose platitudes I could often do without, but point out that "elitist" is just another word for qualified. And not all Americans are qualified to lead. But we are all qualified to think. So when did we, as a society, relinquish that right? When did we start relying on other people to tell us what we think, and what our values are?

In Freedom of Thought, Voltaire notes that as long as people are uninterested in practicing their freedom, there will always be tyrants ready to seize it. Americans forget that there are tyrants among us.