Screeds
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Beyond The Lens
January 25, 2002
Have you noticed the herd mentality that’s prevailed among opinion writers, these past few years? There was once a time that you’d be hard pressed to find two of them concerned with the same thing at the same time. Today there’s a short menu of subjects to write about, seldom exceeding three choices, and all of them—I suppose I should say "us," shouldn’t I?—stick to that menu.
The menu changes over time, of course, but whether the changes are driven by real shifts in readership priorities or by the whims of the marketing departments of our major news media is difficult to say. Certainly Black Tuesday and the Afghani War overrode any "artificial" steering of the national attention. Lately the collapse of Enron and the argument over possible Federal budget deficits have occupied what bandwidth was left. But had those things not occurred, what do you suppose we’d be talking about? Ought we to spare it a few moments of our time, despite the war?
Let’s feel around a bit in our recent past, see what we can find.
I recall a controversy over embryonic stem-cell research. President Bush’s statement on the subject left a lot of people unsatisfied. Claims were made that embryonic stem-cells weren’t necessary for the pursuit of this promising-looking field, and little counterevidence had been offered.
I recall that the partial privatization of Social Security was a hot topic. About a fifth of the average taxpayer’s Social Security payments were to be under his control, to be invested as he saw fit, like an IRA. The usual groups were screaming that this would endanger retirees’ pensions, or bankrupt the Social Security pyramid scheme (current payments into the system would no longer be entirely available to pay current retirees), but popular sentiment found much merit in the idea.
I recall a considerable ruckus over educational standards and the prospects for school choice. The virtues of charter schools and of voucher programs in Wisconsin and Florida were being debated with a religious zeal. The National Education Association (NEA), which has consistently opposed both objective measurements of school performance and parental choice of how their children should be schooled, mounted a major campaign to dissuade legislators from even dreaming about national testing or school choice, on the grounds that these things would deflect children from vital learning tasks and bankrupt the government-run schools.
How strange that the NAACP’s shameful political ads labeling George W. Bush a hate-mongering murderer, because James Byrd was killed in Texas, no longer command any attention! How strange that the controversy over the Presidential election, marred by massive, documented vote fraud in several states and entirely unwarranted intrusions by Florida judges, in defiance of both Florida law and the Federal Constitution, is yesterday’s news!
Does anyone remember the EP-3E downed by that Red Chinese fighter pilot, or the twenty-four American servicemen the Chinese held captive for a month? Does anyone remember the worldwide shock over President Bush’s guarantee that America would do whatever it takes to preserve Taiwan’s independence? Does anyone remember that one of the principal objections to an American ballistic missile defense was that it would make the Red Chinese feel less secure—about their ability to threaten or invade Taiwan without incurring an American response?
Gary Condit and Chandra Levy? The Kyoto Protocol? Immigration reform? California’s electrical shortfalls? BATF involvement in the incineration of a home—and its owner—in Northern California? Black berets for the whole Army? Delayed availability of the Star Wars movies on DVD?
Maybe it’s well that we’ve let these things slip from our minds. Just reviewing them has raised my blood pressure about fifty points. The average man simply doesn’t have enough emotional energy to cope with all of this, plus the anti-terrorism campaign, plus the fall of Enron, plus the struggle over the Bush tax cut, all at once.
I draw attention to them here, today, because in each and every case there’s a community of interest that celebrates the public’s withdrawal of its interest. For the cessation of interest in a topic that has apparently faded from the public mind is never uniform; every topic will always matter more to some than to others. Whoever’s attention and energies last longest is likely to get his way about it. This is the core of the public choice / special interest group dynamic that’s done so much to corrupt politics and government in these United States.
If our attention and energy are used up by two or three topics, then as long as politics is deemed to be a fit decision making mechanism for a multitude of things, the interest groups will get what they want at our expense. All they have to do is wait for us to disengage from the matter, whether because we’ve tired of it or because our priorities have shifted to another subject. Perhaps it’s a misnomer to say they "wait," for they never really wait; they simply remain engaged with the single subject that’s all they care about, while we peel off to address other things. Nevertheless, once we’ve abandoned the field, they remain as de facto victors. Their narrow focus, which gives them staying power, is their ultimate asset.
It’s yet another argument for keeping politics out of the vast majority of things. Rights theory dictates this. The division of labor dictates this. Humanity’s experience with the consequences of governmental overextension strongly dictates this. But, needless to say, the special interests are opposed. As they have more staying power than the rest of us, plus the attention of politicians eager for their votes and campaign contributions, they’re likely to get their way. All they have to do is wait until the lenses swing away from their pet topics, as, inevitably, they will.
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