Cybrpnk's Rantings

A couple of times over the last year I have been the target of what were intended to be devastating verbal assaults. These were blasts by people who were so certain that they had command of overwhelming verbal ability that they would be able to incinerate me with their attacks. While I salute their initiative and passion, I was left scratching my head at the showcase of poor reading skills, ignorance of logic, ad hominem attacks, and raw bluster. Where, I found myself wondering, did this come from. After some discussions with friends and colleagues, I have formulated a theory: these people, like so many of their fellow Americans, are simply incapable of participating in sophisticated discourse. Which is not just to say that they are not capable of contributing to the discussion, but that they are incapable of comprehending what the discussion is really about.

Yet, despite being out of their depth, these people want to be taken seriously by the people holding the discussion, and as citizens they deserve to be made part of the conversation. Problematically, they refuse to accept the notion that by having things explained to them in terms they can understand, they are losing critical aspects of the matter at hand. This certainly isn't to say that politicians and other public figures should be absolved of their responsibility to communicate meaningfully with their constituents. But it does suggest that politicians that insist on pandering to this lowest-common denominator are doing grave harm to our society. It is essential if there is to be any hope for democracy in America that we push our schools to better prepare people to participate in vital public discussion; and insist that public debate be held at the level appropriate to it's seriousness, not to it's television audience.

In addition to the obvious crime of oversimplifying news coverage to the point of meaninglessness, television has a possibly larger crime to answer for. We have created a fantasy in our society that we can all become experts on complex issues just by watching television and listening to the experts. This illusion is wide-spread throughout the world of sports broadcasting. By hiring people who have both intimate knowledge of a sport and the ability to simplify it for a home audience, the networks seduce viewers into believing that they too are experts. Yet few of us would be able to understand the actual conversations held between the players and coaches who must deal with a far greater level of complexity than television dare expose us to. The same is clearly true of public policy. Slick politicians with the ability to simplify complex issues beyond the point where any nuance is apparent may have electoral success, but at the cost of a decline in the merits of our decision-making process.