I wonder why some people are so stupid. How can they fall for cons and conspiracy theories? Then I wonder if they think the same thing about me and my beliefs: how can I be so stupid?
Of course they do.
Which leads to the obvious question: which of us is right?
Some things seem so clear to me as to be beyond dispute. The sky is blue kinds of things. Facts.
Close behind are judgements any reasonable person would come to. We should not kill each other; it should not be so easy to buy an assault weapon to commit mass murder. We should not hurt each other by refusing in a public health emergency to roll up our sleeves and take a vaccine.
But many of us—not just the odd eccentric—believe things that make no sense to me. Yes on assault rifles, no on vaccines.
For a long time, I thought they were just idiots. There are so many of them now that I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t re-examine my assumptions about how we should think about things.
An easy answer would be: you think about things however you want to, and I’ll do the same. That would be fine if we didn’t need some agreed-upon principles on which to base our behavior and our public policy. We’re as far from anything like common ground as I have ever seen us. I’m not sure how we come back together.
There’s a large and violently merry band of libertarians rampaging across the land. They remind me of the troop that followed the Judge in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Merridian. He led them on nihilistic journey of slaughter and mayhem. To be fair, the Judge in McCarthy’s novel was the devil—not a metaphorical one, but the actual devil. Take your pick for candidates for the role today.
When the Judge and his band of hooligans ride into town, what are we to do? Say, “Listen fellows, let’s sit down and work this out over a beer.”? I don’t think so.
The underpinning for my sorting of views and people into sensible and not is reason. The Judge didn’t give a hoot for reason. His boys had guns. That was all the reason they needed.
Reason is suspended when we’re engaged in sex. Likewise when we’re in a fight. Too bad it’s not sex that’s distracting us now, rather than fighting. That would be more fun, and we’d all be a lot less grumpy.
