Some people aren't seeing what you're seeing
The Jan. 6th Committee continues its work regardless
Because we are all just mobile happiness machines, among the people watching this morning’s continued Jan. 6th committee hearings there rests at least a few who are seeing something far different than mounting evidence of an attempted coup, as Rep. Bennie Thompson, committee chair, described the 2021 insurrection.
This is a first in American history, and we’ll be generations sussing out why here, and why now. So far, the answer seems complicated. So much of our political speech these days is online, and online speech isn’t deep or even factual. It’s about likes/retweets/getting attention. Our technology has far exceeded our reach and while we all toy with the powerful tools that are Facebook/Instagram/et al, we are doing scant research as to precisely what, in this Information Age, is honest information and what is propaganda or worse.
During the last century, society was treated to a rolling public debate between John Dewey, an educator and a philosopher, and Walter Lippmann, an intellectual and a writer. One man would write a book, and the other would critique it, and not positively. In addition, they aimed articles at one another. It was all fairly genteel, but earnest. Boiled down (very boiled down), Lippmann believed that the average American wouldn't or couldn't take time to consider important issues, and that they should just rely on experts, such as Lippmann, to explain life to them.
Dewey, who was reared in the world of New England town halls, believed that if the American people had the information they needed, they could by-God make good choices for themselves.
I once was on Team Dewey, vociferously so. Now? I'm not so sure. How wonderful would it be for Mr. Dewey to return just long enough to give us some guidance on the internet.
While painfully aware of Fromm and Hoffer, I still think this cannot work without the efforts of Team Dewey. This struggle isn't new and will likely never end.
"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." John Dewey
I am coming very late to an understanding of US culture in which by and large people are shockingly lazy and amnesiac and hierarchical. Which means that they want to Know Best (without doing any work or being able to remember much), Know What Everyone Should Do (to be paid for in funding and energy by not-them).* So they go around reciting slogans and depending on the whims of millionaires and running various sorts of US cultural revolutions and feeling sneery-triumphant about it.
I'm Team Dewey. I know that people are capable of coming to well-informed and thought-out opinions and discuss them.
But I wish we weren't so intent on paring things down to boredom and blame.
* I have run this by my 17yo son, who expresses both surprise at my noticing so late, and a sense of disturbance at my saying these things, since I've always been (and continue to be) team dignity-and-talents-of-every-person.