Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise. – English poet Thomas Gray
It’s rude to eavesdrop (though the NSA doesn’t seem to care) but sometimes, when you’re in a public place and other people are talking loudly, it’s impossible not to hear what they’re saying.
One of the oddest exchanges I ever heard took place in a waiting room. Two older men who sort of knew each other exchanged pleasantries, but the one couldn’t fathom that the other didn’t live where he thought he did. They went on for a good five minutes saying, “Well I’ll be darned — I coulda swore you was from Primrose,” “Nope, Belgrade,” over and over again.
Since the recent election a lot of people have been discussing politics in public, and I’ve been dismayed to hear how many things some of them have gotten wrong. One man was upset that Boone County has gone from three to two County Commissioners and that people can run for either Commission seat even if they don’t live in the part of the county that seat represents. Though county district boundaries have changed slightly, there are still three, and all of the recent Republican candidates for the southern district live in it.
A couple of days later at an out-of-town track meet a guy sitting behind us announced that since we have a black president it’s ridiculous for liberals to complain that there’s any racism left in this country. He went on to decry the fact that the most recent Social Security cost of living increase is only 1% while “food stamps went up 400%.” Comparing an increase in payments to an increase in recipients is preposterous. And while the number of people needing food stamps has increased dramatically since the Great Recession, the amount of assistance recipients get has actually been cut.
Misinformation is as easy to come by as it is inaccurate. A conservative friend recently informed me that the cost of security when the President travels has significantly reduced the amount we can spend on the military. And while it does cost money to protect presidents (and former presidents continue to be protected for life), the United States still manages to spend as much on the military as the next nine countries combined.
It’s great when people are interested in politics – that’s a prerequisite for a successful democracy. But when voters’ beliefs are flat-out wrong their election choices reflect that. Thus we end up with people like Illinois Republican congressional candidate Suzanne Atanus who maintains tornadoes are the result of recent advances in LGBT equality, and a GOP House candidate in Arizona, Gary Kiehne, who stated that 99% of all mass shootings have been carried out by Democrats (Kiehne has since retracted this statement). Both assertions are patently absurd, but either these politicians are so ignorant they don’t realize this, or they believe the majority of their districts’ voters are so ignorant that they have to say crazy things to get elected.
Ignorance may indeed be bliss, but leadership requires wisdom. Serious problems demand serious solutions. Whether it be climate change or dealing with mass shootings blaming these problems on gays or Democrats doesn’t help anyone. Reasonable people can disagree about the causes and cures for both, but when the inmates get elected to run the asylum, hope for rational solutions disappears. The only way to keep people like Atanus and Kiehne from running the show is for voters to truly understand the issues. But from the sound of it, there’s still a lot of work to be done.