It’s no secret that U.S. schoolchildren aren’t taught history or civics anymore.
STEM and social studies might be important, but what happens when a generation that may literally have never gotten an elementary education in civics and history goes to college and grad school for public policy?
What happens when, inevitably, they and their children take responsibility for education and government?
Antonin Scalia, whose jurisprudence I rarely take as a model, used to say he wished he had a stamp that said “Stupid, but not unconstitutional.”
We’re allowed to make dumb laws under the supreme law of the land, just as we’re allowed to make dumb decisions within the bounds of the law.
As a matter of jurisprudence, that’s not such a stupid idea at all.
But, as a matter of culture, is “not unconstitutional” the right standard to set, expect, or accept?
We can’t outlaw stupid stuff. But we can vote for smarter politicians.
Today, as every day, we’re still on the hook.
Aristotle’s claim that people are by nature political animals is premised on the idea that our nature is essentially social.
Like other animals, we live in groups, which have their status roles and hierarchies.
Unlike other animals, we also have self-consciousness, which means we can build much more sophisticated cultures with much subtler social roles and expectations. We can judge (however arbitrarily) whether someone is dressed “correctly.” We can ask What have you done for me lately? — and remember the answer.
That the social politics of everyday life might be complex, subtle, or ultimately arbitrary does not make them any less real. You’re certainly free to wear a sweatsuit to the big job interview — there’s no law against it. But your interviewers are equally free to not invite you back.
The past few years have started a new conversation in the United States about the differences between the worlds of politics and policy. The temptation, even among some policy people, is to see politics as the land of slime: endless networking, logrolling, and grasping at coattails.
There’s plenty of slime in politics, and plenty of slimy politicians. No one denies that. But what gets forgotten is just how political the policy world can be: organizations as big and entrenched as federal departments have baroque and subtle office politics of their own (and that’s just among the career people, never mind the political appointees).
Most of the complaints about politics and networking, then, are really cultural complaints. It’s quite reasonable to wonder if there’s a better way to interact with people than through craven palace intrigue.
The bad news is that politics — large and small — is not going away anytime soon. As long as people live and work together, they’ll find status games to play.
The good news is that it might be well within our power to change the culture. If we get choosier about whose coattails we grab and why — or even whether to grab coattails at all — we might be able to be well connected for the right reasons rather than the wrong ones.
If you back a rat into a corner, it may turn around and make a stand that sends you — a much bigger and scarier creature altogether — scampering for safety.
Much of the art of politics consists in choosing very carefully which corners to back people into, and what to demand of people so cornered.
No one eagerly accepts defeat or humiliation. And the political mind is always attuned to precedent: how will the outcome in this corner affect what happens in the next?
It’s tempting to insist on a total outcome: this always to rats.
But it’s worth asking: if we do this to those we’ve cornered, what might happen to us when we’re cornered?
Is a healthy planet made up of healthy communities, or are healthy communities assured by a “healthy” form of global governance?
Which would you bet on?
Which would you choose?
Another interminable campaign season is (shudder) already upon us.
In all the posturing, pontificating, and “debating,” let’s try to distinguish a little more clearly between minutiae and things that matter.
Rather than looking for better answers to meaningless questions, let’s try to put some better questions on the table.
Questions like:
Let’s see if we can’t find a candidate for national office who’s actually willing to ask questions that matter rather than reciting pat answers that don’t.
One of the great problems in U.S. politics is the way our fairly (and increasingly) parochial interests are hitched to a global hegemonic power.
We fight like hell to elect the person with the “right” bedroom politics. Meanwhile, the rest of the world anxiously waits to see who’ll be managing the alliances and the all-important “nuclear button.”
In a conversation yesterday, a friend compared our current political situation to a forest fire: it’s hot and scary now, but necessary to clear out the choked and choking underbrush and deadwood.
I largely agree. But I also can’t forget that the president, even if he or she is elected based on his or her views on a particular wedge issue, legally controls the most powerful military (and nuclear arsenal) in the world.
Our current cultural conflagration might well make way for new growth and rebirth. But it’s hard to watch without also having your heart in your mouth, wishing there was some way to take the truly irrevocable instruments off the table while we make our way through the fire.
Sometimes, politics is best devoted to setting minimum conditions: the bar below which no one is allowed to fall.
Everyone learns this version of history. No one is allowed to interfere with ships peacefully plying the high seas.
Other times, it’s better to focus on maximum standards, or at least raising the bar on the status quo.
Now that you’re Romans, you must act this way. “We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
And many times, it’s unclear which is which. For example, is the idea of a universal basic income a minimum or a maximum standard?
It’s worth paying careful attention to minimums and maximums. Who’s framing the topic in which way, and why? Does it make sense in speech? Would it make sense in practice?
Or, now that everything’s recorded online for everyone, for ever, can we afford not to?
Which is more important: not flip-flopping, or insisting that no one ever move off of that somewhat controversial position they took that one time in the college debating meet?
Today is a good day to think about whether, when, and how progress is possible through politics.
As others have noted, the genius of the Good Friday Accords was that they effectively suspended the past: they bought a peaceful present by taking a final judgment on a painful past and an uncertain future off the table.
Many are those whose memories — and desire for judgment and revenge — run strong and deep. But when the past is allowed to exert such (violent) power on the present, the future is liable to look much the same: an endless cycle of vendettas that never manages to meaningfully set anything right.
Many, too, are those privileged enough never to have experienced such things. Perhaps they cannot imagine how anyone could ever devote his life to avenging a past that refuses to stay past. Perhaps that’s ultimately for the good.
Or perhaps it’s not. Perhaps — particularly among outsiders — it reinforces the belief in sudden or final progress through politics alone, or even in the power of outside intervention.
Sometimes a third party can create the space that was so desperately needed. But it’s left to the people of the place to live with the peace, and to cautiously hope that living in suspended animation long enough (a generation? two?) might finally make politics possible again.
Colin Steele 