Levity is the Soul of Thought

We are being manipulated. We are all tools. We are not smart enough to have much, if any, real freewill. Powerful forces are working harder than we know to control our thinking, and too often they are succeeding. There are some that seek our money or our vote, but there are others who seek our soul.

Since it is true that we always notice character flaws much more readily in others than in ourselves, I am better equipped to explore this problem as it affects a group that has been irritating me particularly of late: the tea-party protesters.

I actually agree with a fair number of things that the tea-party movement hold dear. I like my independence. I am a lover of our country’s founding documents and a firm believer in living within our means. I even sympathize with their fear of liberal special interests and of conceit among policy wonks who think they can develop a government solution to every problem. However, when I see the tea-party slogans at the rallies and hear the calculated rhetoric of their elected representatives, I silently rage at how simplistic and deceptive the logic seems.

Populism and populist slogans are never the genuine voice of the people, but are quickly co-opted by demagogues and special interests. These political high-rollers are too obviously biased to speak for themselves, but they are spending enormous sums of money in the hopes of getting other people, people like you and me, to speak for them. The sad thing is that when we get caught up in certain causes we think we are speaking with a pure voice, which makes us all the more ardent in our tacit support of these special interests. This is true both of liberals and their teacher’s unions and conservatives and their crusade against entitlements.

Recently I watched a debate on Jim Lehrer’s Newshour where I again heard the specious GOP argument that we need to lower taxes on the wealthy because lots of them are business owners and they will start hiring people if they have more money. I suppose this version of trickle-down economics might sound good at first, but the rationale defies belief. I haven’t been to business school, but I’m pretty sure that you hire people when your business needs more people in order to operate well, not when you happen to be taking more money home in profits. I can see how business taxes can hurt business, but the idea that keeping personal income taxes low for the rich (a Republican demand that Obama acceded to in December) is going to help business is ludicrous. I kept the books at my step-dad’s machine shop for a couple of years and I know that during hard times he would actually loan money to his own company, even while the business was getting clobbered by Multnomah County business tax. It might surprise John Boehner to learn that this had absolutely no effect on whether we hired new people or not. Businesses don’t hire employees because there happens to be extra money laying around, and especially not because the owner is making a good profit. They hire workers because they have reason to think that at a given time more employees will produce more income.

We are actually electing people who are pitching stuff this inane to us on a regular basis. Why are they doing it? Because they have no shame and they know it will get them re-elected. How can constantly repeating trite, vacuous platitudes get you re-elected? Because special interests like it and will give you money for your re-election campaign. How does money win elections in a democracy? Because we are too easily manipulated by flashy advertisements and acknowledgment of our pet political issues. Intelligent people have known why since this book was published. (Um, I haven’t actually read it myself.) Mancur Olson argues that it is really hard to fight for vague public good, but special interests are very effective at fighting for themselves. In other words people lack incentive to expend energy fighting for benefits to society at large. We have much more incentive to fight for benefits for an exclusive group to which we belong, like a religion, an ethnicity, or an industry.

An especially egregious example is the insurance industry. In the first three months of 2009 health insurance companies spent millions of dollars of YOUR INSURANCE PREMIUMS lobbying congress so they wouldn’t have to compete against a government-run public option for YOUR BUSINESS. Aetna spent just shy of $1 million. Blue Cross/Blue Shield spent just shy of $2 million. Drug companies spent even more. The health insurance lobby, led by Karen Ignagni, fought hard to make sure there would be no public option. Lobbyists threw around their weight around, misrepresented the data, and gave portions of YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUM PAYMENTS to key politicians (like $2.5 million to powerful Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus) to make sure their interests as insurers took precedence over YOUR OWN INTERESTS as the insured. And the worst part of it is, they convinced millions of ordinary Americans that a cartel of for-profit insurance companies doing these kinds of things to maintain their stranglehold on the industry will serve you more ethically than the government; that it would be better for you to have a claims adjuster between you and your doctor than a government bureaucrat. Ironically, the only reason that most Americans aren’t more sour on private insurance companies is that they don’t have health problems so they don’t have to use them. Tea-partiers put up with (and even defend) government-run Medicare and Medicaid, so why not have a government option for people who don’t get sick that often.

It’s not just the private companies that are to blame though. Their relentless lobbying has a profound effect on Washington politics. According to George Crile, Charles Wilson’s career was funded by American Jews, though there were hardly any in his district who could actually vote for him. In the movie version of Crile’s book, Wilson, played by Tom Hanks, admitted that “congressmen aren't elected by voters, they're elected by contributors.” The only way that is possible is because the money is buying votes, your votes. The only reason that is possible is because we are selling our votes cheap, for the price of a few impotent words on abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, or lower taxes.

This kind of political cynicism and deception happens on both sides of the aisle and it is disgusting. However, in the case of the tea-party, I would just like to alert you that not only is the tea-party being attacked by liberals, but even responsible conservatives have had enough with their dubious logic and senseless brinkmanship. Just last week a reputable conservative magazine called down shame on them for their sophomoric recklessness and “economic illiteracy.” A conservative columnist devoted a whole column to his worries that tea-party ideologues are an internal existential threat to the Republican party that could lead to its downfall. Untethered to reality, they are “more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.” Ironically his major concern was their fanatical inability to engage in the time-honored American virtue of compromise, a foundational American doctrine that these Constitution-loving fanatics have ostensibly jettisoned along with their tea.

But the tea-party might be doing more than just abandoning core American values. They may also be jettisoning their souls. That’s because they take themselves too seriously. Despite the depressing tone of this article I believe there is one hope for the tea-partiers and every other uncompromising ideologue who is actually the unwitting political tool of special interests: levity. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but levity is the soul of thought. We must take ourselves lightly and recognize our limitations or we will begin to believe we really have a complete understanding of what is going on, which is the surest path to embarrassment. A full understanding of what is happening in politics and what we ought to do about it is light years beyond what any of us can fathom. If we are foolish enough to think we see it all clearly, we will start to believe in radical widespread conspiracies and lose sight of the real threat, which is within us. Having chosen a side we’ll view everyone not similarly aligned as a threat. Their perceived agenda will frighten us rather than inform us. Rather than judging the merits of their ideas on a case by case basis, we won’t even consider them because we have already passed judgement on the source. That’s why Chris Wallace doesn’t understand Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly doesn’t get Stephen Colbert, but it also may be why Stephen Colbert gave short shrift to Rick Perry this week, why Chris Matthews isn't known for his laugh, and why liberals rarely have much patience with religious conservatives. It’s also why tea-party wackos write impartial economic experts off as part of the liberal establishment.

I don’t dare to hope that we all will collectively plunge ourselves into analyzing every political issue, challenging every hypocritical statement, and exposing every special interest acting behind the scenes. That sounds kind of boring anyway. I think the real hangover cure after a hard night of tea-partying is a little laughter. Look at the world around you and try to find what is funny about it rather than focusing on what is tragic. We should zealously fight for what we think is right, but we will quickly get manipulated into fighting the wrong battles if we fail to love our enemies or laugh at ourselves while doing it. If you can’t laugh at the funny stuff, you probably can’t accurately diagnose the tragic. As Chesterton said, “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly...Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One ‘settles down’ into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness.” You may not like them and you may have good reason, but if you can’t laugh with Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, the problem might be more internal than external.