In today’s latest edition of “People elsewhere on the internet have said interesting things”, I point you, dear reader, to the always excellent slacktivist, where the author examines the way American political factions have advocated for their position on health care reform in terms of popular game show programs. In short, President Obama and most of the Democratic party are playing Jeopardy!, trafficking in factually correct information (or at least exhaustively researched and supported hypotheses and projections) about the plan, while the Republicans, for the most part, are playing Family Feud, where the correct answers do not matter so much as as what surveys determine the most popular answer to be, and they’re asserting that health care reform is so unpopular it wouldn’t show up on Richard Dawson’s big board.

His point is that perceptions are much easier to influence than facts, and the Republicans have become masters of influencing public perception of policies, to the point where people will oppose a given position that can be factually stated to be in their best interest, through the use of obfuscation, distraction, and confusion, and repeating something often enough and loudly enough that the public accepts it as conventional wisdom, backing it up with psuedodata about “what the polls say” while dismissing the facts cited by the experts – “popular” is (wrongly) held up as always being equivalent to “correct”.

And much of our society accepts this without question. Part of it is that the modern media enables such confusion – in the attempt to appear “balanced” or whatever, modern journalism has abdicated its responsibility to present factually correct information. Instead, the media (particularly cable television news) presents every issue as having two equally valid and opposing positions, with no regard to whether the position a given talking head is advocating is factually true or even logical. There is no factually “correct” or “incorrect” check applied to information; nobody gets credit for being right or for presenting a cogent well-supported argument; they’re scored basedon how good they are at convincing people their position is the better one regardless of its basis in fact, or barring that, who’s better at shouting down the other guy.

But I don’t think that’s the only reason for it.

I mentioned in an unrelated post yesterday that I generally agreed with the statement that “life is basically like sixth grade.” I think that statement holds true here as well. Middle school, in my experience, was all about popularity; everyone aspired to popularity, to attach themselves to trends, people, fashions, or whatever that were perceived as popular, with little regard to whether these whatevers actually offered, to the extent that subscribing to the popular thing could actually unpleasant or harmful (think eating disorders, drug use, tight pants).

Many of us eventually get past this, and realise that life is more about making ourselves happy and much less about adhering to ephemeral standards of popularity or trendiness. Facts also become actually important, because you actually have to know stuff to do well at life – facts are your friends when they help you earn good grades in school, secure and keep a good job, manage a household, and vote in support of political positions that will, according to the facts, actually improve your lot in life.

Notice I said “many” there, not “most”; there’s a large number of people who don’t ever get past this stage, and continue to aspire to follow trends blindly, and believe the line fed them by whatever charlatan they perceive to be popular, regardless of whether the line fed them is good for them, or whether it’s true or not (From a certain perspective, life is easier when you don’t have to think about it, and just do what everyone else does). This is especially true when the marks get to feel like they’re eating at the cool kids’ table, even if the cool kids are demonstrably wrong; they’re still more popular than the nerds in the corner with their cheap shoes and d20s who always have the right answer in algebra class, and in that sort of environment, “popular” trumps “right” in all cases where someone might see you.

Worth noting is that so many of these trend-following adult types are the same people who ask their children “Would you jump off the Brookyln Bridge just because all your friends were doing it?” while queueing up on the stairs at Centre Street and Park Row.

I think that’s the source of all the anti-intellectualism in this country; it’s a carry-over from the middle school popularity dynamic, with the added wrinkle of the “cool kids” (in this case, those people with big giant media megaphones whose opinion is accorded more weight “because they’re on television”) recognize that they need the teeming masses who wish to be popularity-adjacent in order to retain their political office or income stream, and thus, toss a few bones to the proles to make them feel like their part of something (that the “something” is working against their own best interests doesn’t seem to occur to them). This something, more often than not, works its way around
to making fun of the nerds in the disused corner of the Westerberg High cafeteria; who, in the supposed grown-up world are the analysts, wonks, and scientists who use rational arguments and evidence to support their worldview.*

Sadly, in a lot of cases, the popularity seekers seem to be winning; even within the ranks of ideally rational factions are a significant force of trend-chasing, self-hating nerd/geeks who can’t resist the allure of trying to curry favor with the supposed cool kids, if only because they think it’s more politically expedient to do so. Sayeth commentator Vermic about the article that started me rolling on this tousand word manifesto:

It’s a great analysis, but it also makes it seem as if the only ones playing in bad faith are the Republicans, and after a year of HCR drama I’m no longer convinced that’s true. If the Democrats are playing Jeopardy, then at least some of them think they’re Norm Macdonald playing Burt Reynolds and writing “Turd Ferguson” on their screens.

Remember when this all started with game shows?

Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wish more people in this country were contestants on Jeopardy! and not Family Feud.

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* – also included in the “out” crowd are the various racial, sexual, and religious minorities, but that’s not really the point I’m trying to make…doesn’t make it not true, and deserving of a passing mention.