You Can’t Fix Stupid – But What We Can Do (Now)
You Can’t Fix Stupid
The Need for Perspective, the Importance of History,
and
What We Can Do (Now)
Author’s Note
A writer knows he’s in trouble when he borrows a title from the book written by a cigar-smoking, heavy-drinking, profanity-speaking (but hysterically-funny) comedian like Ron White – and for that, I apologize in advance. However, his title encapsulates a big part of America’s problems right now. And maybe it is time for all of us to start thinking about things differently.
Preamble
Our American democracy is neither young nor innocent. We have wrapped ourselves in theories of exceptionalism and just like all ageing celebrities, too many Americans still think of themselves as vibrant and energetic with a deep reserve of hard-earned wisdom.
Amongst both the wildly optimistic and the darkly cynical, America is still seen by some as the only real and deserving world power; still at times cresting in greatness. But actions matter. Headlines accumulate. And as we are discovering, the years don’t lie.
For example, America is not young. Our democracy is more than 225 years old. It is the longest surviving, constitutional democracy in the world. That is both a hard fact and a noble accomplishment.
We have survived much. We have always been more inclined to action than reflection. Possibly in spite of this or because of this, we are in rarefied company. We have already lasted nearly half of the duration length of The Roman Empire itself.
But now we have choices to make. Important choices. Maybe we can remain some strange admixture of contentment and cantankerousness. But this writer thinks that this is a dangerous gamble. It is time both to speak out and to demand better.
The choice is ours. We can accept the force-of-history inevitability of some American version of Gibbons’ Decline and Fall. Or we can get back to writing a better history for our nation.
Essay
Introduction
I never met my uncle; my mother’s brother; my grandmother’s son. He died in the third year of World War II while carrying a machine gun up the lonely, rocky hill at Monte Cassino in Italy.
For reasons that I cannot easily explain, I miss him; a man whom I never met. In a manner similar to the thousands of others who lost a father or son or uncle or mother or aunt or sister in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Desert Storm, or more recently in Iraq or Afghanistan — I sense my life would have been different had he lived; had we met. Many years ago, in a small town in Montana, my grandmother gave me his Purple Heart and a scrapbook which he kept as a young boy. And now, so many years later, I still feel his presence and feel indebted to his sacrifice.
Possibly because I observed the quiet pain of my mother’s missing of her only brother, possibly because I too am a veteran, and possibly because I am honored by the bequest which my uncle and so many others gave to this country, I feel like an explanation is somehow owed to them about the state of our country, about the seeming confusion of our peoples, and about the staining of our principles.
It is comforting to know that there are millions of good, hard-working, decent and law-abiding Americans. However, something has been amiss in our society for decades now. And it is not good.
How Has That Been Working For Us?
I was raised amidst a generation in which judgments were rarely made. Ethics were deemed “situational.” Morals were always “relative.” And everyone somehow claimed a birthright entitlement to his or her own “space” regardless of whether or not there was enough of it to go around.
Even apart from my generation, America has long been a country where individualism is not just tolerated, it is exalted. But of late there have been societal changes, the ramifications of which are not yet fully understood or appreciated.
Our communities have become increasingly fluid and self-defined. Our culture and especially our politics have become monetized. Darwinism has become the most powerful component of our business life and economic structure. Consumerism is conspicuous, and toys and bling are routinely displayed as the material rewards of success. And centrism is everywhere. “First me; then us” is not just said out loud; it is done out loud.
It is probably a rule that no serious writing should ever quote Dr. Phil, but his routinized question here applies — how has all that that been working for us? In a world where for personal safety is merely a memory, where some schools are a joke, where politics has become a blood sport, and where insecurity is a tolerated component of our economic system, I suggest that all that has not been working for us “all that” well.
There are some concrete places to begin changing “all that.”
Try Telling That to the Coach at Half-Time
Reflection, Spirit, Footing, Confidence, Composure, and Calm
One place to begin is to focus upon our communities and our conversation. In the context of our communities, however they are now defined, and in the context of the substance, tone, and style of our national conversation, we need to reflect upon our actions and our words. As a nation and as a people, we need to regain our spirit. We need to find our footing. We need to regain our confidence. We need to regain our composure. We need to calm our tone. And – for those who have the time and the means – we need to double our commitment.
In our face-paced, anger- and data-driven culture, matters of tone and style – reflection, spirit, confidence, composure, calmness, and commitment – may seem like dismissible platitudes. But try telling that to the coach at half-time. These matters of tone and style are not platitudes.
Consider these matters in the context of business. There is a reason your HR staff (and its new AI buddy) weeds through thousands of resumes. Because raw talent is rarely enough. Most employers look for independent minds, self-starters, go-getters, and team players. And no enterprise needs another critic. No enterprise seeks out the naysayers; welcomes complainers; or long tolerates slackers, whether they work remote or down the hall.
To the contrary, reflection, confidence and composure are the very basis upon which we must act. Spirit and confidence contribute to momentum and increase the likelihood of success. Calmness and commitment define the manner in which we analyze the data. These things literally and tangibly assist us in our ability to move towards sensible objectives.
The Dangerous Ground of Critics
I realize that I am treading on dangerous ground. I know that no essay – no matter how well-meaning — should approach moralizing; that there is a reason that “pontifications” – just as the word implies — should be left to The Man in Rome.
I also realize that no one likes critics — or even “commentators” in the jargon of the 21st Century media. No one could write or speak with more bite than H.L. Mencken or Dorothy Parker (or their later-day compatriots such as Thomas Franks and George Will and now Tucker Carlson, Bill Maher, Charlamagne the God, and the rest). Indeed, there is a reason that critics are wined and dined —- but rarely invited out for beers or over for dinner.
Part of the problem of critics and commentators lies in the very dubiousness of their profession. Whether critics are right or wrong, they are still a dime a dozen. It just doesn’t take much effort — or even skill to find fault. Literally anyone can sit in their corner bar or their corner office and find five problems by lunch. ten excuses by dinner, and 20 other people to blame by sunrise.
Thus, please know that I am not talking from high on any horse. I willingly admit that I have made more mistakes than I can count. In fact, I stopped counting after my first thousand mistakes — even though my son still rejoices in keeping the tally running for me.
But dangerous ground or otherwise, sometimes one must go out on the limb. Someone must remind us of how much we can’t see with our heads in the sand; how much we can’t hear amidst the clamor of that which is passed off as our contemporary American dialogue. Someone must venture a few ideas of where to start and what to do.
America’s Devolution
One place to begin is to understand that America’s devolution has been a process. America’s devolution cannot be tightly tracked to any date, blamed on any event, or — despite the convenience and temptation — pinned on any leader, party, or group. Consider, for example, the horrific tragedy of 9/11, the calamities which flowed from the financial collapse in 2008, the rise of MAGAism, or the seeming demise of one or both of America’s political parties.
These events are huge. They are significant. But they are at best contributory. They affect but not, by themselves, they need not define the state of our country. And things started to change much earlier.
Long before both 9/11 and the financial collapse of 2008, the American community had become dangerously divided – by politics, by social alliances; by varied definitions of one’s community (or, more precisely, one’s communities); by income, wealth, and opportunity; and by – stubbornly and still – race, ethnicity, and gender identity. This has all been logarithmically accelerated by the anger and divisiveness of Trump.
More than three decades ago religion was re-infused into “the public square” with, for example, the 1979 formation of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. Shortly thereafter Reagan accelerated the debate about the role of the government. Though well-intentioned, he took the country to a place of great risk by the over-stated simplicity of defining the government as “the problem.” But there were a lot of hands stirring the anger and enflaming the passions.
Both political parties helped enhance the power of money – albeit of late with the help of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 and 6-3 decisions. Both parties and the nature of the election process itself helped assure that political and social movement campaigns became encased with the tools and methodologies of marketing and advertising. Egged on by a news-cycle media and the media’s thinly-concealed use of news as entertainment, candidates and elected officials helped assure that politics became a blood sport. Both parties helped assure that real conversations are rare.
Honest debates now seem a distant memory. They have been replaced by tight scripts, honed message points, and guarded conversations. We are left to keep our ear on the ground listening for code words. Only amongst like-minded friends do we exchange facts and data like so many little gold nuggets. Concessions are deemed a sign of weakness, and bipartisanship is increasingly seen as an empty promise. By some, bipartisanship is now even seen as a sign of weakness, as a dangerous concept.
America’s problems are certainly more complicated than the demise of our national conversation, and accepting the breadth of our problems is neither fun nor easy.
It is hard to get the “stolen election” and “agin’ Joe” lines out of our memories. It is hard to ignore the sound-bites still ringing in our ears. And the barking diatribes of our leaders continue to fog the issues and taint our perspectives.
As a nation, we seem as if we have no choice but to choose a side. We have allowed ourselves to become split – not into teams, but into warring factions. We have become twisted in our own tangles and lost amidst our close-minded, yah-but conversations. It is hardly surprising that in our exhaustion or disgust, we have become anxious, irritable, and cranky; that we have lost our spirit and our confidence. Others have withdrawn into self-protective, but understandable, silence.
Hope itself is too often contained. Expectations are kept low. “It is what it is” has replaced our sense of public confidence. America seems tired; exhausted. Unsurprisingly, our collective morale has diminished. The consequential side-effects are numerous, pervasive, and prolonged.
Good, talented, and decent men and women, exercising their personal prudence and sometimes wise prerogative, decline to enter the public sphere. And in the end, another generation does its own version of “duck-n-cover.” But we can’t blame it on the Russkies this time around. We are doing it to ourselves.
And it is even more serious because we are quietly (and even unconsciously) forsaking other things and other responsibilities. We are not teaching our children well. One of the great re-discovery joys of parenting is being constantly reminded ab out how much is learned by our children by their watching; by their listening …. And, eventually, by their imitating. Their actions are then magnified – and become imbedded — on the playground. Analogously, none of us need to touch the Mensa ring to know that bullies abound and that too many Americans no longer play well or share often. But our kids still need, and if I may – deserve, our protection.
And, thus, maybe as a place to start — it is part of our responsibility both as citizens and parents (or grandparents, as the case may be) to chart a new path and to start helping one another.
How? There are many ways, and both the good news and the bad news is that the place to begin is everywhere.
One First Step
One place to begin is to help ourselves and to help one another – our children, our friends, and our peers, better and more correctly understand the relative significance and the real meaning of events. And this is best achieved with understanding the need for perspective and importance and context of history. Perspective and context are not just the niceties of history. They can simultaneously offer comfort and bolster confidence.
One first step may be to remember that America has faced and survived far greater calamities than those which we face today. December 7, 1941, was a bad day, and for literally millions of American families, Pearl Harbor changed everything. Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation came of age during the long winters of the Depression. Then, there was November 22, 1963, which is etched in the minds of many older Americans — and Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullet was followed by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy just a few years later. 9/11 speaks for itself both because of what happened and the fact that millions of Americans literally saw it on television.
We can even track our tough recent history from the perspective and in the context of epidemics. We have all been impacted (and isolated from one another) by the ravages of the worldwide Covid epidemic. But it was only about ten years ago that the media (and especially poor Brian Williams on NBC and everyone at CNN) became obsessed with Ebola. Ebola is a horrendous, tragic and frightening disease, but perspective and context can help us as a nation absorb and deal with this challenge. Before Ebola, it was SARS. Before SARS, it was the bird flu. Before bird flu, it was AIDS. Before Aids, it was polio. Before polio, it was the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919. Before that it was the smallpox epidemic of 1898. And before that, the real killer and when America really put it all on the line, The Civil War. But we made it. And it is part of our obligation, literally our duty and obligation, as citizens to remember that.
You Can’t Fix Stupid
Despite the echo of “you can’t fix stupid” and even apart from the useful infusions of perspective and context, there IS much more we can do. WE need not be stupid. WE need not stand by and watch. WE can accept that leading by example is just not enough. And even if WE can’t fix stupid, we can lend variant forms of constructive aggressiveness into our citizenship.
We can start off by accepting that a chunk of money and boundary gates are not enough. In the end, we cannot expect our police alone to keep us safe. The graffiti will not miraculously wash off the walls of our cities. We cannot ask – or expect – our schools to be responsible for instilling character in our children. And possibly most important of all, we cannot expect our laws, by themselves, to define the parameters of right and wrong. Decency requires much more than mere legality. “I paid my taxes” is not enough to get us Pass Go.
And, thus, though you can’t fix stupid, we still can listen better. We can be more selective (and cautious) about what we read and whom we listen to. We can – indeed, it is time, for us to try to guide our friends and to use our influence. We are going to have to start stepping in to chastise wrongdoing and loudly criticize those who suggest it. Power must again be viewed as a gift – not a weapon.
It is going to be awkward, but we must start more openly criticizing intolerance and show more disdain for the close-minded. We can still honor those who try. We can still encourage the weak. We can still help the struggling, and we can give more to the poor and needy. But from others, we might have to start expecting more.
For example, there is a drumbeat debate in this country about “fair shares” – in the context of, for example, charitable giving and tax rates. I am not flippant with my own money, and it is certainly never my place to be flippant with respect to other people’s money. However, I am mindful that for reasons not inherently obvious, the poor and the middle class in this country always donate higher percentages of their annual incomes to charity than the wealthy. For reasons that are more obvious and disturbing, I am also mindful that the middle class almost always and almost without exception pay a far higher percentage of their annual income in taxes (income, payroll, sales, property combined) than do the wealthy. Thus, in the small context of even charitable giving and taxes and in the context of classes, elitism, and judgmentalism, we can’t fix stupid, but we should know and act on the facts.
You can’t fix stupid, but we may have to consider adopting community-fusing policies. For example, to break down some of the distortions caused by the geographic and social isolations of the wealthy and the poor and to cement a stronger sense of national community, we may need to implement some form of widely diversified, but meaningful and mandatory national service.
You can’t fix stupid, but we may have to alter America’s toleration of individualism and even the boundaries of the familial province. The public may need to carefully assert an even stronger role in protecting our country’s children. The phrase “national security” is rightfully inserted into many of our national discussions — from ISIS to travel restrictions; from resource development to the drug war. However, this country’s national security – wholly apart from the depth of our moral obligation — is not inserted often enough into our conversations about the needed protection and education of our children.
It is with caution and with the greatest respect for the “family unit,” but the care, feeding, and protection of children is a rightful public interest as well — and something is terribly wrong when there are millions of children in this country who are without food or shelter or (again echoing the Nation At Risk Report written more than 30 years ago) who are receiving inadequate education. Every President in the last 40 years has proclaimed himself to be the “Education President” — to it seems no avail and no change. And thus, we are left with foster care and state variants of child protective service. Although neither of them is adequate to protect our children at risk, they remain this country’s spear tips because we have not yet adequately addressed the crisis of our children. This year we are focused upon the “fentanyl crisis” — but it is ALL inter-related. We can’t fix stupid, but is anyone else tired of funding prisons rather than schools; hearing about drug busts and lost lives. It is time. This too must change. One child; one community, at a time.
You can’t fix stupid, but we may have to make radical changes in our political and electoral systems. Since it is increasingly obvious that the Supreme Court is not going to take the money out of politics, we may have to take the money out of the politicians. In contemporary jargon, the lives of politicians and their careers need to be severely de-monetized. For example, in the context of business, an employee (such as a public official?) is oftentimes precluded from second jobs and outside income. Until recently, non-compete clauses were routinely enforced. Non-use of inside information and trade secrets are routinely required for at least a number of years. Well, politics must be viewed similarly — as a monetarily constrained profession. The place and expectations of public service must be re-instilled by a circumvention of term limits, by restrictions upon after-office lobbyist or representative employment, and even by contact and access privileges.
You can’t fix stupid, but to the extent that cynicism, disillusionment, spirit and confidence are parts of our problem, then possibly we should adopt some of the marketing, branding, semantics, and labeling practices which America’s businesses use every day. A 4% unemployment rate remains disappointing, but there is a greater sense of accomplishment when it is restated conversely as a 96% employment rate. Even though the unemployment rate among blacks remains at 10% — nearly double that of whites, possibly the hardened and ingrained racism of some people can be tamed a bit by remembering that even within the black community the employment is 90%!!
You can’t fix stupid, but to the extent that Americans don’t know, remember, or appreciate what the government does do – and do even well — every day, it may be in the public interest for public achievements to be better reported and at times even promoted. While there are propaganda and self-aggrandizement issues associated with this type of suggestion, knowing what our government does and does well is in the public interest as was brilliantly discussed a number of years ago in an article in The Atlantic Monthly.
Lastly, while we can’t fix stupid, we can remember that the very nature and reality of democracy is to seek improvement; not to demand or expect perfection. Democracy is clumsy. We have had our clarion moments. We have been blessed with some visionary leaders. However, most of the time and by most historical measures, democracy is little more than the fact that only 51% of our people have been right 51% of the time. And now is no different. On any given subject – whether it be immigration reform, judicial appointments, tax reform, crime and punishment; moral or immoral majorities, or even the Keystone Pipeline — any one of us and any one of them might be wrong. We can demand honesty. We can demand (and in the political context, by voting, assure) accountability. But we cannot expect perfection.
But once again, like a broken record, leading by example is not working. It is not enough. I have never met a person who couldn’t influence a few people – members of his family or his friends. I have met many people who could influence many people – members of his family, friends and associates, employees and co-workers, readers of his or her works, listeners to his or her speeches. It is time for each of us to participate more aggressively in our communities.
There is no easy way to end a diatribe … but in the Closing which follows, I have tried.
Closing
One of my best friends lives on the other side of the country – a long ways from the West Coast.
I called him the other day and asked him what he was up to.
He said he had been busy all day counting his blessings and thinking about what he should do next.
And in that brief sentence, he reminded me why I always liked him so much.
He was right.
And maybe, especially as we all enter this holiday season,
We should join him.