Paul Krugman wrote in a New York Times piece “No Nothing Politics” (Thursday, August 7) that “Republicans, once hailed as the ‘party of ideas,’ have become the party of stupid.”
His use of the word, “stupid,” annoyed me a lot.
I hate the word, although I do allow myself to use it about myself and to describe any driver who puts my life in danger.
I especially do not like it used about “everybody,” the President of the United States, Republicans or Democrats.
Let us all rethink it.
“Stupid” is a rush-to-judgment word that tends to invalidate complaints about things that have gone wrong, are going wrong or will do so.
Krugman’s use of the word, I believe, does not invalidate the main thrust of his piece that there is a current tendency among Republicans “operatives” to push policies—especially in the area of energy and offshore drilling—that are not thought through and rely on people’s ignorance.
He might have led his piece with his reference to a poll that showed 51 percent of the public believe that removing restrictions on offshore drilling would reduce gas prices within a year and that the Republican push on the issue takes advantage of ignorance on the subject rather than helping to correct it.
Those who have repeatedly used the word “stupid” about President Bush or any political opponent fail to grasp something basic in the human psyche. There is a backlash that tends to build in the presence of the use of the word. It is based on the fact that we all—deep down in a place we don’t let anybody else know about, much less see—realize that we ourselves can be shortsighted of, if you prefer, “stupid.”
A parent should never call a child, “stupid;” nor a teacher, a student; not an individual, a friend or relative; nor an advocate, an opponent. There s always a more circumscribed way to grasp and describe a person’s or even a political party’s reason for acting a certain way.
If we look to look to stupidity rather the long-range causes of our nation’s problems, we fail to idsolte the virus of petty, self-aggrandizing greed and power that can grip us all and override intelligence, thoughtfulness, care and concern, even for our own real interests.
Former Illinois Gov. John Peter Altgeld attempted to do this in his book, The Cost of Something for Nothing, published by Clarence Darrow in 1904, a year after Altgeld’s death.
Altgeld wrote:
“There was a time when the men in public office led public sentiment, and the contest was intellectual and moral. With every contest, they grew stronger. But the commercial interests began to control government for private ends. For this purpose, they sought to shape public sentiment and they used commercial methods; and the office-holders no longer led the public, nor were they simply followers, but they were side-door conveniences for commercial interests. They posed and strutted, it is true as congressmen, as senators, as governors, aye as judges; but they breathed the atmosphere of servitude. They bent to the winds of commercialism, which was laden with the poison of injustice.”
Altgeld’s words were strong ones and represented the man and his personal convictions. John F. Kennedy included Governor Altgeld in his Profiles in Courage for being willing to sacrifice an opportunity for higher office by pardoning the three men unfairly tried in the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Square bombing.
“Warned,” Kennedy wrote, “by Democratic leaders that he must forget these convicts if he still looked toward the Senate, Altgeld replied ‘No man’s ambition has the right to stand in the way of performing a simple act of justice.’”
Altgeld believed the answer for each of us is to disavow the gratuities that many politicians and members of the public accept as getting “something for nothing.”
The latter practice by public servants, Altgeld called, “suicidal,” urging us all to replace it with the commandment, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” This tenant, he described as “the law of self-preservation.”
If we miss the depth of his exhortation—if we continue to think that people and politicians are wrong because they do not know any better—we ignore the fact that the cause for many misdirected political policies and stances is not stupidity—it is cupidity.
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Kenan Heise is a former Chicago Tribune editor, a member of the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame and a regular columnist for The Chicago Daily Observer